Government files, including Project Blue Book, reveal that on March 24, 1967, near the small town of Belt, Montana, a truck driver named Ken Williams saw a domed object land in a canyon near the road. He was curious enough that he stopped, got out of his truck, and began to walk toward the object. The UFO then lifted off, flew further up the canyon and touched down again, now hidden from the highway by a ridge.
Williams, in a handwritten document filed with the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomenon, told the whole story of what he had seen that night. In response to their request, on April 7, 1967, Williams wrote:
Gentlemen:
Object was first observed approximately 5 miles southeast of Belt, Montana. I was traveling North on Highway 87 enroute to Great Falls, Montana. Object was approximately 1 mile to my left and appeared to be about 5 or 6 hundred yards [1,500-1,800 feet] altitude. I would estimate its speed to vary from 40 to 50 miles per hour. I am judging this speed by the speed I was traveling as object seemed to be running evenly with me. Its appearance was that of a large doomed [sic] shaped light or that of a giant headlight. Upon climbing up the Belt Hill in my truck, I looked to my left and about ½ mile up a gully. I witnessed the object at about 200 yards [600 feet] in the air in a still position. I stopped my truck and the object dropped slowly to what appeared to me to be within a very few feet from the ground. [Underlining in original]. It was at this time that I felt something or someone was watching me. As a very bright effecting light emerged from the object it momentarily blinded me. This extremely bright light seemed to flare three times. Each time holding its brightness. By the third time the light was so bright [underlining in original] that it was nearly impossible to look directly at it. It was at this time that I drove my truck onto the top of the hill which was about another ½ mile. I stopped a car and asked the people [Don Knotts of Great Falls] if they would stop at a station at the foot of the hill and call the Highway Patrol. I went back down the hill and viewed the object for several more minutes. It was while watching it the second time that it rose and disappeared like a bolt of lightning. I went back to the top of the hill where my truck was parked and just as the Highway Patrolmen [sic] Bud Nader arrived the object appeared once again. About 2 miles away and traveling in a Northeast direction, whereas it stopped once again and appeared to drop to the ground [Underlining in the original.]. There are several deep gullys [sic] in the area where it appeared to drop out of sight. This was my last sighting of the object.
The government file on this case contains what was known as a Project Record Card, a 4” X 6” card that outlined the details of the case. While the case is labeled as “unidentified,” it also noted that there was “(1 witness),” which they believed to be so important that it was underlined. But that isn’t true and other documents in the government files prove it.
According to a letter written by Lieutenant Colonel Lewis D. Chase, and addressed to Edward Condon at the University of Colorado, there was at least one other witness. According to Chase, “Mr. Nader [sent by the Highway Patrol] reported that upon reaching the scene he observed an unusual light emanating from the area that the truck driver, Mr. Williams, claimed the object had landed a second time.”
The Great Falls Leader carried a series of articles about UFO sightings in the area at the time. Interestingly, some of what was printed in the newspaper was not found in the government files. Those who conducted the military investigation should have been aware of the other sightings, but there is no mention of them. It seems that as far as the Air Force was concerned, those sightings never happened.
Ron Rice, a staff writer on the newspaper said that there had been UFO sightings all over the state that day. He wrote, “Before midnight it was the Belt area; after 3 this morning, Malmstrom Air Force Base where one was picked up on the bottom of a Federal Aviation Agency radar scope which tracked it for a time before it disappeared in the direction of the Belt Mountains.”
There were visual sightings as well. Airman Second Class (A2C) Richard Moore, a communicator-plotter said that he had seen something about five or ten miles from the base at 3:30 A.M. Airman Third Class (A3C) said that he had seen an object that appeared to be a bright light with orange lights on the bottom. This, according to Moore, was close to the ground and it was what the FAA radar had detected.
Moore also said that a sabotage alert team had located another object about 4:40 A.M. directly over Malmstrom. Moore said that he saw it as well, but it was more a point of light moving across the sky than anything else. He said it wasn’t a satellite because it was zigzagging.
Another airman, Warren Mahoney, said that Moore had told him about the UFO at 3:10 A.M. and that at 3:42, he had received a call from the FAA that there was an object on their radar northwest of the base. Three minutes later it had turned, flying toward the southeast. At 4:26 A.M. it disappeared from the FAA radar.
Rice also mentioned that there had been a search of the canyon where Williams and Nader saw the UFO and they found some evidence, though it isn’t clear exactly what they had found. Sheriff’s deputies Keith Wolverton, Jim Cinker, and Harold Martin searched the ground for about two and a half hours and discovered some freshly broken twigs on bushes and branches of the trees. They thought it might have been cattle, but there were no cattle in the area. Martin was reported as saying, “Some of the trees are 25 feet high, and had limbs broken from them, and some bushes below them were broken. All were fresh breaks.”
According to the Great Falls Tribune, Trudy Fender provided a rough drawing of an object she had seen with a steady white light on one end, a blinking white light on the other and a red light in the center. She had been waiting for her ride on March 26. The sighting isn’t important because of her description of the object but because she saw something, and it refuted a theory that there had been no UFO sightings in Montana other than Williams sighting two days earlier.
With all that was going on that night, with the news media alerted and with local law enforcement involved, there wasn’t much that the Air Force could do other than respond. The government files, in a teletype message that was unclassified revealed, “Between hours of 2100 and 0400 MST numerous reports were received by Malmstrom AFB agencies of UFO sightings in the Great Falls, Montana area.”
The message noted that “Reports of a UFO landing near Belt, Montana were received from several sources including deputies of Cascade County Sheriff’s Office. Investigation is being conducted by Lt. Col. Lewis Chase…. The alleged landing site is under surveillance. However daylight is required for further search.”
The investigation was apparently completed several days later and on April 8, 1967, Chase wrote a report that he sent on to Edward Condon at the University of Colorado who was leading the Air Force sponsored investigation into UFOs. After setting the scene, Lewis wrote:
Numerous reports were being received by the dispatcher at Base Operations, plus questions from the public. At 2205 [10:05 P.M.], Lt. Col. Lewis D. Chase, Base UFO Investigating Officer, was notified by the Command Post of a reported landing. Sequence of events following notification were as follows:
Malmstrom AFB in Cascade County, Montana, received numerous reports of UFO sightings in 1967.
2215—Check was made with Base Operations as to aircraft movement in the area. An outbound transient aircraft departed Great Falls enroute to Glasgow, Montana. Departure time was 2109 [9:09 P.M.]. All other aircraft were accounted for.
2230—Discussion with the Sheriff of Cascade County revealed that he had dispatched additional deputies to the area. Requested that he notify me of any significant findings. While talking to the sheriff, he contacted one of his mobile units. The man reporting said that they were at the scene and that there was no activity at the time. Requested the sheriff to forward any subsequent developments.
