Tag: Explained

Status: Explained — widely regarded as a hoax, including by many UFO researchers.

On June 21, 1947, harbor patrolman Harold Dahl said he was on a patrol boat in Puget Sound when he saw six large doughnut-shaped aircraft over Maury Island. According to Dahl, one of them shed lava-like rock and thin white metal that fell on his boat, hurt a crewman and killed a dog. His associate, Fred Crisman, said he later collected debris and saw a craft himself.

The story reached Kenneth Arnold, whose Mount Rainier sighting had made headlines days earlier. At the request of the editor of Amazing Stories, Arnold went to Tacoma in late July and interviewed both men. He and airline captain E. J. Smith judged the “white metal” Crisman showed them to be ordinary material. Two Army Air Forces intelligence officers then collected fragments and interviewed the men, and died in a B-25 crash near Kelso, Washington, on August 1, 1947.

Project Blue Book chief Edward Ruppelt later called the whole affair a hoax, and that remains the mainstream view, even among many UFO believers. The case is still part of Pacific Northwest UFO lore, and Des Moines, Washington marks the anniversary with local events.

Sources: Wikipedia: Maury Island incident

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Status: Explained — U.S. Air Force reports in the 1990s concluded the debris came from Project Mogul, a classified balloon program. Some researchers dispute this.

In early July 1947, a rancher near Roswell, New Mexico reported unusual wreckage on his property. Personnel from Roswell Army Air Field collected it, and on July 8 the base press office announced that the military had recovered a “flying disc.” The story made international headlines.

Within a day the Army reversed itself. At a press conference in Fort Worth, Brig. Gen. Roger Ramey and others identified the debris as a weather balloon and radar target, and photographs of the material were published. The rancher told a local paper it consisted of rubber strips, tinfoil, paper, tape and sticks.

The episode faded until 1978, when retired officer Jesse Marcel said the weather-balloon explanation had been a cover story. That claim grew into the modern Roswell legend. In the 1990s the U.S. Air Force published reports concluding the debris came from Project Mogul, a top-secret program that flew long balloon trains carrying equipment to detect Soviet nuclear tests. The original press release did not mention that program.

The Air Force explanation is the one supported by the documented record, though many UFO proponents reject it. Roswell now hosts a UFO museum.

Sources: Wikipedia: Roswell incident

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Status: Explained — investigators concluded the pilot most likely chased a Skyhook research balloon.

On January 7, 1948, the Kentucky Highway Patrol told Godman Army Airfield at Fort Knox about an unusual object in the sky. Tower staff saw it too and could not identify it as an aircraft or a weather balloon. Four F-51 Mustangs of the Kentucky Air National Guard were sent to look, and one of them was flown by 25-year-old Captain Thomas F. Mantell.

Mantell climbed toward the object while his wingmen turned back. None of the aircraft had the oxygen equipment needed for high altitude. The Army later concluded that once Mantell passed about 25,000 feet he blacked out from lack of oxygen, and his plane spiraled down and crashed on a farm south of Franklin, Kentucky.

Sensational rumors spread afterward, including claims the plane was shot down or the wreckage was radioactive. The Air Force investigation found no support for them. Project Blue Book head Edward Ruppelt later concluded that the observations, including a tower operator's description of “a parachute” and a Vanderbilt astronomer's report of a pear-shaped balloon with cables, fit a Skyhook, a then-secret high-altitude research balloon that Mantell would not have known about.

It remains one of the best known early UFO cases and a standard example of a pilot chasing a misidentified object.

Sources: Wikipedia: Mantell UFO incident

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Status: Explained — one proposed explanation is a meteor plus a barn owl in a tree; not universally accepted.

At about 7:15 p.m. on September 12, 1952, two brothers and a friend in Flatwoods, West Virginia, saw a bright object cross the sky and appear to land on a nearby farm. They told the boys' mother, and a group that included West Virginia National Guardsman Eugene Lemon and several local children walked up the hill to look.

