THINK ABOUTIT SIGHTINGS REPORT
Date: December 6, 1952 BBU [CCL Item #8]
Location: Gulf of Mexico
Hynek Classification: RV (Radar / Visual) Observation supplemented with radar.
Duration:
Shape of Object(s): Disc
Number of Witnesses: Pilot/Co-Pilot/Air-Crew, Military, Radar
Special Features/Characteristics: Pilot/Aircrew, Radar, Humanoid/Occupant
Source: McDonald; cf. Condon Rpt pp. 148-150; etc.
Summary: When watching the radarscope, Coleman observed two UFOs that he tracked at a speed in excess of 5.000 miles per hour, quite impossible for planes of the day.
Full Report
Just before dawn on December 6, 1952, on a bright moonlight night, a B-29 bomber of the US Air Force was cruising at the altitude of 18.000 feet above the Gulf of Mexico, 100 miles south of Louisiana, on a bearing which has not been disclosed.
The B-29 had been on a night training flight and the mission was at its end, the plane was now traveling back to his home base.
The crew comprised:
Captain John Harter, flight commander
Lieutenant Sidney Coleman, radar operator
Master Sergeant Bailey, assistant radar operator to Lieutenant Coleman Staff Sergeant Ferris, assistant radar operator to Lieutenant Coleman
Lieutenant Coleman was watching his radarscope, waiting to detect he coastline. At 05:25 local time, he saw a fast moving target on the radarscope, approaching the plane from ahead, at the relative direction of 12 o’clock. What puzzled Coleman is that between each sweep of the radar, the object seemed to have moved 13 nautical miles towards the B-29, which he knew was a speed impossible to any known aircraft.
Lieutenant Coleman used his stopwatch to measure the sped of the object and calculated that it was flying at the speed of 5.240 miles per hour.
He then decided to alert the flight commander, Captain Harter. Harter replied that such as speed was “impossible” and asked Coleman to re-calibrate his radar set.
As Coleman was re-calibrating his radar set, four other blips of an unknown nature appeared on his radarscope, but also on Captain Harder’s radarscope and on the navigator’s scope, also at the relative position of 12 o’clock, and also approaching the B-29 at high speed.
Coleman was done recalibrating the radar set; he actually found out that the calibration was correct from the start and that the radar was functioning correctly.
At this time, one of the four blips on the radarscope left the group of the four blips and accelerated, approaching the B-29, coming very near. Master Sergeant Bailey noted that, and rushed to the right waist blister to try to see what the object was.
Bailey was totally bewildered to see that indeed at the expected position, an object was visually visible; a blue lit object streaking by the plane far enough to the right side of the plane, circling around it.
At this moment, a second group of blips appeared on all three radar set, seen by all, as the crew was now aware that there was something strange on the radar set. The new group of object also appeared at the relative position of 12 o’clock, they were rushing towards the bomber but this time their courses missed the bomber by several miles. Their speed was calculated with the sop watch; it was also 5.000 miles per hour.
At 05:31 local time, the radar set was clear again. The crew who has been on his nerves started to relax a little. But then a third group of blips appeared on the scope, also coming from their 12 o’clock position. Lieutenant Coleman was using the stopwatch again and Master Sergeant Bailey was doing the calculation: the objects of this third group moved at a pace above 5000 miles per hour. This time, it was the flight navigator who rushed to the right waist blister, and he could see two of the unidentified object: they appeared as blue-white lights streaking at a fantastic speed.
Meanwhile, Captain Harter was studying his radarscope; he noted that forty miles behind the B-29, at the relative position of 6 o’clock, a group of five object was cutting the flightpath of the B-29, and turned as to follow the B-29 from behind. They were heading straight to the B-29 at fast speed, then slowed down when they were closing in on the B-29. The remained right there at the back of the B-29 for ten seconds.
Meanwhile, a larger blip had appeared on the radarscopes. This blip made a motionless half inch spot on the radarscopes, a size impossible to any known plane.
The group of five objects pacing the B-29 then turned, and started to accelerate. The entire crew saw on their radarscope that the group of five approached the huge motionless blip and seemed to merge into it. Now, only the large blip remained on the scope. In a moment, the huge blip took speed.
Coleman called Harter on the intercom and told him that he and Bailey clocked the huge blip. Coleman said: “You won’t believe this. It was making over 9000 miles per hour.”
Harter replied: “I believe it, all right. That’s just what I figured.”
Case details by Donald E. Keyhoe, NICAP:
Official clearance list, item 8. Gulf of Mexico area, December 6, 1952. B-29 training flight. Radar and visual reports, accurate details, double-checked; speeds computed showed UFO making 9,000 m.p.h.
The second case which Chop had just cleared was even more dramatic. This strange sighting occurred over the Gulf of Mexico, as a B-29 bomber was returning to its base in Texas. It was just before dawn on December 6, 1952 – less than 48 hours after Lieutenant Earl Fogle’s near-collision at Laredo, Texas.