2330—I called the Sheriff of Cascade County for a status report. He put one of his deputies on the line (Ziener?) who had been at the scene and had interviewed the truck driver and highway patrolman. While on the phone, Sheriff Martin from Belt, Montana, called in from the scene. He discussed the possibility of manpower assistance from Malmstrom and/or helicopter support. Informed him that daylight would be the first possible helicopter support and that I would discuss the other manpower request with Colonel Klibbe.
2345—Discussion with Colonel Klibbe. He suggested that I go out and evaluate the situation and make my recommendations from there.
0030—Departed the base in radio equipped station wagon accompanied by Major John Grasser of the Helicopter Section, for an evaluation of the terrain for any possible helicopter survey at daylight, a driver, and the alert photographer.
0100—Arrived at the scene. Was met by Sheriff Martin, who repeated the previous reports. He had been on the scene continuously. A study of the terrain revealed the hopelessness of any ground survey at night. A tentative plan was agreed upon—the sheriff’s office to conduct a ground search of the reported landing area on the morning of 25 March 1967, while concurrently a helicopter survey of the area would be performed by Malmstrom. (It had been reported by Major Grasser that a helicopter training flight was scheduled for 0730 Saturday morning. This procedure was later approved by 15th AF, provided no landing was made). Sightseers were in the area due to radio publicity and Martin reported some had gone on the ridges before he could stop them.
0215—Reported to Colonel Klibbe the tentative plan agreed upon with Sheriff Martin. He approved.
0230 to 0340—Numerous sightings reported.
0350—Discussed the make-up of a message with Captain Bradshaw, Wing Command Post, IAW [In Accordance With] AFR [Air Force Regulation] 80-17, to notify concerned agencies, including CSAF, of numerous sightings, plus the reported landing under investigation. Was concerned with resulting publicity and the need to notify other agencies prior to press releases. Message will merely state reported landing, that it is under investigation, that daylight hours are required to complete investigation, and that a subsequent report will be submitted. Preliminary message dispatched.
0800—Sheriff’s ground search and Malmstrom aerial survey completed with negative results. Follow-up messages dispatched to interested agencies (AFR 80-17) stating negative results of the investigation.
The last part of the report confirmed that Chase had conducted the investigation and provided his contact information. In a teletype message sent later, he reported again that there had been negative results.
None of the newspaper articles appeared in the official government file, which is odd. Often the case files included many, if not all, the newspaper articles about the specific sighting. It could be, in this case, that the newspaper reports contradict some of the information contained in the official file. Although Chase wrote that his investigation was negative, the sheriff’s deputies did report they had found some evidence at the scene. The problem is that the evidence wasn’t sufficiently unusual and there were alternative explanations for it. Cattle certainly could have been responsible for some of it, though it is unlikely that cows could damage something twenty-five feet above the ground.
All mentions of the radar reports are missing from the government files, as are the reports from Air Force personnel. Even if Chase was uninterested in most of the civilian sightings, it would seem that he would want to talk to the airman who saw something, if for no other reason than to explain the sightings. This is a hole in the investigation.
The radar sightings, with the corroborative visual reports would seem to be an important part of the case. The combination of the two would make it a stronger case, but Chase didn’t follow up on it. The government files that are available suggest he did not explore the radar sightings, he did not request information from the FAA, and he didn’t interview any of the radar operators. The newspaper files suggest that the information had been reported the next day and Chase should have known about it.
One thing that might have affected how the investigation was conducted was the mission of Malmstrom AFB, a minuteman missile base. Just days before, an entire flight of missiles had suddenly fallen into a “No-Go” situation, meaning they had been deactivated. This mission was a matter of national security and may have been the reason the Belt, Montana, sighting was so poorly investigated.
Robert Salas and Jim Klotz were the first to tell the story of Echo Flight, which they did in an online article at cufon.org and later in their book, Faded Giant. Robert Hastings, in his UFOs and Nukes, provided additional information. The story began early on the morning of March 16, 1967, when two missile maintenance teams working on two different flights, widely scattered across the launch facility, said they had seen strange lights in the sky. A mobile security team confirmed this, saying they had seen the lights as well. All this was relayed to Colonel Don Crawford by Captain Eric Carlson and First Lieutenant Walt Figel per Salas’s 1996 taped interview with Figel. Hastings was told virtually the same things during his interviews with Figel.
About 8:30 A.M., that same morning, as both Carlson and Figel were performing routine checks, the flight’s missiles began to drop off line. Within seconds, though Figel later said it was minutes, all ten missiles were inoperable. This was a major national security issue and a point that later became important during a search of the government files.
Hastings wrote, “Immediately after the malfunctions at Echo, the launch officers ordered two separate Security Alert Teams to drive to each of the launch facilities where the UFOs had been sighted. Nevertheless, the maintenance and security personnel at each site reported seeing UFOs hovering near the missile silos.”
He added that “some months after my book came out, in July 2008, I interviewed Figel on tape. He said one of the two SAT teams reported seeing the UFO over one of the silos. In 1996, he told Salas that both teams had seen it. A faded memory, it seems….”
But the story wasn’t quite so mundane, as Hastings learned during his interviews with Figel. When Hastings talked to Figel, who retired as an Air Force Colonel on October 20, 2008, he was told that one of the guards had suggested the UFO had shut down the missiles. Figel thought the guard was joking. He told Hastings, “I was thinking he was yanking my chain more than anything else.”
Hastings asked, “He seemed to be serious to you?”
And Figel responded, “He seemed to be serious but I wasn’t taking him seriously.”
Hastings wanted to know what the man had seen, and Figel said that it was just a large, round object that was directly over the launch facility.
To clarify the situation, Hastings and Figel discussed the security procedures. Figel said, “[When] the missiles dropped off alert, I started calling the maintenance people out there on the radio … [I asked] ‘What’s going on?’ … And the guy says, ‘We got a Channel 9 No-Go. It must be a UFO hovering over the site.”
Figel, of course, didn’t believe him. He said that one of the two Strike Teams they had dispatched thought they had seen something over the site. They told Figel that a large object was hovering there.
Robert Salas, shown here in 2013, was one of the first, along with Jim Klotz, to talk about Echo Flight.
All of this, of course, suggests that UFOs were somehow involved with the sudden shut down of the missile systems. Although the government files reject the idea, there is a great deal of eyewitness testimony to support this theory.
The maintenance teams were dispatched and once they had located the problem, they were able to bring the missiles back online, but the process was not simple and required hours of work on each missile. There was an extensive investigation that involved not only the Air Force but also the contractors who had designed and built the missiles.
