Colonel Gordon Cooper’s Encounters with the Unknown
Colonel Gordon Cooper was a United States Air Force pilot, an aerospace engineer, and one of the astronauts involved in NASA’s Project Mercury, which was the first human spaceflight program with the goal of sending humans to space and returning them safely back to Earth. Cooper also flew as command pilot of the Gemini mission, logging a total of 222 hours in space and over seven thousand hours in the sky.
Apart from having a memorable career in the air force and with the space agency NASA, Cooper was also an avid believer in extraterrestrial life. In his autobiography Leap of Faith, Cooper wrote, “Ever since I looked up at the stars as a boy, I’ve felt that there had to be some interesting forms of life out in space for us to discover and get acquainted with.” 126 Cooper reported seeing multiple UFOs when flying over West Germany in 1951, and also reported that a UFO landed on a dry lake bed at Edwards Air Force Base in Southern California.
UFOs Over West Germany
In 1950, Cooper was assigned to the 525th Fighter bomber Squadron, stationed at Neubiberg Air Force Base in West Germany, but it was not until 1951 that Cooper had his first UFO sighting. At the time, several other Air Force pilots had reported seeing strange objects in the sky. Many pilots had been reporting seeing foo fighters in the sky and bogies on their radar. “I don’t believe in fairy tales, but when I got into flying and military aviation, I heard other pilots describe too many unexplained examples of UFOs sighted around Earth to rule out the possibility that some forms of life exist beyond our own world,” wrote Cooper.127
On one day in particular, Cooper recalled that he and his comrades had received an alert that an unidentified flying object was in the sky. Immediately, Cooper jumped into an F-86 fighter jet and took off in an attempt to intercept the unidentified aircraft. Cooper had reached an altitude of forty-five thousand feet and radar showed that the UFO was still hundreds of feet above, also traveling at a much greater speed. During the encounter, Cooper managed to get a visual on the object, which he described as “metallic silver and saucer-shaped.” The saucer-shaped aircraft was also vastly different to a weather balloon or the Soviet Union MiG-5 fighter jet Cooper had initially thought it was.
For the following three days, Cooper and his squadron reported seeing several unidentified objects flying over the base. On one night, Cooper recalled seeing as many as sixteen objects flying in formation at once. It was clear to Cooper that these flying objects were extraterrestrial. Each time they attempted to intercept, the unidentified aircraft outmaneuvered the fighter jets effortlessly. After several failed attempts, Cooper and the rest of the squadron would simply just look up at the sky through their binoculars in awe, watching the saucer-shaped aircraft carry out erratic maneuvers at incredible speeds.
The UFO Landing
Cooper’s experience with the unknown did not end in 1951. Six years after the initial sighting, Cooper was stationed at Edwards Air Force Base in southern California and was part of the Experimental Flight Test Engineering Division.
On May 3, 1957, Cooper was part of a project that included filming a precision landing using an Askania camera, which would automatically take pictures, one frame per second, as the aircraft made its landing on the dry lake bed. Part of Cooper’s team were cameramen James Bittick and Jack Gettys. After the crew had set up the apparatus and several hours had gone by, Bittick and Gettys rushed into Cooper’s office and told him that they had caught a “strange-looking saucer” on film.128 The saucer-shaped aircraft flew overhead for a couple of seconds as three landing gear extended. The UFO proceeded to make a smooth landing on the dry lake bed, just fifty yards away from Bittick and Gettys. The two cameramen described the object as being similar to an inverted plate. It was silver in color and had a diameter of approximately thirty feet. The object did not emit any noise throughout the landing, and as the two men approached it to get closer pictures, the saucer ascended and started a vertical climb and disappeared out of sight, completely silent.
When Bittick and Gettys showed Cooper the footage, he made an official report to the Pentagon, which instructed him to develop the film and send it over to Washington, DC. The film quality was exceptional and was undeniable proof of an extraterrestrial aircraft landing at an air force base. With that being said, the investigation did not go as Cooper was expecting. With all the evidence he had, Cooper was expecting a follow-up or an investigation of some sort. Once Cooper sent the footage over, he never saw it again, nor was he contacted. Nobody mentioned the sighting to him or the two cameramen ever again; it was as though nothing had ever happened.
Letter to the United Nations
The lack of interest and investigation proved to Cooper that either the phenomenon was not being studied at all, or else there was a cover-up and the government was concealing facts from the public. After he retired, Cooper made several efforts and urged the government agencies to disclose any information they had regarding the phenomenon. Cooper also wrote a letter to the United Nations, in which he addressed the lack of interest (or rather lack of disclosure) and stated that there should be more transparency when it comes to the phenomenon:
I wanted to convey to you my views on our extra-terrestrial visitors popularly referred to as ‘UFO’s’, and suggest what might be done to properly deal with them. I believe that these extra-terrestrial vehicles and their crews are visiting this planet from other planets, which obviously are a little more technically advanced than we are here on earth. I feel that we need to have a top level, coordinated program to scientifically collect and analyze data from all over earth concerning any type of encounter, and to determine how best to interface with these visitors in a friendly fashion. We may first have to show them that we have learned to resolve our problems by peaceful means, rather than warfare, before we are accepted as fully qualified universal team members. This acceptance would have tremendous possibilities of advancing our world in all areas. Certainly, then it would seem that the UN has a vested interest in handling this subject properly and expeditiously.
I should point out that I am not an experienced UFO professional researcher. I have not yet had the privilege of flying a UFO, nor of meeting the crew of one. I do feel that I am somewhat qualified to discuss them since I have been into the fringes of the vast areas in which they travel. Also, I did have occasion in 1951 to have two days of observation of many flights of them, of different sizes, flying in fighter formation, generally from east to west over Europe. They were at a higher altitude than we could reach with our jet fighters of that time.
I would also like to point out that most astronauts are very reluctant to even discuss UFO’s due to the great numbers of people who have indiscriminately sold fake stories and forged documents abusing their names and reputations without hesitation. Those few astronauts who have continued to have a participation in the UFO field have had to do so very cautiously. There are several of us who do believe in UFO’s and who have had occasion to see a UFO on the ground, or from an airplane. There was only one occasion from space that may have been a UFO.
If the UN agrees to pursue this project, and to lend their credibility to it, perhaps many more well qualified people will agree to step forth and provide help and information. 129
Conclusion
Cooper’s story is only one of many. There have been hundreds of military officials who have reported seeing unidentified flying objects in the sky, only for their report to be completely disregarded and dismissed. As we have seen so far in this book and as we shall continue to see, in most cases, it is evident that these UFOS are interplanetary. Their maneuverability and characteristics are superior to the military’s fighter jets and this in itself is worrisome. On several occasions, military pilots have shared the skies with advanced beings that could potentially cause them harm, putting their lives at risk. This phenomenon is a serious one that should not be ignored, and the government should certainly not shy away from addressing the issue. As Cooper stated, it is about time that the public is made aware of what is in the sky and of capabilities these beings possess.