160 replies to this topic

[psyche101]

TheMcGuffin, on 15 June 2012 - 03:37 AM, said:

I'd just write off Klass when it comes to many of these cases, since he had the course and speed of the RB-47 wrong, and had airliners flying around far from their actual locations. He was just plain wrong in his basic facts, and not for the first or last time.

In this case, even Blue Book and the Condon Committee ruled out malfunctions because none were ever detected.  There's just no proof that these existed, even according to the Air Force records from the time.  Some people later speculated that they must have existed, but I know of no proof in the records that they did.

It is not just Uncle Phil though. McClure said a malfunction. so did an engineer at Forbes AFB, and when Phil sent his paper out, a Bendix engineer also confirmed the fault further, an intermittent fault cannot have a "malfunction" unless you catch in the act, but if you replace the faulty item and the problem goes away, that does notmake the fault non-existant. Normally when you cannot locate one small item, you just replace everything in the vicinity good or bad, just to make sure. In that sense a fault is never found whilst it is repaired.


When McClure read this (Klass) explanation, he disagreed:

I don’t agree with the malfunction though, because I flew that equipment for 1000 hours in a period of four years and I never saw any sign of a malfunction of this nature, and I never heard any of the hundreds of experienced ravens we had voice any thing which would lead to this conclusion. I do feel strongly that something malfunctioned, but I have no notion of what it could be.



In fact, this type of fault was mentioned by a technician the next day according to McClure:
The day after the incident, when several of them were talking to a technician at Forbes AFB and the technician suggested that a loose lead on the ALA-6 might have caused the sweep around signal in Mississippi, Provenzano asserted that he had seen the same phenomenon on his APD-4 monitor


And then the Bendix engineer:


When Klass forwarded his paper on the incident to D.G. Erskine of Bendix, he received the following reply:
One of our engineers here, Jim Watson, read the RB-47 case write up and asked that I convey to you his comments. He was an instructor for the Air Force teaching maintenance on the AN/ALA-6 unit and he said, “Had I been asked what could have caused the 180 degree ambiguity, I would have immediately responded that the most probable cause would have been failure of the K-301 relay


Dead set, you are more game than me questioning three professionals in the field A faulty relay seems rather more logical than a disappearing and reappearing alien spacecraft emitting S Band signals to be perfectly honest.

TheMcGuffin, on 15 June 2012 - 03:37 AM, said:

And that wouldn't explain how ground radar detected the UFO in the same place that the RB-47 did. In that instance, Occam's Razor would lead me to conclude that they had both zeroed in on the same object, unless the ground radar and all the detection equipment on the plane were malfunctioing at the exact same time.

For that matter, the crews on the plane and the ground would have to have been malfunctioning pretty badly, too, but there's no evidence that they were.

There is some conflicting testimony there too, again fro SUNlite


Hanley told McDonald that he never tracked the UFO.
He said that he had search radar on and was looking all around and in every way he could, but never had any radar contact with the object.

McDonald stated he could not confirm one way or the other by the Copilot, McCoid:
…He could not recall whether the navigator got any radar return on his set.

Chase’s actual report, written in 1957, states they were unsuccessful on tracking it with the plane’s airborne radar (although he did mention scope photographs were taken, which was denied by Hanley).   Chase may have been referring to the ground radar and the CIRVIS report probably reflects the crews reception of the radar signals and not an actual tracking with the navigation radar. All of this seems to indicate there never was any tracking of the UFO with the airplane’s radar.

So they did not both zero in in the same object, and there is nothing to support that it happened that way.

TheMcGuffin, on 15 June 2012 - 03:37 AM, said:

Add to that the visual sightings in the same places as ground rdar and the RB-47 detection equipment then it seems improbably that it was a mirage, meteor or plasma.

That's the rub here! This is why the case is not simply written of as malfunction. There are some weird reports that could be described by natural phenomena. Such has never been the undertaking though, all people ever did was say Alien or not alien. There are more options than those two, such as natural phenomena. Which could at times I feel be described as both!
Mate, do not let my little exchanges with Zoser affect our conversations, Zoser took on the current situation all by himself. I treat people how they treat me, you know that

Cheers,

[TheMcGuffin]

Incidentally, there was a case the day before the RB-47 incident (July 16, 1957) in which a UFO reponded to encrypted IFF (Indentification Friend of Foe) transponder signals and transmitted encrypted responses.

