by Mack Maloney
They called the F-94. Had they seen anything during the brief chase? The pilots responded they hadn’t, besides the radar indication.
The fighter stayed around for another few minutes but found nothing else. It had to return to its base for fuel. As soon as it departed, though, the UFO came back.
The tower personnel saw it, and it was picked up by the radar station again. This time they kept it in sight for about two minutes when suddenly the UFO broke into three separate pieces. The three pieces left the area at high speed, and that ended the episode.
In all, the UFO had been in sight or tracked on radar for more than thirty minutes.
* * *
The Haneda sighting was so detailed, both visually and on radar, that it fascinated Captain Ruppelt, that is, back when his office was still nominally looking for the truth behind UFOs.
Ruppelt consulted with a group of Pentagon officers about whether UFOs appeared to be under intelligent control or simply flew through the air in a random helter-skelter fashion. This was an important question. If it could be shown that UFO flight patterns were random, then the UFO mystery might be deeper, but maybe not as interesting.
However, if it could be shown they were under intelligent control…
Ruppelt and the Pentagon officers discussed doing a study that would determine what kind of motion was used most often by UFOs. Random motion would be similar to a swarm of flying insects, with no pattern or purpose to their flight paths. But in a case like a flock of birds, where there are defined patterns to their movements, there’s an ordered motion to them. The defined pattern indicates intelligent control.
In the Haneda incident, according to the witnesses, each turn the UFO took seemed deliberate, if unpredictable. As Ruppelt later studied the UFO’s flight path from that night, basically moving back and forth over Tokyo Bay, it reminded him of search patterns that were used during World War II when SAR units we were looking for crews of downed airplanes. In fact, the only time the Haneda UFO strayed from its pattern was when the F-94 showed up.
Ruppelt came to the conclusion that doing an extensive motion study on UFO maneuvers was a great way to advance research into the phenomenon. He was anxious to pursue it.
But as usual, his superiors in the air force had other ideas. Those people in the Pentagon who could have actually approved and funded such a study turned him down cold. The promising idea died a quick and quiet death.
Later on, the Colorado Project, a skeptical UFO study effort with ties to the U.S. Air Force, determined the Haneda sighting was nothing more than false radar echoes caused by a temperature inversion layer.
The Haunted Carrier
History tells many tales of haunted sailing ships. The Flying Dutchman. The Mary Celeste. Even, in her day, the Queen Mary was thought to have ghosts.
But many believe the U.S. Navy once had a haunted ship — an aircraft carrier, in fact. And this ship’s tormentors were not poltergeists. They were UFOs.
The USS Franklin D. Roosevelt was commissioned on October 27, 1945, shortly after the end of World War II. The following year, the ship was the first American aircraft carrier to launch and recover a jet aircraft. It also participated in what is still considered the longest flight ever from an aircraft carrier after a P2V Neptune naval bomber took off from its deck near Jacksonville, Florida, and landed in San Francisco the following day.
The FDR also took part in NATO’s first ever naval war games — and that’s when its bizarre connection to UFOs began.
The war games were called Operation Mainbrace; they took place over twelve days in September 1952. The U.S. Navy was the major contributor, but navies from the United Kingdom, Canada, Norway, Denmark, France, Belgium, Holland and Portugal also took part. The newly honed NATO fleet boasted more than 200 ships, 1,000 aircraft and 80,000 men.
The object of the war games was to repel an imaginary Soviet attack on Norway and Denmark; as such, the NATO armada was spread out over four large bodies of water: the Norwegian Sea, the Baltic Sea, the Barents Sea and the North Sea.
The centerpiece of this vast flotilla was the six participating U.S. Navy aircraft carriers, including the USS Wasp, the Midway, and the FDR.
The weirdness began on September 13, 1952. A Danish destroyer taking part in Mainbrace was sailing just south of Sweden when its commander and some of his crew spotted a triangular-shaped UFO streak overhead, traveling southeast. The witnesses said the object was moving at nearly 1,000 miles per hour.