According to the 341st Strategic Missile Wing Unit History, recovered through Freedom of Information:
On 16 March 1967 at 0845, all sites in Echo (E) Flight, Malmstrom AFB, shutdown with No-Go indication of Channels 9 and 12 on Voice Reporting Signal Assemble (VRSA). All LF’s in E Flight lost strategic alert nearly simultaneously. No other Wing I configuration lost strategic alert at that time.
Guidance & Control channel 50 dump data was collected from E-7 facility and E-3 Facility and all 10 sites were then returned to strategic alert without any LF equipment replacement. All 10 sites were reported to have been subject to a normal controlled shutdown….
The only possible means that could be identified by the team involved a situation in which a couple self test command occurred along with a partial reset within the coupler. This could feasibly cause a VRSA 9 and 12 indication. This was also quite remote for all 10 couplers would have to have been partially reset in the same manner.…
In the researching of other possibilities, weather was ruled out as a contributing factor in the incident.
A check with Communications maintenance verified that there was no unusual activity with EWO-1 or EWO-2 at the time of the incident.
All of which, in the short term, did not explain why all the missiles went off line at virtually the same time. In a very technical part of the Unit History, it explains that a “30 micro sec Pulse … was placed on the Self Test Command (STC) line…. Seven out of 10 separate applications of a single pulse would cause the system to shut down with a Channel 9 & 12 No-Go.”
Or, according to the government files, a randomly introduced electronic pulse which might be considered an EMP, and which shouldn’t have affected the missile systems, had shut them down. The point of insertion was apparently the Launch Control Facility, but all those areas should have been shielded from such an occurrence.
The information about the Echo Flight was, quite naturally, communicated to the Condon Committee, and Dr. Roy Craig responded. Although not exactly part of the government files, Craig was working on a government contract for the Air Force when he made notes on his meeting with Lieutenant Colonel Chase at Malmstrom:
After Colonel Chase and I exchanged pleasantries in his office, I asked him about the Echo incident. The Colonel caught his breath, and expressed surprise that I knew of it. “I can’t talk about that.” … If I needed to know the cause of this incident, I could arrange through official channels, to see their report after the completion of the investigation.… Although local newspapers carried stories of UFO sightings which would coincide in time with Echo, Colonel Chase had assured me that the incident had not involved a UFO … I accepted the information as factual and turned review of Major Schraff’s report (on the Echo incident) over to Bob Low [Dr. Robert Low, also a member of the Condon Committee], who had received security clearance to read secret information related to the UFO study … Low, in turn, had to interface with his Air Force Liaison in Washington, Col. Hippler [Lieutenant Colonel Robert Hippler].… [Low wrote to Craig] “Roy, I called Hippler and he said he would try to get this, but he suspects it’s going to be classified too high for us to look at. Says he thinks interference by pulses from nuclear explosions is probably involved.”
It appears that a cause was found, or rather it seemed to have been found, but the ultimate source of the pulse was not identified. Hippler, speculating about the source of the pulse, came up with an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) from a nonexistent atomic blast. Because the pulse shut down all the missiles, the incident became a national security issue, which changed the level of the classification.
Oddly, in the 341st SMW Unit History, it noted, “Rumors of Unidentified Objects (UFO) around the area of Echo Flight during the time of the fault were disproven. A Mobile Strike Team, which had checked all November Flight’s LFs [Launch Facilities] on the morning of 16 March 67, were questioned and stated that no unusual activity or sightings were observed.”
But that doesn’t seem to be quite accurate. Hastings interviewed James Ortyl who had been assigned as an Air Policeman at Malmstrom. Ortyl said:
I was an Airman 2nd Class [A2C] at the time. We were working the day-shift at Kilo Flight in March of 1967.… It was mid-morning and three or four Air Policemen were gathered in the launch control facility dispatch office. Airman Robert Pounders and I were facing the windows looking out to the yard and parking lot. The others were facing us. As we were conversing, I witnessed a shimmering, reddish-orange object clear the main gate and in a sweeping motion pass quickly and silently pass by the windows. It seemed to be within 30 yards of the building. Stunned, I looked at Pounders and asked, “Did you see that?!” He acknowledged that he had.
To be fair, Ortyl didn’t know the exact date, but knew that it was near his birthday of March 17th. But then there is Craig’s interview with Chase, which also moves in the direction of UFO sightings on the proper date. Craig’s notes indicate that he had the names of some of those involved with the UFO sightings at the time of Echo’s shut down, but he never contacted any of these witnesses.
Craig also had the name of Dan Renualdi, who, in March 1967, was a member of the Site Activation Task Force (SATAF). Renauldi said that he had been within a few feet of an object. A sergeant with the Air Force Technical Evaluation Team also said he had seen a flying saucer. There is no record of Craig talking to either of these men, nor are there any reports in the Project Blue Book files to suggest the sightings had been reported there. This violated the regulations in force at the time, although it could be argued there were contradictory regulations.
All this demonstrates is that there was another reported UFO around the time that Echo Flight had gone down, contrary to what the Unit History said. It does not prove that the UFOs had anything to do with the anomalous pulse.
Quite naturally, the Air Force wanted to know what had happened. The man who conducted the investigation for Boeing, the Defense Contractor for the missile systems, was Robert Kaminski. In a letter dated February 1, 1997, to Jim Klotz, he wrote:
At the time of the incident, I was an engineer in the MIP/CNP (Material Improvement Project/Controlled Numbered Problem) group…. The group was contacted by the Air Force so that Boeing could respond to specific Air Force Minuteman Missiles problems that occurred in the field.…
I was handed the E-Flight CNP assignment when it arrived by the group supervisor. As the internal Boeing project engineer I arranged meetings necessary with management and technical personnel required to determine a course of action to be taken, in exploring why 10 missiles had suddenly fallen from alert status—green—to red, with no explanation for it. This was an unusual request and we had no prior similar incident or experience to this kind of anomaly.…
Since this was a field site peculiar incident, a determination was made to send out an investigative team to survey the LCF and the LFs to determine what failures or related incidents could be found to explain the cause … . After a week in the field the team returned and pooled their data. At the outset the team quickly noticed a lack of anything that would come close to explain why the event occurred. There were no significant failures, engineering data or findings that would come close to explain how ten missiles were knocked off alert. This indeed turned out to be a rare event and not encountered before. The use of backup power systems and other technical system circuit operational redundancy strongly suggests that this kind of event is virtually impossible once the system was up and running and on line with other LCF’s and LF’s interconnectivity….
The team met with me to report their findings and it was decided that the final report would have nothing significant in it to explain what happened at E-Flight. In other words there was no technical explanation that could explain the event.… Meanwhile I was contacted by our representative … (Don Peterson) and told by him that the incident was reported as being a UFO event—That a UFO was seen by some Airmen over the LCF at the time E-Flight when down.