I wonder if it was just a coincidence?  Blue Book also listed it as an unknown, extremely high-speed UFO.

This is another one that could not be explained as a meteor or plasma, not giving off signals like that.

http://www.nicap.org...asvegas_dir.htm

Edited by TheMcGuffin, 15 June 2012 - 04:48 AM.

[psyche101]

TheMcGuffin, on 15 June 2012 - 03:59 AM, said:

I can't claim to be an expert on them, and I don't know of any such plasma experts who have even looked at this case since the Condon Committee.  This would have been a very long duration plasma or fireball, though, with highly unusual properties.

Me either, mate we are in that boat together! It just strikes me that there were many things happening that night and confusion was likely to be paramount. There were so many things happening that I expect some things were hard to determine, and some guesses were made, but I think there are more conclusions than have been investigated.

[TheMcGuffin]

And the day afterward, July 18, 1957, there was yet another UFO that reposnded to IFF signals.

"Target responded to encrypted military IFF Mode 3 transponder signals, transmitted encrypted responses resulting in "normal Mode 3 paint" on radar scopes, and "a very slight strobe came from object appearing like ECM jamming."  This was another Blue Book unknown, the third one in three days.

http://www.nicap.org...asvegas_dir.htm

I detect a certain pattern of UFO activity here from those July days back in 1957, of all kinds of unusual UFOs that gave off signals of various kinds.  Later, in September 1957, there was a yet another very fast, high-flying UFO that also jammed radar signals.

This type of thing does happen occasionally with UFO reports, but three of them in as many days is very unusual.

Edited by TheMcGuffin, 15 June 2012 - 04:47 AM.

[psyche101]

TheMcGuffin, on 15 June 2012 - 04:35 AM, said:

Incidentally, there was a case the day before this one in which a UFO reponded to encrypted IFF (Indentification Friend of Foe) transponder signals and transmitted encrypted responses.

I wonder if it was just a coincidence?  Blue Book also listed it as an unknown, extremely high-speed UFO.

This is another one that could not be explained as a meteor or plasma, not giving off signals like that.

http://www.nicap.org...asvegas_dir.htm

This is quite interesting!

Target responded to encrypted military IFF transponder signals and transmitted encrypted responses

Any idea what the response was?

Edited by psyche101, 15 June 2012 - 04:39 AM.

[TheMcGuffin]

psyche101, on 15 June 2012 - 04:39 AM, said:

This is quite interesting!

Target responded to encrypted military IFF transponder signals and transmitted encrypted responses

Any idea what the response was?

These sightings were sent to the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) which indicated that they had identified themselves as "friendly" aircraft, but they were in fact unknowns and did not behave like typical U.S. planes.  Blue Book had no plausible explanations for any of them, since it could not identify these aircraft, but somehow they had the correct codes.  If they weren't ours, then someone else had obtained them.

http://www.nicap.org...svegas_docs.pdf

Edited by TheMcGuffin, 15 June 2012 - 05:15 AM.

[psyche101]

TheMcGuffin, on 15 June 2012 - 05:13 AM, said:

These sightings were sent to the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) which indicated that they had identified themselves as "friendly" aircraft, but they were in fact unknowns and did not behave like typical U.S. planes.  Blue Book had no plausible explanations for any of them, since it could not identify these aircraft, but somehow they had the correct codes.  If they weren't ours, then someone else had obtained them.

http://www.nicap.org...svegas_docs.pdf

Thank you for the link, I had not heard about this one. Do you know if there was opposition to the temperature inversion explanation?

[TheMcGuffin]

psyche101, on 15 June 2012 - 04:17 AM, said:

It is not just Uncle Phil though. McClure said a malfunction. so did an engineer at Forbes AFB, and when Phil sent his paper out, a Bendix engineer also confirmed the fault further, an intermittent fault cannot have a "malfunction" unless you catch in the act, but if you replace the faulty item and the problem goes away, that does notmake the fault non-existant. Normally when you cannot locate one small item, you just replace everything in the vicinity good or bad, just to make sure. In that sense a fault is never found whilst it is repaired.