The group reported a pulsing red light. Lemon aimed his flashlight and said it briefly lit a tall, man-like figure with a round red face inside a pointed, hood-like shape. Descriptions of the being varied, but it was often said to be about ten feet tall, with glowing eyes and a hissing sound. The witnesses said it glided toward them, Lemon screamed and dropped his flashlight, and everyone ran.

The “Braxton County monster” became a national story. In 2000, paranormal investigator Joe Nickell suggested the bright light was a meteor and that the creature may have been a barn owl perched in a tree, whose shadows and shape could resemble a large figure. Flatwoods still keeps the legend alive with a local monster museum, and the case remains a favorite of folklore as well as UFO history.

Sources: Wikipedia: Flatwoods monster

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Status: Explained — the Air Force and skeptics attributed the reports to ball lightning or a severe electrical storm. Many UFO researchers consider it a strong multi-witness case.

Levelland sits on the flat Texas South Plains west of Lubbock. On the evening of November 2, 1957, two farm workers called the police to say a rocket-shaped object had passed over their truck near Levelland, and the engine died until it left. An officer on the night desk assumed it was a joke.

An hour later, motorist Jim Wheeler reported a brilliantly lit, egg-shaped object sitting in the road east of town, and his car stalled. Over the next few hours, more drivers on roads around the town said they saw a bright object, and that their engines, headlights or radios failed and then recovered after it moved away. A Texas Tech student, Newell Wright, was among them, and the sheriff's office also looked into the reports.

The reports came in the weeks after the first Sputnik launch, and they drew national attention. The Air Force's Project Blue Book investigated and concluded that the cause was ball lightning or a severe electrical storm, noting that there was stormy weather in the area. UFO researchers have long pointed to the number of independent witnesses in a short period as what makes Levelland unusual, while critics note that some of the details are not well documented.

Sources: Wikipedia: Levelland UFO case

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Status: Explained — the widely seen fireball is attributed to a meteor, with a Soviet satellite re-entry also suggested. The “crash” story remains disputed.

On the evening of December 9, 1965, a brilliant fireball was seen over a wide area from the Great Lakes to Pennsylvania, with reports from six U.S. states and Canada. The Federal Aviation Administration logged reports from pilots, and a seismograph near Detroit recorded shock waves as it passed. Around Pittsburgh, some people heard sonic booms.

In Kecksburg, a village about 30 miles southeast of Pittsburgh, residents reported blue smoke, a thump and something crashing in the woods. The Greensburg Tribune-Review said the area was roped off, but a later edition ran the headline “Searchers Fail to Find Object.” State troopers and Air Force personnel who searched the woods reported finding “absolutely nothing.” Over the decades, some locals described an acorn-shaped object and said the military removed it.

Astronomers at the time called the fireball a meteor. In 2005, NASA said experts had examined metal fragments and found they came from a Soviet satellite, but the original records could not be found. Others have pointed to debris from the Soviet probe Kosmos 96. A Sky & Telescope analysis concluded the fireball's path ended in or near western Lake Erie. The village keeps the legend alive today with a full-size replica of the acorn.

Sources: Wikipedia: Kecksburg UFO incident

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Status: Explained — officially attributed to swamp gas, an explanation that was widely ridiculed and is still debated.

In March 1966, southern Michigan was in the middle of a wave of UFO reports. On the night of March 20, farmer Frank Mannor, his wife and son reported a football-shaped object with blinking lights hovering over a marsh near their farm northwest of Dexter. Two sheriff's deputies went into the swamp to investigate. Altogether, about 60 people, including a dozen law enforcement officers, were said to have seen something.

The next night, around 87 residents of a Hillsdale College dormitory watched flashing lights over the campus arboretum for more than three hours, took notes, and called the local civil defense director, who also observed the lights through binoculars.

The Air Force sent J. Allen Hynek, its civilian scientific consultant. At a Detroit press conference on March 25, he said “marsh gas” could account for the Dexter and Hillsdale sightings. The explanation was widely mocked, and Michigan congressman Gerald Ford, then the House minority leader, called for a congressional investigation. The controversy added to pressure for a formal scientific review of the UFO question. Hynek went on to become one of the field's most prominent researchers.

Sources: Wikipedia: Michigan “swamp gas” UFO reports

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