Subsequently, we were notified a few days later, that a stop work order was on the way from OOAMA to stop any further effort on this project. We stopped. We were also told that we were not to submit the final engineering report. This was most unusual since all of our work required review by the customer and the submittal of a final Engineering report to OOAMA.…
However, as I recall nothing explained this anomaly at E-Flight.
Hastings, in a review of the material conducted in 2013, wrote, “Actually, the large round object sighted by the missile guard, and reported to launch officer Lt. Walter Figel, had been hovering over one of the Echo missile silos, not the launch control facility itself. Nevertheless, Boeing engineer Kaminski’s revealing testimony essentially confirms Figel’s account of a UFO presence during the incident.”
In March 1967, Robert Salas was a Deputy Missile Combat Crew Commander (DMCCC) at Malmstrom AFB. When he first told his tale in 1995, he thought he had been assigned to Echo Flight, later he thought it might have been November Flight, but once he located his former commander, Fred Meiwald, he learned it was Oscar Flight. The story he told in 1995 was essentially the same as that about Echo Flight, that all ten missiles had gone off line within seconds of each other.
According to what Salas would report, while he was sixty feet underground in the capsule, he received a call from an NCO in the Launch Control Facility telling him that they had seen some UFOs nearby. They were just lights and no one was sure what they might be. But not long after that, the NCO reported that the object, later described as a red glow that was saucer shaped, was now over the gate. Before the NCO completed the report, he said that one of the men had been injured, apparently by the UFO. He hung up to go assist.
Salas said that he woke the commander and began to tell him about the UFO sightings. Within seconds, their missiles began to go off line. Later, there would be some question as to how many of the 10 missiles they lost. It might have been a few of them or it might have been all of them. In May, 2013, Salas said that he had believed all the missiles went offline, but his commander thought it was only five or six. In his first reports, Salas just split the difference.
In fact, Salas would say that once he mentioned what was happening outside, his commander, Meiwald, said that he had heard about a similar event the week before. Meiwald said an intrusion alarm went off the week before and a two-man security team was ordered to respond. As the team approached the site, they saw a UFO hovering over it. They raced back to the Launch Control Facility, shaken by what they had seen.
In a letter to Salas dated October 1, 1996, Meiwald wrote, “Topside security notified us the mobile team had reported observing the ‘UFO’ while responding … to the situation at an outlying LF.…”
Hastings interviewed Meiwald in 2011 about the events at Oscar Flight. Meiwald said:
… essentially, I was resting—whether or not I was sound sleep I don’t recall—but I know Bob got me up because we had unusual indications on the consol [sic], plus we’d had a security violation and, uh, the response team that [inaudible] had gone out to investigate at one of the LFs. They reported unusual activity over there and—by that time I was up—and saw consol indications. [I] also directed that the strike team return to the LCF while maintaining radio contact on the way back. As they came back we did lose radio contact for a short period of time, however, the flight [security] leader—the person who was in charge at the time—recognized the team as it was approaching the LCF and opened the gate so that his troops could get in.
Meiwald didn’t remember much, except confirming that they had seen something in the sky. Hastings asked him about the Flight Security Crew’s description of a bright red oval-shaped object, but Meiwald said that he could only remember something about a bright object, confirming, at least, the UFO sighting.
Later, Meiwald said that he and Salas were called in for a debriefing by the AFOSI. He confirmed that they were asked to sign nondisclosure statements, but he didn’t regard this as a big deal. That sort of thing apparently happened occasionally. At the Citizen Hearing in May 2013, Salas confirmed that they had been required to sign the nondisclosure statements. “It was then designated a highly classified incident,” according to Salas.
The trouble at Oscar Flight was also reported by 1st Lieutenant Robert C. Jamison, who was Minuteman ICBM targeting officer at Malmstrom in March 1967. According to what he told Hastings and reported in UFOs and Nukes, he, Jamison, was tasked to assist in the restart of “an entire flight of ten Minuteman ICBMs which had simultaneously and inexplicably shut down immediately after a UFO was sighted in the vicinity.…”
After a UFO was sighted in Montana, a number of Minuteman ICBMs shut down inexplicably, and silos like this one would not function.
More importantly, Jamison said that before he was sent into the field, he and his team were told to remain at Malmstrom until all UFO activity had ended, and then they received a “special briefing.” They were told to report any UFO they saw in the area. If they saw something once they were at the missile silo, they were to enter the personnel hatch and wait until the UFO left. The Air Police guards, who were to accompany the team, would remain outside to watch the UFO.
While he was in a hangar waiting to go into the field, Jamison overheard a two-way radio conversation about a UFO on the ground. This is a clear reference to the Belt sighting and dates Jamison’s recollections to March 24. Jamison said that one of the highest ranking officers on the base was on the scene of the landing. According to newspaper accounts and government files, this was probably Colonel Fred Klibbe.
The special briefing apparently was not just a one-time affair. Jamison said that for two weeks after the missile shut down, his team received a UFO briefing prior to heading into the field. This is something that would be repeated in other, similar events at other Air Force bases.
This seemed to be a repeat of the situation that happened just days earlier. Salas was later convinced that this incident happened on March 24, the same date as the Belt, Montana sightings.
Unlike the Echo Flight incident, there was no official record of this event. The Unit History doesn’t mention it, and there is no documentation for it. It is as if it never happened and for that reason, there are some who think that this is a hoax. The only reason UFOs are mentioned in government files is because the news media was already involved with the Belt sightings and they couldn’t be ignored. Had the media not been involved, neither the Echo Flight nor the Oscar Flight events would have leaked into the public arena.
One of the criticisms of the stories of UFOs near Echo and Oscar Flights is that there were no UFO sightings in the area other than that at Belt, Montana, on March 24. Although there were newspaper reports of sightings earlier, and while it is clear from the testimony that Air Force personnel were seeing lights and objects on March 16, Air Force investigators simply ignored the sightings. The logical government files that may contain those reports are from Project Blue Book.
There is evidence that not all UFO sightings made it to Project Blue Book, even though the regulations seemed to require that they do. Dr. J. Allen Hynek, who was a scientific consultant to Project Blue Book for many years, often said that the really good cases didn’t make it into the Blue Book files. He suspected another reporting system, but he couldn’t prove its existence.
Hints about this other investigation came from Brigadier General Arthur Exon, who was the base commander at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in the mid-1960s. Exon said that while he was base commander he would periodically receive a telephone call ordering him to prepare an aircraft for a mission outside the local Wright-Patterson area.
Exon himself described this in a May 19, 1991, recorded interview. He said, “I know that while I was there … I had charge of all of the administrative airplanes and had to sign priority airplanes to the members who would go out and investigate reported sightings … I remember several out in Wyoming and Montana and that area in the ‘60s, ‘64 and ‘65 … I knew there were certain teams of people; they’re representing headquarters USAF as well as the organizations there at Wright-Pat, FTD [Foreign Technology Division] and so on … When a crew came back it was their own business. Nobody asked any questions.…”
He expanded on this, saying, “The way this happened to me is that I would get a call and say that the crew or team was leaving … there was such and such a time and they wanted an airplane and pilots to take X number of people to wherever…. They might be gone two or three days or might be gone a week. They would come back and that would be the end of it.”
