The Phoenix Lights
Date: March 13, 1997.
Location: Phoenix, Arizona, United States
A series of unidentified lights were observed over Phoenix, Arizona, Nevada, and Sonora, California on March 13, 1997. Thousands of individuals reported seeing the V-shaped lights in the sky over the aforementioned locations, and several individuals managed to capture these lights on their cameras.
The first report was made at 18:55 when a young man witnessed a group of six lights in the sky over Nevada. In his report to the National UFO Reporting Center, the unnamed man described the lights as having a V shape and being as large as a Boeing 747. The man reported that as the UFO flew overhead, it made the noise of a gust of wind and disappeared over the horizon. In the following two to three hours, multiple similar reports were made. The multiple reports described the V-shaped object to be as large as 900 feet and two miles wide. Although the object was enormous, many reported that the UFO glided through the sky without emitting any noise, even though some reported it to be flying at an altitude of one thousand feet. At different times, the altitude varied from one thousand feet to ten thousand feet.
The next report was made at around 20:15 from an unnamed former police officer in Arizona. As the man was driving, he noticed five red lights; four of which were flying in a V formation, with the fifth light trailing behind. Having just left his house, the former police officer returned back to his house and grabbed his binoculars to get a better look at the object. For two whole minutes, the man was able to observe the bright red lights as they hovered silently before they disappeared over the horizon.
Tim Ley was one of the witnesses who came forward and shared his experience in detail. Prior to his sighting, Ley was not a believer in extraterrestrials, nor was he interested in the UFO phenomenon. His opinion changed on March 13, 1997, when he, together with his wife Bobbi, his son Hal, and his grandson Damien, was at his house in Phoenix. Ley was just exiting his car when his son pointed to the sky as they saw five lights in the shape of an arc, hovering silently toward the house. As the lights approached the house, the size and shape of the UFOs changed too. In a report, Ley said “We could see the lights were also getting slightly larger and the spaces in between them increasing in distance … It now appeared that the middle light on top of the arc had elongated up, so that now the lights looked like the letter A without the bar across.” 51
Maintaining the formation perfectly, the lights flew overhead. As they did so, Tim noted that the lights were, in fact, one enormous aircraft and not five separate ones. The lights were maintaining their positions so perfectly that they must have been “locked together.” 52 He then noted that the aircraft had a very dark structure; its perfect geometric shape and size was something out of a science fiction movie. It was so large that it spread over a couple of blocks and each arm of the V-shaped UFO was around 700 feet long. The aircraft was gliding through the sky at around thirty-five meters per hour.
Another witness, a truck driver named Bill Greiner, recounted his experience when he spoke to USA Today. Prior to the sighting, Greiner was a skeptic; he had never believed in UFOs or extraterrestrials. From his car window, as Greiner was driving on a mountain north of Phoenix, he saw the massive V-shaped aircraft in the sky: “Now I’ve got a whole new view. I may be just a dumb truck driver, but I’ve seen something that don’t belong here.” 53
One last witness report to examine is the report made by Fife Symington, the former Arizona governor. On March 13, Symington saw a “massive delta-shaped craft silently navigate over Squaw Peak, a mountain range in Phoenix, Arizona.” 54 Apart from being the governor of Arizona, Symington was also a pilot and a former air force officer. The former Arizona governor stated the following when asked about the Phoenix Lights: “I’m a pilot and I know just about every machine that flies. It was bigger than anything that I have ever seen. It remains a great mystery. Other people saw it, responsible people. I don’t know why people would ridicule it. It was enormous and inexplicable. Who knows where it came from?” 55
In later interviews, Symington also confirmed that this object was most definitely not man-made, and he also ruled out the explanation that the Air Force had provided for the sightings:
“I can definitively say that this craft did not resemble any man-made object I’d ever seen. And it was certainly not high-altitude flares because flares don’t fly in formation.” 56
The Military’s Response
Although hundreds of reports were made describing the UFO in detail, the United States Air Force stated that what was in the sky was actually slow-falling, long-burning LUU-2B/B illumination flares that were dropped by four A-19 Warthog aircraft as part of a training exercise at the Barry Goldwater Range. As I shall point out, there are many discrepancies in this explanation.
The first inconsistency is the shape of the aircraft. Hundreds of reports were made on the day, and all of them described the UFO in the same way. Even if we have a look at the detailed witness reports mentioned previously in the chapter, it is clear that the aircraft in the sky was enormous, V-shaped, and had bright lights along its body. The witnesses also mentioned that the aircraft hovered slowly overhead, and even when it was at a low altitude, none of the individuals were able to hear any noise emitted from the UFO. This does not correspond to the general appearance of flares or of A-19 Warthog aircraft.
One important aspect of this explanation, which I find troubling, is the fact that the former governor of Arizona was not informed that long-standing flares were going to be dropped over the state. Would it not have prevented panic and anxiety amongst civilians if they had known that flares were about to be dropped as part of a military exercise? Moreover, even if this information was not made public, wouldn’t the governor at least have been informed? When Symington heard of this explanation, he contacted the air force himself and started asking questions. Unsurprisingly, the air force refused to answer any questions and he was not given further explanations. Moreover, as with every other case, interviewing firsthand witnesses is usually the first thing done after an event like this. Although the Phoenix lights were observed by thousands, not one individual was interviewed or asked to provide a description of the object they had seen.
As mentioned in the beginning of this chapter, multiple individuals were able to capture these lights on film. Jim Dilettoso, the founder of the Arizona State University Computer Institute and the former NASA Industrial Application Center Technology Director, analyzed a number of these photographs and film footages using a number of computerized techniques. When analyzing one film in particular, Dilettoso came to the conclusion that these lights were artificial and could not have been flares, as the air force had proposed.
The analysis also showed that the spectrum of the lights did not match up with any known light in the sky. This ruled out the possibility of the lights being anything natural. Moreover, the lights also had a substantial amount of red, green and blue—colors that do not match-up with the description of a flare. Dilettoso also reported that the lights were pulsating in a repeated manner.
Conclusion
If we have a look at the eyewitness reports and the details that the individuals provided, the explanation the Air Force gave seems nonsensical. Many high-level individuals, such as the former Arizona governor, did not accept this explanation, and for good reason. With the explanation being ruled out, what was truly in the sky? Many explanations have been disproved, but the one hypothesis that was not even considered was the extraterrestrial hypothesis. Was this theory not even acknowledged due to the general taboo concerning the subject? Did the air force not even consider the theory a possibility to prevent mass hysteria and panic?
51. Tim Ley, “Tim Ley Family—Eyewitnesses of 3/13/97 Arizona UFO Flyover Event Called ‘Phoenix Lights,’ ” Tim Ley (blog), 1998, http://www.artgomperz .com/a1999/aug/b7.htm.
52. Ley, “Tim Ley Family - Eyewitnesses.”
53. Richard Price, USA Today, June 18, 1997.
54. Fife Symington, CNN, November 9, 2007.
55. Symington, CNN, November 9, 2007.
56. Symington, CNN, November 9, 2007.