On September 19, a British jet fighter returning to its home base in the UK arrived with a UFO on its tail. Witnesses on the ground described the object as a large rotating disk. Stopping in midair, the UFO lingered briefly over the airfield, then took off at tremendous speed, eventually disappearing to the southeast. The next day, three Danish Air Force officers spotted a shiny metallic disk streaking across the sky. They reported seeing it coming from the direction of the massive NATO fleet and then vanishing to the east.
That same day, September 20, a newspaper photographer who was on the FDR covering the war games at sea saw a group of crewmen looking at something overhead. It was a large spherical object moving extremely fast across the sky. The photographer quickly snapped off a few photos before the object disappeared.
On studying these photos, the carrier’s intelligence officers decided the large spherical object had to be either a weather balloon — or something else.
The FDR quickly sent a message to all the ships in the NATO fleet, asking if any had released a weather balloon. The answer that came back was unanimous — no. None of the ships had sent up a balloon.
The next day, September 21, six RAF pilots flying above the North Sea spotted a bright spherical object heading in the direction of the NATO fleet. The six jets started chasing it, but it quickly rocketed away.
The six planes returned to base, but just as they were landing, one pilot saw that the UFO was following him. He turned to chase it, but the UFO sped off.
On September 27 and 28, there were hundreds of UFO reports from West Germany, Denmark, and southern Sweden. Over Hamburg, a luminous object trailing a comet’s tail was seen by many people for a long period of time. Other witnesses elsewhere in Germany saw three small UFOs orbiting a much larger UFO.
Once the war games were over, though, the UFOs went away.
* * *
The following year, the FDR went on maneuvers in the Caribbean. Having just gone through a refit at the navy shipyard in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, it was on its shakedown cruise. One night it was anchored off the U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the now infamous “Gitmo,” when a UFO appeared above it.
The object was glowing with the intensity of a bright star. It began zooming around with fantastic quickness, but then would stop on a dime. It would hover, then streak off again, only to stop again seconds later. Many people on the FDR’s deck watched it until it disappeared in the light of the rising moon.
There was never any explanation for the object, and no official report was ever filed.
* * *
In the spring of 1956, after being refitted again and recommissioned at a shipyard in Washington State, the FDR was assigned a new home port at Mayport, Florida.
The ship was too massive to fit through the Panama Canal, so a trip around the tip of South America was necessary. On the way up the South Atlantic, the carrier stopped in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for a goodwill visit.
It was at anchor off Rio one night when two unknown aerial objects were spotted approaching the ship. The carrier’s radars were immediately turned on, and word went through the crew that they were being stalked again. This time, by two UFOs.
Those who ran to the flight deck saw two large disks. They described them as one above the other, with a glowing light between the two. The objects were estimated at between 75 and 100 feet long.
They weren’t moving, and there were a few hundred feet separating them. The ship’s radar fixed them several miles from the carrier and about a ha
lf mile high. Each object had bright counterrotating lights ringing its middle.
Suddenly the top disk ejected a fiery object that fell into the lower object. After that, both disappeared at blinding speed. They went so fast, the ship’s radar could not catch up with them.
Anyone in the ship’s crew who witnessed the incident was later questioned by the navy and then told never to talk about it again.
* * *
In the fall of 1958, the FDR was back at Guantánamo Bay.
It was around 9 P.M. when a mysterious light appeared in the night sky and started heading right for the carrier.
Alerted that a UFO had been spotted, at least a couple dozen crewmen rushed to the flight deck. What they saw was a cigar-shaped object with a row of windows running through the middle. Some witnesses claimed they saw figures inside looking down at them. Others say they could feel heat coming from the object. Throughout it all, the craft did not make any noise.
The object remained hovering close to the ship for more than five minutes. Then it turned reddish orange — and then it was gone, leaving the area at very high speed.