Asked about the overall control of these teams, Exon said, “I always thought they were part of that unholy crew in Washington that started keeping the lid on this thing.”
Everything said to this point suggested that the operation was run through FTD, the parent organization to Blue Book at Wright-Patterson. But in an interview conducted about a month later, on June 18, 1991, Exon clarified what he had meant.
Asked if these teams of eight to fifteen people were stationed at Wright-Patterson, he said, “They were, they would come from Washington, D.C. They’d ask for an airplane tomorrow morning and that would give the guys a chance to get there [Wright-Patterson] by commercial airline.… Sometimes they’d be gone for three days and sometimes they would be gone for a week. I know they went to Montana and Wyoming and the northwest states a number of times in a year and a half.… They went to Arizona once or twice.”
He also said, “Our contact was a man, a telephone number. He’d call and he’d set the airplane up. I just knew there was an investigative team.”
What all this boils down to is an attempt to cover the activity. The team, whoever they were, would fly into Dayton, Ohio, on commercial air and then drive out to the base. If a reporter attempted to trace the movements of the team after it had been deployed, the trail led back to Wright-Patterson. After that it just disappeared.
This team, or these teams, were made up of eight to fifteen individuals at a time when Project Blue Book was composed of two Air Force Officers, an NCO, and a secretary. They were stationed at Wright-Patterson, but these other teams were assigned somewhere else, and there is no reason to assume that all members of a team were assigned to the same base. They would come together as needed.
On October 20, 1969, Brigadier General C. H. Bolender provided the documentation to prove that there was another investigation. In paragraph four of his memo, Bolender wrote, “As early as 1953, the Robertson Panel concluded ‘that the evidence presented on Unidentified Flying Objects shows no indication that these phenomena constitute a direct physical threat to national security’ … In spite of this finding, the Air Force continued to maintain a special reporting system. There is still, however, no evidence that Project Blue Book reports have served any intelligence function. Moreover, reports of unidentified flying objects which could affect national security are made in accordance with JANAP 146 [Joint Army, Navy, Air Force Publication] or Air Force Manual 55 11, and are not part of the Blue Book system.”
In other words, the suspicions of Hynek and Exon were confirmed by this document from the government files. This organization dealt with matters of national security and the sightings at Malmstrom because the missile shut down was a matter of national security. Those sightings and the information collected about them would not be part of the Blue Book system and therefore would not be in the files. That they are missing is the significant point.
As with many other UFO incidents, there are a small number of people who are outraged by the thought that a UFO had been seen and interacted with the environment. In this case, the outrage came from James Carlson, son of Captain Eric Carlson, the Echo Flight MCCC on March 16, 1967. Carlson has carved out quite a presence on the Internet suggesting that Hastings and Salas were somewhat less than accurate.
But given all the information available, the number of men identified as being members of either Echo or Oscar Flight, and given the documentation that is available in the government files, some conclusions can be drawn. The situation can be better understood today, and looked at through neutral eyes.
James Carlson is of the opinion that nothing UFO-related happened that day. He said that his father told him about the events, but said that there was no need to speak to others. In fact, Carlson apparently wrote to Billy Cox, blogging as Devoid at the Herald Tribune (article at http://devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/10647/nukes-debate-gets-personal/), “I didn’t question Walt Figel because his response is already part of the record. It wasn’t necessary. My father was the commander at Echo Flight, and I questioned him … my father would never lie to me about something like that.”
Yet, according to Hastings, he interviewed Eric Carlson on October 6, 2008, and was told that the elder Carlson “himself had previously received reports from missile security guards of UFOs during other missile alerts … but that he didn’t take them seriously.”
While this statement is not a direct refutation of what the son was saying, it does speak to the idea that UFOs had been reported and that Eric Carlson didn’t believe them. In fact, he added, “You take an 18-year-old kid and stick him out there for days, with nothing but TV dinners, and they have a tendency to see things.”
Carlson noted that the 341st SMW Unit History didn’t mention any UFO sightings. It did say only that “Rumors of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) around the area of Echo Flight during the time of the default were disproven.”
But there is nothing in the Unit History to explain how they had been dis-proven, nor why, if the UFOs hadn’t been sighted, they would even bother to mention this.
In reality, however, Figel mentioned the maintenance crew talking about UFOs. There are suggestions that the security teams saw lights and UFOs. In other words, the rumors weren’t disproven, merely ignored, which isn’t quite the same thing.
More importantly, any UFO sightings at the time, especially if linked to the failure of the missiles, would be a matter of national security. They would not have been reported through the same channels as other UFO reports. That none of these reports were filed with Project Blue Book, as regulations required (unless it was a matter of national security), is interesting.
In a similar vein, Carlson said that Figel had not believed the UFO story and thought it was a joke. He quotes Figel as saying, “I thought it was a joke.” But the line is taken out of context. True, Figel did think that the maintenance crew was joking, but it is also true that Figel said they sounded sincere. In other words, he thought of it as a joke, but the crew did not and attempted to tell him what they were seeing above ground.
So Carlson didn’t see any UFOs, but he talks of others, above ground, seeing them and reporting them. He seems to reject the idea that any UFO was seen on March 16, and that UFOs had anything to do with the shut down, contrary to what his deputy, sitting in the capsule next to him, had to say about this.
Carlson makes a big deal about the fact that Figel didn’t attend the press conference held at the National Press Club by Hastings and Salas, wondering why he was excluded. Figel wasn’t excluded, he did not attend the press conference because he didn’t want to get in the middle of an argument between Hastings and Eric Carlson. Once the acrimony between the parties became known, Figel severed his communications with all. Figel had been invited, he just never responded to the invitation.
These sorts of arguments can become quite tedious, especially when one side takes statements out of context, doesn’t provide full disclosure on all that witnesses said, and is driven by an agenda that leads to a very narrow and extremely hostile point of view. It is clear, based on the government files, that all ten Minuteman missiles of Echo flight failed in a matter of minutes, possibly seconds. There were reports of UFOs in the area, and both Captain Eric Carlson and 1st Lt. Figel knew of it. That Figel thought it was a joke does not mean that it didn’t happen.
It is strange that there is no documentation for a similar failure at Oscar Flight just days later, but there are UFO sightings in the government files. There are other witnesses to this event than Robert Salas, and while their stories don’t completely agree, the differences are minor. They are the sort of thing that is to be expected when someone is relying on memories from decades before.
