Starship Trooper
By MUFON’s Valerie Schultz and Nomar Slevik
In the mid-1920s, attorney Edward Godfrey procured numerous farms in the Bangor area and set out to build an airfield. In 1927, Godfrey Field was opened and eventually solidified commercial flights from Northeast Airlines. In the early 1940s, as World War II heated up, Godfrey Field was turned into Bangor Army Airfield to assist with war efforts. The field changed its name to Dow Army Field in 1942 in honor of Army Air Corps pilot James Frederick Dow, who was killed in 1940 when he collided with another pilot over New York state. Five years later, when the Army Air Corps had become the United States Air Force, the field’s name was changed one last time to Dow Air Force Base. It was in operation until 1968 and then sold to the city of Bangor and turned into a commercial airport, although the Air National Guard does remain on-site.
A former Air Police Officer (airman) who was on duty at Dow during the 1960s described peculiar UFO and alien encounters that he experienced, per testimony in MUFON Case #76253. The following events took place between March 1963 and November 1964.
The airman’s first encounter was with odd lights while on duty at the base in March of ’63. He told MUFON, “I was stationed as a K-9 Sentry, guarding B-52 alert bombers loaded with nuclear weapons. The site where the bombers were parked was near the 33 end of the runway. It was about 2300 hours (11:00 p.m.), and time for the second shift to start. As the truck pulled up for my relief, I began to muzzle my dog when he broke position and pulled me on the side of the truck facing the runway. Then I saw the three pulsating spheres of light. As they slowly came down the runway (from the 15 end) they paused halfway. The whole base lit up brighter than daylight, but it was not a blinding light. The light was more beautiful than daylight.”
The airman called Central Security Control (CSC) to report the incident and found that it had already been seen and reported by tower personnel. The witness remembered that when using his radio to report the orbs of light, there had been a great deal of static that came through. He was approximately seven hundred fifty feet from the orbs at the time and stated, “As I looked up from my radio, the objects, who were three in number, and about thirty feet in diameter each, shot up at a 90-degree angle and turned many colors. They were gone in a matter of seconds.”
The witness was unable to observe any structure behind the reddish-orange orbs, and felt that perhaps a cloaking device had been used. He said that the orbs sometimes appeared transparent but was unable to actually see through them. The motion of the colors reminded him of volcanic lava as the red-orange glow moved around the outside of the mysterious spheres. The orbs were pulsating, and although heat waves were visible, the witness did not feel any warmth radiate from them. “The three spheres were in a V formation but opposite the usual formation. There were two in the front and one in the back. When the orbs continued down the runway at the 33 end, it was like they hit a wall, and just went up at a phenomenal speed while spinning and turning many colors.”
The witness and other personnel then drove around the perimeter of the base. “The flight leader driving the truck and everyone else were terrified and we sped to CSC and were met by Office of Special Investigations officers (OSI) where they interrogated me for about forty-five minutes. The strange thing was they kept asking me if I knew who and what they are.” The witness found their questions quite peculiar, and was eventually told to write a statement about the events he had witnessed. After writing down his observation, he was then forced to sign an affidavit saying he was not to talk about the event while in the service, and that if he did speak about it he would be jailed. This obviously concerned the airman, and he knew that orders were orders, so he kept his silence for over fifty years.
It was also confirmed to the witness that the orbs were captured on radar. He elaborated further: “The 75th ADC Squadron stationed at Dow Air Force Base sent two F-101s after the objects. I was told the 6th Air Division in Pease, New Hampshire and the 8th Air Force Headquarters in Westover, Massachusetts had picked them up on radar. They were also seen the next few nights near the nuclear weapons depot, which was about two miles from the 33 end of the runway.” The witness did not hear any sound coming from the orbs but felt that his guard dog could hear something from them since it was agitated for the entire encounter. He estimates this event to have been approximately eight to nine minutes, but could have been a bit longer. “Only years later, I had the feeling that for some reason, time had stood still.”
Monsters and Aliens
The airman spoke of a few other encounters while on duty at the base. Sometime during 1963 or 1964, the witness was on duty and resting in a ditch with his trusty companion when his guard dog suddenly went on alert. He had trouble keeping ahold of its leash; the dog wanted to run out of the ditch and up a nearby hill. The witness got out of the ditch quickly to see what had gotten his reliable dog so riled up.