Crewmen said that shortly afterward, the CIA arrived on the FDR. The reason the spooks gave for being on the carrier was to investigate illegal gambling on the ship.
In reality, they questioned any sailor who’d seen the UFO — and then warned everyone never to talk about the sighting again.
* * *
On October 2, 1962, the FDR was off the coast of Sardinia during one of its many tours of the Mediterranean.
At approximately 2 A.M., an aerial object was detected heading toward the ship.
The object was at the very edge of the ship’s radarscopes, more than 500 miles out and 80,000 feet in altitude. But as the ship’s radar operators watched in astonishment, the object descended nearly three miles in a matter of seconds and then just suddenly stopped.
Officers in the carrier’s radar room confirmed the sighting, and the ship’s captain was alerted. He immediately ordered the carrier to turn into the wind. In minutes, several F-4 Phantom fighter jets were catapulted off the deck with orders to confront the bogey. Once in the air, the Phantoms’ pilots hit their afterburners and started to climb.
The fighters were soon close enough to pick up the UFO via their onboard radars, but this proved fruitless. In fact, the very moment they turned on their radars, the UFO disappeared from the FDR’s radar screens. The F-4s searched for more than twenty minutes but could not find anything. They were called back to the carrier.
But no sooner had the Phantoms landed and the carrier turned around to its previous course than the UFO blinked back onto the ship’s radar screens. And this time it was right above the carrier, meaning it had traveled a distance of more than 500 miles in just a few minutes.
The UFO eventually disappeared for good. But when it came time to enter the details of the incident into the ship’s log, the sailors responsible for that duty were told by their commanding officer not to enter anything.
The officer’s words were: “This never happened.”
* * *
Why did UFOs seem to target the FDR, among all the other aircraft carriers in the U.S. Navy?
There’s only one clue: In 1950, the FDR was the first U.S. Navy carrier to deploy with nuclear weapons on board.
The FDR was decommissioned in 1977 and eventually scrapped. Years later, the ship’s logs were thoroughly searched by UFO investigators, but no UFO reports were ever found.
The Disappearing Jet
On the evening of November 23, 1953, air traffic controllers at Truax Air Force Base in Wisconsin picked up a UFO on their radar screens.
The UFO had been detected flying near the Soo Locks, close to Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. The Soo Locks is the channel that connects Lake Superior with the other Great Lakes.
North of the locks is Canada, so technically this channel constitutes the border of the United States. Because this was the Cold War era, the area was under constant monitoring, as were all border areas, by the Air Defense Command and was considered restricted airspace.
As the radar controllers at Truax continued tracking the UFO, a fighter plane was scrambled from Kinross Air Force Base in nearby Michigan. The aircraft was an F-89C Scorpion, a large, powerful jet for its day, capable of carrying both a pilot and a radar operator. This night, Lieutenant Felix Moncla was at the controls of the jet. Sitting behind him was his radar operator, Lieutenant Robert Wilson.
The UFO remained on the Truax radar as the F-89 approached, flying at 500 miles per hour at 8,000 feet. But once the fighter closed in on the object, the object abruptly changed course. Wilson could not get the UFO to show up on the F-89’s radar, so Moncla had to rely on the Truax ground controllers to keep him on the UFO’s tail.
The pursuit went on like this for about thirty minutes. Finally, the F-89 was able to catch up to the UFO, which was now out over Lake Superior.
That’s when the unbelievable happened.
With the ground radar operators watching, the two blips — one representing the F-89, the other the UFO — suddenly merged into one. The ground controllers were certain the fighter had simply overflown the UFO and would soon emerge on the other side. But this didn’t happen.
Instead, the merged blip suddenly accelerated, leaving the radar screen completely.
The astonished ground controllers desperately tried radioing the F-89, but to no avail. Emergency rescue units were dispatched to search the F-89’s last known position, which was approximately 160 miles northwest of the Soo Locks out over Lake Superior.
But nothing was found of the jet fighter.