If Robert Salas had been the only officer to talk of UFO involvement in minuteman missiles dropping off line, the tale could be ignored. But his commander confirmed it and the missiles in Echo Flight, on the same base, had been affected just days prior to Salas’ experiences as documented in the government files. Other officers in other locations have also reported the same thing.
Dr. J. Allen Hynek, one-time consultant to Project Blue Book, in an article published in the December 17, 1966, issue of the Saturday Evening Post, wrote:
On August 25, 1966, an Air Force officer [Captain Val Smith] in charge of a missile crew in North Dakota suddenly found that his radio transmission was being interrupted by static. At the time he was sheltered in a concrete capsule 60 feet below the ground. While he was trying to clear up the problem, other Air Force personnel on the surface reported seeing a UFO—an unidentified flying object high in the sky. It had a bright red light, and it appeared to be alternately climbing and descending. Simultaneously, a radar crew on the ground picked up the UFO at 100,000 feet…. When the UFO climbed, the static stopped…. The UFO began to swoop and dive. It then appeared to land ten to fifteen miles south of the area. Missile-site control sent a strike team … to check. When the team was about ten miles from the landing site, static disrupted radio contact with them. Five to eight miles later the glow diminished, and the UFO took off. Another UFO was visually sighted and confirmed by radar.…
Robert Hastings, in UFOs and Nukes, provided additional detail about the sighting. He quoted an article from the Christian Science Monitor in which Raymond Fowler, who worked for Sylvania Corporation, was interviewed. That article, published on December 5, 1973, said:
Specifically, Mr. Fowler says he talked with an Air Force officer who had been in one of the subterranean Launch Control Facilities of a North Dakota Minuteman site on [sic] August 1966, when radar operators picked up a UFO maneuvering over the base at 100,000 feet. The officer declared that the LCF’s sophisticated radio equipment, that enables it to receive firing instructions from coordinating centers and transmit them to the silo Launch Facilities [LFs] was blocked out by static when the UFO hovered directly over it. Mr. Fowler recalls the officer saying that he could conceive of “nothing on earth” that could cause the equipment to malfunction from such an altitude, emphasizing that it was working perfectly before the object appeared overhead and after it left.
Asked to comment on Mr. Fowler’s allegations, an Air Force spokesman in Washington declared that SAC, that operates the site, “could find nothing in its unit histories to confirm the presence of unidentified flying objects over it or indeed malfunctions in its equipment on the date mentioned.”
Rather than search the unit histories, the Air Force spokesman should have reviewed another area of the government files. Project Blue Book contains information about this case. Major Chester A. Shaw, Base Director of Operations, wrote:
Capt Smith [no first name given, but is Val Smith] (Missile Combat Crew Commander) on duty at Missile Site (Mike Flt) sixty (60) feet underground indicated that radio transmission was being interrupted by static, this static was accompanied by the UFO coming close to the Missile Site (Mike Flt). When UFO climbed, static stopped. The UFO appeared to be S.E. of MIKE 6, range undetermined. At 0512Z, UFO climbed for altitude after hovering for fifteen minutes. South Radar base gave altitude as 100,000 feet, N.W. of Minot AFB, NDak [sic]. At this time a strike team reported UFO descending, checked with Radar Site they also verified this. The UFO then began to swoop and dive. It then appeared to land 10 to 15 miles south of MIKE 6. “MIKE 6” Missile Site Control sent a strike team to check. When the team was about 10 miles from the landing site, static disruppted [sic] radio contact with them. Five (5) to eight (8) minutes later, the glow diminished and the UFO took off. Another UFO was visually sighted and confirmed by radar. The one that was first sighted passed beneath the second. Radar also confirmed this. The first, made for altitude toward the North and the second seemed to disappear with the glow of red. A3C [Airman Third Class] SEDOVIC at the South Radar base confirmed this also. At 0619Z, two and one half (2½) hours after first sighting, an F-106 interceptor was sent up. No contact or sighting was established. The Control Tower asked the Aircraft Commander of a KC-135 which was flying in the local area to check the area. He reported nothing. The Radar Site picked up an echo on radar which on checking was the KC-135. No other sightings. At 0645Z discontinued search for UFO.
On October 12, 1966, Colonel Jerome J. Jones sent a short letter to then Major Hector Quintanilla at Project Blue Book stating that his office had no explanation for the sightings but that it was possible a ball lightning was the culprit. He mentioned that an editor of Aviation Week, Philip Klass, had written an article on UFOs suggesting that ball lightning “might well cause static sufficient to interrupt communications—but not for 3½ hours.”
Jones also thought this would be an ideal case with which to “inaugurate the $300,000 [that figure eventually became more than half a million dollars] contract with the University of Colorado.”
Subsystems in the Electronics Directorate, which investigated the case, pointed out that there was no reasonable explanation for the sighting. He mentioned Philip Klass’ theory of ionization of the atmosphere as an explanation for the UFO sightings. Klass was quickly debunked by atmospheric scientists who realized that the phenomenon that Klass cited was quite short lived and much smaller than the descriptions given by the witnesses. As of October 12, 1966, several weeks after the sightings, no reasonable explanation for the sighting had been found.
On January 4, 1967, First Lieutenant Roger D. Meyer, who was a Missile Security Operations Officer with the 862nd Combat Defense Squadron, answered a letter sent by Hynek. He wrote:
A3C [John M.] Turner was taken to the scene of the original sighting (M-6) by the undersigned [Meyer]. He indicated the following, (0 degrees is true north, 90 degrees true east, 180 degrees true south, and 270 degrees true west; degrees were extrapolated from the direction in which the subjects pointed by the undersigned).
Philip Julian Klass, who passed away in 2005, was an engineer and journalist who became one of the most famous critics of ufology.
He observed two objects. The first was a multi-colored object, which will be described in more detail. He did not observe the second object until after the strike team arrived and he described it as “the white light.” The first object (the one which generated his report via radio) was very high and located most of the time approximately 40 degrees. However, it did move between approximately 0 degrees and 55 degrees. When A3C Turner was asked by the undersigned how he could be sure that he was pointing in the right direction he knew he was pointing in the right direction because the night he observed the object he used the “back side of the fence” as a reference point. The back fence is on the north side of the site.
He noticed the second object after the strike team arrived and pointed it out to him. He called it the “white light” and stated that it was very close to the horizon at approximately 100 degrees. Attachment #1 is a drawing made by A3C Turner of the first object. It represents the image of the object as it passed in front of some clouds. Light seemed to come from the back side of the object and reflect off the clouds and thus formed a silhouette. One last point made by A3C Turner was the fact that shortly after the strike team arrived, as he was trying to watch both the “white light” and the first object, he lost track of the first object.