That's the rub here! This is why the case is not simply written of as malfunction. There are some weird reports that could be described by natural phenomena. Such has never been the undertaking though, all people ever did was say Alien or not alien. There are more options than those two, such as natural phenomena. Which could at times I feel be described as both!
Mate, do not let my little exchanges with Zoser affect our conversations, Zoser took on the current situation all by himself. I treat people how they treat me, you know that

Cheers,

According to these original reports, the radar onboard the RB-47 also tracked the UFO, so if that was malfunctioning too, then the whole plane was one big malfunction.

Air Technical Intelligence Center also knew of no airborne radar that gave off signals like those detected from the UFO.  It did not believe there was any equipment malfunction in the air or on the ground.  They also confirmed that the two airliners that nearly collided near El Paso had nothing at all to do with this incident, so Klass really had that part wrong.  If he had looked at the original documents at all, he would have known that.

Someone also added the articles by Klass and McDonald to these records many years after the original incident, although I'm not sure who was still keeping track of all of this into the 1970s, after Blue Book was officially closed.


http://www.nicap.org...7RB47_docs1.pdf


Incidentally, this UFO also reponded to IFF Mode 3 as "friendly", which certainly indicates that it was not a plasma or a meteor.  I simply can't believe that they would respond as a "friendly aircraft", or that they give off any such signals at all.  I think this is a very important aspect of the case that is often overlooked.

These documents also state clearly that the ground radar station "Utah" (Duncanville, Texas) was also tracking the UFO, regardless of what Klass wrote many years later.


http://www.nicap.org...7RB47_docs2.pdf



I do wonder why there would be three UFO reports in three days back then in July 1957 in which all three objects gave off IFF signals, but they could not be identified as American aircraft, nor did any of them behave even remotely like conventional planes of the era.

Edited by TheMcGuffin, 15 June 2012 - 05:58 AM.

[TheMcGuffin]

psyche101, on 15 June 2012 - 05:28 AM, said:

Thank you for the link, I had not heard about this one. Do you know if there was opposition to the temperature inversion explanation?

It's certainly bizarre under the circumstances and seems to have been added after the fact, since temperature inversions don't respond to IFF signals.  The internal documents simply said there was "no satisfactory explanation", but it was moving too fast to be a US aircraft.

[TheMcGuffin]

Now I could offer one conventional explanation for all this strangeness in July 1957, and that would be some kind of test of the radar system, planes and other equipment by Gen. LeMay of Strategic Air Command, a really Top Secret test.  I don't know if that really holds any water or not, since SAC also took charge of all the records and classified them Top Secret, and seems to have been running some kind of highly classified investigation for months.

Blue Book was out of the loop, though, and Air Technical Intelligence Center had no good explanations for what was going on.

I don't have any evidence for this theory, though, since all we have in the public record is an indication of considerable concern and confusion about what was happening.

Edited by TheMcGuffin, 15 June 2012 - 06:07 AM.

[psyche101]

TheMcGuffin, on 15 June 2012 - 05:38 AM, said:

According to these original reports, the radar onboard the RB-47 also tracked the UFO, so if that was malfunctioning too, then the whole plane was one big malfunction.

Air Technical Intelligence Center also knew of no airborne radar that gave off signals like those detected from the UFO.  It did not believe there was any equipment malfunction in the air or on the ground.  They also confirmed that the two airliners that nearly collided near El Paso had nothing at all to do with this incident, so Klass really had that part wrong.  If he had looked at the original documents at all, he would have known that.

Someone also added the articles by Klass and McDonald to these records many years after the original incident, although I'm not sure who was still keeping track of all of this into the 1970s, after Blue Book was officially closed.


http://www.nicap.org...7RB47_docs1.pdf


Incidentally, this UFO also reponded to IFF Mode 3 as "friendly", which certainly indicates that it was not a plasma or a meteor.  I simply can't believe that they would respond as a "friendly aircraft", or that they give off any such signals at all.  I think this is a very important aspect of the case that is often overlooked.