* * *
The next day the Chicago Tribune ran the headline: “Jet, 2 Aboard, Vanishes Over Lake Superior.”
The accompanying news story said the plane was on radar “until it merged with an object” but furnished no more details than that.
Pressed for an explanation in the days following the incident, the U.S. Air Force began its clumsy juggling act again. First, air force officials floated rumors that the pilot, Lieutenant Moncla, suffered from vertigo, was flying too low and probably crashed into the lake. In fact, this is what one air force spokesman told Moncla’s widow. But it was pure speculation; plus Moncla had never been diagnosed with the inner-ear ailment.
Then the air force claimed the UFO had actually been a propeller-driven Canadian Air Force DC-3 cargo plane, before suddenly changing its story again and stating a Canadian Air Force jet was to blame instead. Why the switch? Maybe because so many people had seen the UFO being tracked at 500 miles per hour, while a DC-3’s top speed was just over 200 miles per hour.
Either way, the Canadian military responded that none of its aircraft — of any kind — had been over Lake Superior that night. Later, when Moncla’s widow asked if her husband’s remains could be recovered, the air force changed its story yet again and told her no, because now they claimed the F-89 had actually exploded at high altitude, meaning there were no remains.
As for the UFO and the F-89 “merging,” another air force spokesman stated the F-89 and the UFO had actually been miles apart when the incident occurred, and something mechanical had brought down the jet. But of course, by using that line of reasoning, the air force was saying that its own radar operators — the people who were in charge of protecting America’s borders from aerial attack — didn’t know how to read a radar screen.
Sometime later, when UFO investigators wanted to look further into the incident, they discovered that the air force had deleted all references of the F-89’s mission that night from the official records. In the files of Project Blue Book, the case is listed as an “accident.”
The Incredible Gander Sighting
One of the most dramatic UFO incidents of the decade happened on February 10, 1956, out over the Atlantic Ocean.
At the time, the U.S. Navy had an airplane called the R7V-2 transport. A military version of the Lockheed Super Constellation, the top airliner of the time, it was
a four-propeller aircraft with a distinctive tri-fin tail wing and the capacity to carry about ninety passengers or several tons of cargo.
This particular R7V-2 had left Keflavik, Iceland, after refueling and was heading for Gander Air Force Base in Newfoundland, with an eventual destination of the U. S. Navy air station at Patuxent River, Maryland.
The plane was flying at 19,000 feet, and the night was clear. The pilot was a U.S. Navy commander, a ten-year veteran who’d made the Atlantic crossing more than two hundred times. There were thirty U.S. military personnel on board the flight, including several aircrews. Most of these passengers were heading home after duty overseas.
About 90 miles from Gander, the pilot happened to look out on the ocean below, and instead of seeing complete darkness as usual, he saw a clutch of bright lights about 25 miles in front of him.
The pilot pointed this out to his copilot, who saw the lights, too. The pilot was sure the lights were coming from a village. But if that was true, then the plane must be over land, which meant it was wildly off course.
The plane’s navigator disagreed, though; his instruments said they were directly on course. He suggested the lights might be a gathering of ships, possibly something to do with a special military operation.
The pilot then asked his radioman if he was picking up any chatter from ships nearby. His answer was no.
The other flight crews riding in back of the plane were asked to come up to the cockpit. The pilot wanted them to see the lights, hoping one of them might have an answer to the mystery.
With these men in place, the pilot banked the large plane so everyone could get a better look. Suddenly, the lights below dimmed, to be replaced by several expanding colored rings.
As the aircrews watched in astonishment, one of these rings began getting bigger. In the next instant, everyone in the crowded cockpit realized this ring was not floating on the sea. It was actually rushing up toward the transport plane.
The pilot hastily pulled out of his turn and started climbing as fast as the plane would allow — but it was no use. This colored ring was on them in seconds. Only then was it clear the ring was actually the rim of a gigantic saucer-shaped craft that dwarfed the navy plane.