Approaching the end of a night practice flight to Florida, the B-29 was cruising in bright moonlight, at 18,000 feet. So far it had been a routine mission.
At 5:24 A.M. the big bomber, piloted by Captain John Harter, was 190 miles from Galveston and about 100 miles south of the Louisiana coast. A minute before, Harter had called the radar officer, Lieutenant Sid Coleman, and asked him to turn on the set, so he could check the coastline on the auxiliary scope in the cockpit.
At 5:25, back in the ship, Coleman was watching the main radarscope to see if the coast showed up. Suddenly the blip of some unknown object appeared at one edge of the screen. When the sweep made its next revolution, Coleman jumped.
In that brief moment the unknown craft had gone 13 miles.
A third blip leaped onto the scope as the oncoming object streaked toward the B-29. For an instant it seemed they would meet head-on. Then Coleman saw their paths were diverging. He snatched up his stop-watch, yelled for the flight engineer.
“Bailey! Help me track this thing!”
Before the blips faded, Coleman and the staff sergeant swiftly computed the unknown’s speed.
It was 5,240 miles an hour.
The two men gaped at each other, then Coleman grabbed his intercom mike and called the pilot.
“Captain-check your scope! We just clocked an un known at over 5,000.”
“That’s impossible,” snapped Harter. “Recalibrate the set.”
As Coleman hurriedly went to work, Master Sergeant Bailey bent over the scope.
“There’s another one-two of them,” he exclaimed.
A second later Lieutenant Cassidy, the navigator, cut in on the intercom.
“I’ve got ’em on my scope, too,” he said tautly.
By the time Coleman finished recalibrating, the blips of four UFOs were racing across his screen. Abruptly, Harter’s crisp voice came through the intercom.
“I’ve got four unknowns at 12 o’clock [dead ahead]. What do you show?”
“They’re on all three scopes,” said Coleman. “I’ve re-calibrated – it’s no malfunction.”
Up in the cockpit, Harter incredulously watched the swift-moving blips cross his glass. As one approached on the right, he called out a hasty alert.
“Unknown at 3 o’clock!”
Back in the B-29, Bailey sprang to the right waist blister and peered out into the night. Astonished, he saw a blue- lit object streak from front to rear. Moving so fast it was only a blue-white blur, the saucer vanished under the bomber’s wing.
The strange machine had hardly disappeared when another group of blips came onto all three scopes. Like the other machines, the new group was making over 5,000 miles an hour. To make it worse, they were all coming from almost dead ahead. Though their course still diverged enough to miss the bomber by miles, the slightest change might put the crew in instant peril. At those terrific speeds they wouldn’t have a prayer, and every man aboard knew it.
Six minutes after the first sighting, there was a sudden lull. As the scopes cleared, Coleman drew a long breath. Apparently the nightmare was over.
A minute passed. The tense airmen were slowly beginning to relax when a third group of blips flashed onto the scopes. Coleman seized his stop-watch again, swiftly called off the times and distances. Bailey figured the speeds, grimly nodded.
“Same as before,” he muttered.
The radar officer bent over the screen. Two of the UFO’s were rocketing by on the right.
“Unknowns at four o’clock!” he bawled into the mike.
Staff Sergeant Ferris beat Bailey to the waist blister. Open-mouthed, he watched two machines streak by- mere blurs of blue-white light.
Up in the cockpit, Harter’s eyes were glued to the auxiliary scope. Forty miles away, five of the saucers were racing behind the bomber, cutting across its course.
Suddenly the saucers swerved, headed straight for the B-29. Harter froze. At their terriffic speed they would close the gap in three seconds.
But before he could move the controls, an incredible thing happened. Abruptly the onrushing UFO’s slowed to the bomber’s speed. For ten seconds they kept pace behind it, while the pilot held his breath.
Then, swiftly picking up speed, the unknown machines pulled off to one side. At the same moment Harter caught sight of a huge blip-a half-inch spot on the scope. Amazed, he saw the most fantastic thing of all.
Still moving at over 5,000 miles an hour, the smaller craft merged with the large machine. Instantly, the huge blip began to accelerate. Moving so fast that Harter sat stunned, it flashed across his scope and was gone.
A few moments later Coleman’s awed voice came through the intercom.
“Captain, did you see that?”
“Yes – I saw it,” said Harter.
“We clocked it,” said Coleman. “You won’t believe this-it was making over 9,000 miles an hour!”
“I believe it, all right,” Harter said grimly. “That’s just what I figured.”
For the rest of the way he kept the crew on alert, but no more saucers appeared.
The meaning of what they had seen was inescapable. The discs had been launched from a huge mother ship for some type of reconnaissance mission. Probably it had covered parts of the United States, but at the discs’ tremendous speed they could have been operating anywhere over the globe.