A2C Holiday, the strike force leader, was also interviewed by the undersigned at M-6 during the hours of darkness. He provided the following information. As he and his rider (A3C Aldrich) approached the sight they were watching a “white” light very close to the horizon at approximately 80 to 100 degrees. Upon arrival at the site A3C Turner pointed out an “unusually bright” object at approximately 20 degrees which was very high. After looking at it for a few moments Airman Holiday turned his attention to the “white light.” He observed the “white light” for some time. After a while he looked back to the north to find the unusually bright object” that A3C Turner had pointed out to him, but he could not find it.
A3C Aldrich, the strike team rider, was also interviewed at M-6 by the undersigned during the hours of darkness. The information he provided was as follows. He did not see the first object although he did hear the other personnel (A3C Turner, A3C [Michael D.] Mueller and A2C Holiday) mention it. He kept his attention on a white object at approximately 100 degrees which was very close to the horizon. He further stated that the object he was watching moved between approximately 75 and 110 degrees. The object also disappeared at various times for approximately 30 seconds at a time.
Attachment #2 is a transcript of the sequence of events recorded in the log book at south base (radar base). Attachment #3 represents a pattern of courses flown by the intercept plane as observed by the radar observer, SSgt Angel Camacho. Sgt Camacho further stated that the “object” was on his radar scope continuously from the time he picked up until he was relieved at approximately 0900Z (3 AM Central Standard time). The extract from the log book is also in Zulu time, which is equal to Central Standard Time plus six hours. Sgt Camacho stated that the object in question was “by itself” on his scope in that no other aircraft, ground clutter, or random “noise” bits were within 20-30 miles of the object on his scope except during the period when the fighter was in the area. The object did not disappear from his scope when the intercept plane flew it’s [sic] pattern. The undersigned spoke to Capt Burg, 5th Fighter Interception Squadron, who piloted the intercept plane. He advised that he flew intercept courses at, as he remembers it, 1000’, 2000’, 3000’, 4000’, and 5000’. Capt Burg further stated that he made no visual contact and that his plane’s radar equipment and infrared detection equipment recorded no contact. If you wish to have a sequence of events between the intercept plane and the control station (Great Falls Air Defense Sector) it will be necessary for you to write Col Duncan C. Myers, Director of Operations, Great Falls Air Defense Sector, Malstrom AFB, Montana 59402. The undersigned was unable to secure this particular sequence of events.
This letter, found in the government files, which may have been used as the basis of the Condon Committee investigation, left out some significant points. First and foremost is that there is no mention of the radio interference at the LCF, nor was any interference experienced by the strike team. Ignoring this point ensured that the case was no longer strictly a matter of national security, since it could be argued that radio static was not the same as the missiles going off line. It would also explain why the sighting report ended up in the Project Blue Book files. General Bolender made it clear that UFO sightings that were a matter of national security were not part of the Blue Book system.
The Condon Committee also seemed to ignore radar contacts that suggested the object was 100,000 feet above the ground. They rely, instead, on the height finding radar that put the object somewhere between one thousand and five thousand feet. Nowhere in their report do they mention the report of the high altitude.
It is clear from the information published by the Condon Committee that their investigation consisted of Hynek’s letter to Minot AFB and assigning a first lieutenant at the base to the task of investigating. Although Hynek’s letter with his questions is not in the government file, it is fairly clear that he was asking for specific information.
Their conclusion was that the case was difficult to evaluate because of the number of people and objects involved, as well as the vagueness and inconsistencies of the testimony. The Condon Committee decided that the descriptions of the first object were possibly based on a sighting of Capella, a very bright star which was in the general direction and azimuth of the area under question. They speculate that a sleepy guard on a lonely post might have a distorted impression of what he had seen, though they had no evidence that the man was sleepy or that the post lonely.
They do note that whatever the original object was, it was not the object seen by the radar because about the time the radar object was acquired, the visual object disappeared. Hynek and Low wrote, “Thus, what was ostensibly a single sighting was probably three; and there is much in the situation to suggest that the later two—radar target and white lights—were commonplace phenomena that were endowed with significance by the excitement generated by the first report. The weight of the evidence suggests that the original object was Capella, dancing and twinkling near the horizon; the evidence is not sufficient to justify any definite conclusion.”
In the end, the original solution, ball lightning, was quickly rejected. Although those involved with the investigation were unable to provide a solution, it was eventually listed as a possible aircraft by the Air Force. This was later changed to aircraft without the qualifier.
Both the Condon Committee and the Air Force seemed to forget about the original electromagnetic effects, and that the radar tracks, as described by the radar operators, and visual sightings do correspond. Hynek, in his magazine article at the end of 1967, used this case to argue that something truly unusual was happening. It is even more important when it is remembered that there was interference with the radio communications and that this was not an isolated event.
In May 2013, at the Citizen Hearing on Disclosure, retired Air Force captain David D. Schindele added another dimension to this case as well as the cases under consideration from other locations. He said that he had been involved in an incident while he was stationed at Minot AFB in 1966. He was off duty when the UFO sightings were reported, and he didn’t see anything himself, but what is important is the aftermath of those sightings and how they affected him.
According to what Schindele said in the Washington for the Citizen Hearing, he had been aware of a UFO sighting about three miles west of Mohall, North Dakota:
… I drove to the airbase to attend the morning Predeparture Briefing at [455th Strategic Missile] Wing Headquarters, where all 15 missile crews would normally meet each day prior to “pulling alert duty” at their respective Launch Control Facilities. During the briefing, it was mentioned that some missiles at November Flight had gone “off alert” during the night, but no further information was provided. I immediately connected this to the news item that I had heard earlier in the morning regarding a possible UFO sighting near the town of Mohall.
So here, another source from a different base, was in essence saying the same thing. The missiles had been disabled, but they didn’t give any additional information to the missile crews. Schindele said that those around him, at that briefing, were aware of the UFO sighting and they were all speculating about the possibility about the UFO and the missile failure.
Schindele said that when they arrived at the Launch Control Facility, their normal procedure was to inspect the grounds and the building, but on this morning he went in to debrief the security personnel. The site manager, a tech sergeant, asked if he had been briefed on what had happened and when Schindele said he hadn’t, the sergeant told him about the sighting. According to Schindele:
We then proceeded toward the windows on the west side of the day room where he described to me the large object with flashing lights that had been hovering just outside the fence that night, and he spread his arms out in front of him to indicate its size. Based on his description, I estimated that the object may have been 80 to 100 feet wide and about 100 feet from the building, maybe a bit closer.…
He then said that the object, while hovering close to the ground, then glided to the right toward the North end of the building out of sight. The object then came into view from the security section of the facility, and hovered just behind and slightly to the right of the main gate, concealed partly by the large garage located within the fenced area to the right of the gate….