These documents also state clearly that the ground radar station "Utah" (Duncanville, Texas) was also tracking the UFO, regardless of what Klass wrote many years later.


http://www.nicap.org...7RB47_docs2.pdf



I do wonder why there would be three UFO reports in three days back then in July 1957 in which all three objects gave off IFF signals, but they could not be identified as American aircraft, nor did any of them behave even remotely like conventional planes of the era.

With regards to the RADAR readings, that appears to be some confusion with the differing reports. From SUNlite:



In addition to the ECM#2 operator receiving radar signals, Sparks states the navigator was close enough for a radar contact:

The first UFO overshoot is evidently the time when the RB-47 navigator, Maj. Thomas Hanley, briefly detected the UFO on his aircraft navigation radar, APS-23, after apparently spending quite some time attempting to do so.


This part of the incident seems more fiction than fact. His conclusion is based on two bits of information. One was the testimony of McClure, who states that Hanley tracked the UFO with his radar and the other is the comment in the CIRVIS report that states the B-47 tracked the UFO.  
However, this seems unlikely because Hanley told McDonald that he never tracked the UFO.
He said that he had search radar on and was looking all around and in every way he could, but never had any radar contact with the object.

McDonald stated he could not confirm one way or the other by the Copilot, McCoid:
…He could not recall whether the navigator got any radar return on his set.

Chase’s actual report, written in 1957, states they were unsuccessful on tracking it with the plane’s airborne radar (although he did mention scope photographs were taken, which was denied by Hanley).   Chase may have been referring to the ground radar and the CIRVIS report  probably reflects the crews reception of the radar signals and not an actual tracking with the navigation radar. All of this seems to indicate there never was any tracking of the UFO with the airplane’s radar.

TheMcGuffin, on 15 June 2012 - 05:48 AM, said:

It's certainly bizarre under the circumstances and seems to have been added after the fact, since temperature inversions don't respond to IFF signals.  The internal documents simply said there was "no satisfactory explanation", but it was moving too fast to be a US aircraft.

Could it reflect though?

[psyche101]

TheMcGuffin, on 15 June 2012 - 06:06 AM, said:

Now I could offer one conventional explanation for all this strangeness in July 1957, and that would be some kind of test of the radar system, planes and other equipment by Gen. LeMay of Strategic Air Command, a really Top Secret test.  I don't know if that really holds any water or not, since SAC also took charge of all the records and classified them Top Secret, and seems to have been running some kind of highly classified investigation for months.

Blue Book was out of the loop, though, and Air Technical Intelligence Center had no good explanations for what was going on.

I don't have any evidence for this theory, though, since all we have in the public record is an indication of considerable concern and confusion about what was happening.

To be quite honest, considering the confusion, and the number of RADAR;s involved I find it probably one of the better conclusions. We know they were looking into the phenomena heavily at the time, and while there may or may not have been something around the RB-47, it is conceivable that someone was looking for something, and perhaps caused such confusion when a meteor shower hit and perhaps played some havoc with the newer systems.

I think the best we can hope for is that there was a lot of activity that night, and that something unusual happened that the pilot witnessed. Beyond that I think with such an old case any more might be too big an ask. It would best be served in archives hoping to see something similar that may explain it one day.

[TheMcGuffin]

psyche101, on 15 June 2012 - 06:12 AM, said:

With regards to the RADAR readings, that appears to be some confusion with the differing reports. From SUNlite:

According to James McDonald, there were conflicting accounts about whether the plane's radar detected it, although the original records indicated that it did.

Also according to McDonald:

"McClure told me that this was what baffled him the most, then and now. All the radar signature characteristics, as read out on his ALA-5 pulse analyzer, were completely normal -- it had a pulse repetition frequency and pulse width like a CPS-6B and even simulated a scan rate: But its intensity, McClure pointed out, was so strong that 'it would have to had an antenna bigger than a bomber to put out that much signal.' And now, the implications of the events over Gulfport took on new meaning. The upscope- downscope sweep of his #2 monitor lobe implied that this source, presuming it to be the same one now also being seen on ground radar at Carswell GCI, had flown a circle around the RB-47 at 30-35,000 ft altitude while the aircraft was doing about 500 kts."

http://dewoody.net/u...in_Default.html

Edited by TheMcGuffin, 15 June 2012 - 06:35 AM.