For a rendezvous, whoever guided the discs had chosen this point over the Gulf of Mexico. After the B-29 was sighted, one group of discs had been diverted for a brief observation or tracking. Then, flying at 5,000 m.p.h., they had been taken aboard the mother ship. And in a matter of seconds the huge machine had almost doubled its speed.
It was almost unbelievable. But the radar set had been working perfectly, and the visual confirmation, as Bailey and Ferris saw the machines flash by, was final, absolute proof. Three separate times during the operation saucers had been seen exactly where the three radarscopes showed them.
Captain Harter had radioed ahead, and Intelligence officers were waiting when they landed. Over and over the airmen were interrogated, separately and together. But nothing could shake their story, and statements in the report showed their firm conviction.
Captain Harter: “One group of blips was noted, after the set was calibrated, to arc about and swing in behind us at about 30 miles, and maintain speed and distance for approximately ten seconds… Contact was broken off at 0535, after a group of the blips merged into a one half-inch arc and proceeded across the scope and off it at a computed speed of over 9,000 m.p.h.”
Lieutenant Coleman: “I noticed one UFO approach our aircraft at a terrific rate of speed. I timed it as best I could with a stop-watch over a known distance and the flight engineer computed the speed at 5,240m.p.h. I alerted the entire crew to look for the objects visually, and flashes of light were noted. The closest the objects came was approximately 20 miles. I saw about 20 objects in all. I recalibrated the set and there was no change.”
“The objects were small and possibly round, with the exception of one very large return shaped as follows, one- half-inch curved arc. I also noticed a large return come up to within 40 miles of our tail from behind and then disappear. To the best of my knowledge, I believe that this object was real and moved at an extremely high speed and was not a set malfunction or optical illusion.”
Master Sergeant Bailey: “The radar operator clocked the object [the first one seen] and I computed the air speed of the object to average 5,240 m.p.h. Twice during the period, the radar operator reported an object to be passing at 3 o’clock. Upon looking out the window, I saw a blue-white streak travel front to rear and disappear under the wing.”
Staff Sergeant Ferris: “After the radar operator reported objects approaching at 4 o’clock, I immediately looked in that position and saw two flashes of a blue-white nature for approximately three seconds.”
As was to be expected, neither Bailey nor Ferris could make out the shape of the saucers. At their great speeds they were naturally only a blur.
Discussion:
It was Albert Chop, who was at the time the public relation officer about UFOs for the US Air Force in Washington DC who released the case to Major Donald E. Keyhoe, USMC Ret. and a leading UFO investigator.
The events are known because they occurred before the JANAP 146 regulation silenced military witnesses of UFOs. After JANAP 146 was imposed, military personal were ordered to report all UFOs internally only, forbidden to report their UFO sightings publicly unless they had a commonplace explanation, and were sued if they ignored the regulation.
If the US Air force had an honest desire that people and the scientific community would evaluate the UFO problem, they would have publicized such data. They did not, and claimed even as late as 1966 before the US Congress that no UFO has ever been detected on radar. Understandably, they did not want to be bothered over the UFO problem.
To the best of my knowledge, skeptic people offered no comment on this case ever. They either do not know about it, or chose to ignore it.
The only academic scientist who checked into the case is Paul R. Hill, a well respected NASA scientist who became interested in UFOs because he had his own UFO sighting in the 50s. He soon acted as the unofficial UFO specialist at NASA, and offered the same conclusion for this case than the conclusion offered by Al Chop, Major Keyhoe, and other ufologists:
Several changes of course were made, and two phases of acceleration were performed. Speeds of 5.000 to 9.000 miles per hour with maneuvers and motionless capability exclude any meteor whatsoever as it is too slow, and exclude any known human flying machine of 1952 and ever since, as it is much too fast. Planes cruising at 5000 miles per hour at an altitude of 18.000 feet would simply immediately disintegrate. Rockets of that time did not have the observed maneuverability.
The fact that the objects arrived head-on, turned back, paced the plane, went away to join with a much larger one which then fled away at an impossible speed is indicative of intelligent driven operation.
No known human plane or rocket emits blue light.
Neither meteors nor planes nor rockets do not make Rendez-Vous.
No rocket or plane has the size seen by the crew for the largest object on the radarscope.
Conclusion:
This incident is no less than a report from US Air Force’s own people that groups of extraordinary flying machines with a speed impossible to any known plane of that time, and still impossible to any modern time jet from the point of view of both speed and manoeuver, do visit our planet.
It is also an incident in which not only radar and visual observation was made by multiple witnesses, but in which precise enough measurement of the speed was done, based on instrumentation and not just visual evaluation.
This is also an incident where smaller flying machines paced a US bomber aircraft and, finally, joined with a flying machine of a size which was and still is impossible to any known plane, and whose speed of 9000 miles per hour after a motionless period was and still is something absolutely impossible to any know plane.
This case is one of many which prove that our planet is visited by something for which there is no other reasonable explanation by far, than an intelligent, technological, extraterrestrial origin.