Security personnel confirmed everything that the Site Manager had related to me. My commander and I then proceeded to take the elevator down to the Launch Control Center to relieve the two man officer crew below. After entering the capsule, our eyes were immediately transfixed on the Launch Control Console, which showed that all missiles were off alert and unlaunchable.
The outgoing crew briefed us on the wild events that transpired overnight, and indicated that the missiles malfunctioned at the time the object was hovering directly above the capsule and next to the main gate. We speculated on the possibility of an EMF pulse that might have created the situation. We had no doubt, however, that the 10 outlying nuclear tipped missiles of November Flight had been compromised, tampered with, and put out of commission by the object that had paid a visit. Normally, it was quite unusual to have even one missile down.…
As had happened at Malstrom, an entire flight of Minuteman missiles had been rendered useless by an outside force. True, they were brought back online but everyone realized the gravity of the situation. If an outside influence, whatever it might be, could take down a flight of missiles, it could take down the entire wing and the U.S. missile strategy would become useless.
Schindele also told the panel at the Citizen Hearing in 2013 that when he tried to get additional information from the Flight Security Controller, the controller said that he had been instructed not to discuss the situation. “That was when my commander told me that he had received a call while I was on a schedule rest break below ground, and he was told that we were never to discuss the incident. When I asked where the directive came from, he said the OSI.”
Schindele said there were more than a dozen people involved in the incident and although neither he nor his commander had been there at the time of the encounter, they were required to deal with the aftermath. He said that besides the staff at the LCF, there were others involved, including the maintenance people who had to retarget and realign the missiles. Salas had said the same thing.
Schindele said, “Everyone had been silenced. The incident was never discussed and I never heard a word of any other incident from people I associated with. I never spoke a word about my incident for almost 40 years.”
Like Salas, if Schindele was a standalone witness, his testimony could be ignored. He said say that he had run across others who knew of such events, two of whom had gone public, but others did not. Schindele said, “They fear losing their Air Force pensions or losing their personal integrity in keeping a secret, or of being ridiculed … [T]here is the late Captain Val Smith of my squadron who was mentioned in official documents released via the Freedom of Information Act. He was interviewed by the late Dr. Allen Hynek … who wrote an article in the Saturday Evening Post… which described the incident that Smith was involved with on 25 August 1966.”
If the stories about UFO sightings over missile sites are true, you would expect there to be many of them. The problem is that such things are normally classified and those involved are warned about revealing classified information. But more and more, tales of UFOs and missiles are coming to light.
Another example is the testimony of former Air Force captain Bruce Fenstermacher, who provided information to the Citizen Hearing in May 2013. He was a Minuteman III combat Crew Commander assigned to the 400th Strategic Missile Squadron at F.E. Warren AFB from 1974 until 1977.
Fenstermacher said that they were monitoring the VHF radio communications between the security NCO on the ground and the Security Alert Team who were doing the routine checks on the missile silos. At about two in the morning, the security NCO asked the SAT to pull over to look around. He wanted to know what the SAT could see. They spotted a light in the sky that was a pulsating white, with other colors visible between the pulsations.
Frances E. Warren Air Force Base near Cheyenne, Wyoming. The NCO there ignored reports of UFOs, not taking them seriously and not logging them.
Fenstermacher said, “I got on the direct line to the FSC and asked him what was going on. His reply was that right above the LCF there was a silent object with a very bright pulsating light. Between the pulsations he could see a blue light and a red light. I asked for specifics and he said that it was shaped like a fat cigar and was about 80 to 100 feet above him and appeared to be 40 to 50 feet long…. While we were talking he reported that it was slowly and quietly moving away to the east.”
They ordered the SAT to head to the Launch Facility where the object was hovering. It took them some time to respond but they headed out. The object had moved farther east and Fenstermacher ordered them to that location.
Fenstermacher in his testimony in front of the Citizen Hearing on Disclosure panel said:
Shortly after the object went to the first LF we reported the incident to the SAC command post at F. E. Warren. The NCO that took the call laughed at the report and said to call him back when the thing “ate the SAT” and hung up. As well as logging all the activity in the official log, my deputy also started taking personal notes dealing with what transpired.
At our hourly 400th SMS crew check in for flights Poppa, Quebec, Romeo, Sierra, and Tango [which are the designations of other missile sites] we told the other crew members about our object and received laughter and an attitude of general disbelief. Right after the group communication, the crew from Quebec called—they were the team we had dropped off on our way to Romeo—and stated that earlier that morning they had a similar object about a couple of their LFs. When asked what direction it was headed they said that it appeared to be heading towards our area.… We asked what happened when they reported the incident and the answer was, “Are you crazy? We didn’t report it. We would have been laughed at.” …
We contacted the F. E. Warren SAC Command Post a few more times and finally asked if this incident had been entered into the log. They said it had not. I asked for the officer in charge and stated that if they did not enter I would wake up the base commander and report it directly to him.… Shortly after that we got a call from a senior NCO at the Command Post asking for specific details about the incident.…
Upon our return to the 400th SMS we discussed the incident with our flight commander. The next morning we were called in to the 400th SMS commander’s office. He asked us about the incident and when he learned about our personal notes he asked to look at them. Once in his hands he tore them up and said we were never to talk about this again and required us to sign documents that seemed to say we would not talk about it. We reluctantly signed them.
At our next couple of departure meetings an officer in uniform (not a crew uniform and not someone we recognized) briefed all crews that this incident was classified and officially never happened and that no one should talk about it.
While it is clear from Fenstermacher’s statement that the UFO did not interfere with the missiles in any fashion and there were no reports of electromagnetic effects, it is the reaction of his fellow Air Force officers and the command structure that is important here. The culture inside the Air Force suppressed any sharing of information about UFO activity simply by wrapping it in a cloak of ridicule.
This resulted in two things. It prevented the crews from talking to one another about UFOs and it destroyed the paper trail about the sightings. Fenstermacher said that his commander had destroyed the notes about the sighting and that the Command Post wasn’t interested in logging the event until he pushed the issue, but there is no evidence that the events were logged. There was an attempt to keep the information out of the government files.
These cases are all quite strong, based as they are on multiple witnesses, the radar tracks reported in some of them, and the interaction of the UFOs with the environment in others. There is documentation in the government files, such as on-the-record interviews with many of the principals, including those given in May 2013 at the Citizen Hearing on Disclosure in Washington, D.C., but there is an interesting lack of sighting reports in the Project Blue Book files where they should have been. There is testimony that witnesses were told not to talk about the sightings and in some cases signed nondisclosure agreements with anonymous government officials to prevent them from discussing the information.
Someone went to great lengths to hide something that supposedly didn’t exist and that was not a matter of national security. Now, finally, some of that information is leaking into the public arena because of the pioneering work by both Robert Hastings and Robert Salas, Finally there is some disclosure of these important cases.