His K-9 counterpart was focused, observing something phenomenal. The witness described seeing a large, bipedal, hairy, humanoid figure at the top of the hill. He thought the beast could have been a Bigfoot-type creature and estimated its height as eight to nine feet tall. Shocked, he could barely move, but studied and marveled at the being. Slowly, he reached for his radio and called his base command to report the odd intruder. The voice on the other end of the radio advised him to not approach the being, and to wait for the base’s Six Man Strike Team to arrive. When they showed up, a full investigation of the area was launched. The team could not find the creature, but the witness made sure to write an official report about the incident.
Another event occurred on a late spring evening of 1964. The witness had just started his post and was conducting a security walk-through with his guard dog when it went on high alert again. The dog was focused on a house near the base. As the witness’s flashlight lit a basement window of the house, he was startled to see two people hiding inside the basement. The house was located near the Hammond Street gate of the bomber area of the base. He radioed the presence of the intruders to base command, who then sent the Strike Team to investigate. They arrived swiftly and apprehended the individuals. The Strike Team marched the intruders out of the building; it was at this point the airman was able to see the figures. He said, “they were not like regular people,” and described them as grayish in color with emotionless faces. He compared the captured pair to the Teros alien species—a subsurface race that was featured in the video “Alien Races A-Z 3rd Edition,” which can be viewed on YouTube. (To get there quickly, you can scrub to the 16:57 mark.) Similar to one of the photos in the video, the airman described the individuals as wearing hats and coats; however, their noses were not as exaggerated. The witness was later congratulated for his help in apprehending the pair, but he was never told of their fate.
A few months later, the witness reported more odd lights on the base. These were not described as orbs, but something more like the aurora borealis. The difference was that the prisms of light came all the way down to the ground, and the airman recalled walking through colors of red, blue, and green. After this event, he speculated whether there could be some sort of dimensional opening at the base.
Portals have been described in other areas of the world as well. One in the United States is located at Skinwalker Ranch in Ballard, Utah. NIDSci, which I mentioned in chapter one, conducted a long-term investigation of the ranch. While there, scientists observed Bigfoot-type creatures, UFOs, haunting activity, and even dinosaurs! You can read about the ranch in the book Hunt for the Skinwalker by Colm Kelleher and George Knapp. You can also listen to a great podcast about Skinwalker Ranch from Jack Stockwell (December 3, 2014).
During its heyday, Dow Air Force Base was a busy and crucial addition to the Strategic Air Command sector due to its flight line for international aircraft. In the 1960s, it boasted a large cache of nuclear weapons. As UFO researcher and author Robert Hastings put it in his 2006 article about UFO sightings at military sites, “Our nuclear weapons program is an ongoing source of interest to someone possessing vastly superior technology. Significantly, the reported UFO activity occasionally transcends mere surveillance and appears to involve direct and unambiguous interference with our strategic weapons systems.”
Another event, unrelated to the witness cited above, was reported in February of 1966 from the National Investigations Committee of Aerial Phenomena (NICAP). They reported in their newsletter, The UFO Investigator, that two Skowhegan police officers observed a large, domed, disc-shaped object with an orange, glowing light. Patrolman Robert Barnes and Special Officer Everett Laporte first saw the object while in their cruiser at 11:55 p.m. They called in the sighting to their dispatch, who reached out to the FAA and Dow Air Force Base. Both tracked the mysterious object on radar. The newsletter also stated that the object was “easily visible because of its orange glow, the unknown object slowed down and hovered above the town, going through several maneuvers before it speeded up and disappeared.” An FAA spokesman stated that Dow had only reported “an intermittent blip over the Skowhegan-Augusta area.” In contrast, the FAA confirmed that the object was “making tight turns at a low altitude, and Dow personnel apparently were not able to determine if the object was an aircraft or not.”
I have spent a lot of time at this former base. It is currently bustling with activity, since it’s an operational international airport, which makes an investigation of the area difficult. I did spend some time at the Hammond Street gate but failed to observe anything out of the ordinary.
The airman’s observation of the lights, the humanoid figure, and the alien beings were investigated by MUFON’s Valerie Schultz. The case was closed as “Unknown.”