[TheMcGuffin]

One more interesting fact about this time period.  On July 15, 1957 there was a big nuclear test in Nevada codenamed "Diablo".  It was part of the preparations for the Hardtack tests, which were conducted above the atmosphere in 1958.

The UFO detected the next day seemed to be following roughly the same track as the radioactive debris that was drifting over Las Vegas, and then took off at very high speed..

"Senior Director 1st Lt. Clifford E. Pocock, scope operator A/2c Walter Lyons, and control technician A/1c Armand Therrien, using the FPS-3A L-band search radar tracked an inbound target at average speed of about 6,200 mph for 48 secs [?] when it "stopped abruptly" and "remained stationary" for 12 secs to the ENE at 75° azimuth 85 miles range, N of Grand Canyon, then target headed outbound at about 7,000 mph on 85° heading over the last 72 secs before disappearing at the radar's maximum range at 81° azimuth 224 miles range (near Marble Canyon, Ariz.). Target responded to encrypted military IFF transponder signals and transmitted encrypted responses. Similar occurrence 2 days earlier noted by night crew but none others in 2 years."

http://nicap.org/fal...lout_570716.htm


The UFO detected over Arizona on July 18th was just hovering:

"USAF ADC radar station 684th ACWRON, Mt. Lemmon AFS,Senior Director Capt. Claiborne F. Bickham and crew using both MPS-7 L-band search and MPS-14 S-band height-finder radars tracked a stationary target at 42,000 ft to the NW at 308° azimuth 82 miles range (S of Chandler, Ariz.). Target responded to encrypted military IFF Mode 3 transponder signals, transmitted encrypted responses resulting in "normal Mode 3 paint" on radar scopes, and "a very slight strobe came from object appearing like ECM jamming."

This was the one that Blue Book suggested might have been a large balloon, but it must have been a very unusual one.

Edited by TheMcGuffin, 15 June 2012 - 07:07 AM.

[psyche101]

TheMcGuffin, on 15 June 2012 - 06:34 AM, said:

According to James McDonald, there were conflicting accounts about whether the plane's radar detected it, although the original records indicated that it did.

Also according to McDonald:

"McClure told me that this was what baffled him the most, then and now. All the radar signature characteristics, as read out on his ALA-5 pulse analyzer, were completely normal -- it had a pulse repetition frequency and pulse width like a CPS-6B and even simulated a scan rate: But its intensity, McClure pointed out, was so strong that 'it would have to had an antenna bigger than a bomber to put out that much signal.' And now, the implications of the events over Gulfport took on new meaning. The upscope- downscope sweep of his #2 monitor lobe implied that this source, presuming it to be the same one now also being seen on ground radar at Carswell GCI, had flown a circle around the RB-47 at 30-35,000 ft altitude while the aircraft was doing about 500 kts."

http://dewoody.net/u...in_Default.html

Even more confusing, from the same link, McDonald also goes on to say:


One of the important points not settled by the Colorado investigations concerned the question of whether the unknown was ever painted on any radar set on the RB-47 itself. Some of the men thought the navigator had seen it on his set, others were unsure. I eventually located Maj. Hanley at Vandenberg and he informed me that all through the incident, which he remembered very well, he tried, unsuccessfully to pick up the unknown on his navigational radar (K-system). I shall not recount all of the details of his efforts and his comments, but only mention the end result of my two telephone interviews with him. The important question was what sort of effective range that set had. Hanley gave the pertinent information that it could just pick up a large tanker of the KC-97 type at about 4 miles range, when used in the "altitude- hold" mode, with antenna tipped up to maximum elevation. But both at the start of its involvement and during the object's swing into the 12 o'clock position, GCI showed it remaining close to 10 miles in range from the RB-47. Thus Hanley's inability to detect it on his K-system navigational radar in altitude hold only implies that whatever was out there had a radar cross-section that was less than about 16 times that of a KC-97 (roughly twice 4 miles, inverse 4th-power law), The unknown gave a GCI return that suggested a cross-section comparable to an ordinary aircraft, Chase told me, which is consistent with Hanley's non-detection of the object. The Condon Report gives the impression the navigator did detect it, but this is not correct.