Strange things in the sky have long been said to revolve around places of war, dating back to ancient times, but it is not just the realm of superstition and ignorance from the past misunderstanding common celestial phenomena, and here we take a look at some of the stranger cases of these things accumulating in war until modern times.
Starting with World War I, the spectacular moment when the Red Baron supposedly shot down a flying saucer comes to mind. The "Red Baron" is the alias of the German ace of the sky, pilot Manfred Freiherr von Richthofen. Manfred had at least 80 dogfight victories to his credit during his war career.
In the book UFOs of the First World War, by Nigel Watson, there was an entry according to which, while flying over the Belgian trenches in the spring of 1917 with fellow pilot Peter Waitzrick, Baron noticed an unidentified object that was described as "an upside-down silver saucer with orange lights." The Red Baron opened fire on him, and Waitzrick, who reportedly saw the entire incident, described what happened next as follows:
We were terrified because we had never seen anything like this before. The Baron immediately opened fire and the machine fell like a rock, cutting down tree branches as it plunged into the forest.
As they flew over the wreckage, they saw two humanoid figures escape from the ship and run towards the trees. Waitzrick kept this entire bizarre story to himself until 80 years later, in 1999, when he told the world about it. The story seems interesting, but is it really true? It is difficult to imagine that the same vehicles that today escape the most modern combat fighters would be shot down by the first war triplane.
Other UFOs encountered during World War I were the so-called "Burning Onions", which were usually described as glowing green orbs that circled around planes, performed somersaults, other aerial maneuvers, and very often chased planes, easily overtaking them. None of these vehicles ever attacked either side of the war. One theory as to what the Flaming Onions were is that they may have been flares fired by the Germans, but flares do not usually chase planes and experienced pilots can usually spot them in the sky.
By moving the clock forward several dozen years, we reach World War II. One of the most interesting incidents of this period occurred on the evening of November 27, 1944. Lt. Fred Ringwald of the United States Air Force was traveling as an observer during a night operation over the Rhine Valley, north of Strasbourg on the French-German border, when he saw something in the sky that shouldn't be there. Over the hill in the distance were eight to ten lights in a row, glowing a fiery orange.
When the officer pointed them out to his brothers-in-arms, the pilot and the rest of the crew saw them too. They quickly checked Allied ground radars, but they recorded nothing. When they decided whether or not to fight, the lights simply disappeared. No known aircraft of this period could become completely invisible to radar. Ringwald and his crew were part of the 415th Special Operations Squadron established in 1943. was tasked with carrying out missions in the Mediterranean Theater of Operations and then in northwestern Europe during World War II.
Although Ringwald's crew remained silent about what they saw during this mission, it turns out that other flights from their unit spotted something similar in the sky, particularly over the German-occupied Rhine Valley. Pilots have reported stories of strange lights, usually red, orange or green, following them or even flying parallel to their planes. They were reported to be typically cigar-shaped, had no wings or visible propulsion system, were highly maneuverable and fast, and often flew in formations of up to 10 and never appeared on radar.
Sightings began to flow in from across the European theater of war, and it looked more like the War of the Worlds than World War II. Soon these mysterious glowing ships were called "Foo Fighters". Given the credibility and experience of these witnesses, as well as the sheer number and consistency of the reports, the military began an investigation into the phenomenon.
Initially it was suspected that the Foo Fighters were some top secret German weapon, but it soon turned out that enemy pilots were seeing the same objects, which also never seemed to attack them or act in a threatening manner. After a full investigation, no official conclusions have been reached. Theories assume that these Foo Fighters were top-secret technology lost after the war, some atmospheric phenomenon, or the result of combat fatigue of pilots seeing strange things. The true nature of these objects remains unknown.
Interestingly, sightings of Foo Fighters also occurred in the Pacific theater of war. In this case, instead of glowing objects performing aerial maneuvers, pilots typically reported "fireballs" hanging in the sky. Once again, theories emerged that they were some kind of Japanese weapon, but as with the Foo Fighters from Europe, these fireballs never attacked either side in the conflict, as reports indicate that both Japanese and American pilots saw them.
It is worth mentioning that we are talking about times when the terms UFO and flying saucer had not yet been coined. Both Foo Fighters and Pacific Fireballs certainly exhaust the definition of these terms. However, this is still not the end of mysterious reports. A very strange account emerged several decades after the Korean War (1950-1953). In January 1987, John Timmerman of the UFO Studies Center J. Allen Hynek (CUFOS) sat down for an interview with former US Army Private Francis P. Wall.
Wall served with the Army's 25th Division, 27th Regiment, 2nd Battalion, Easy Company, and in May 1951 he operated out of Chorwon, in an area known by the military as the Iron Triangle, on a mission to reach a small village in the mountains. The village in question was in an area marked for bombardment with artillery fire. Wall and his men were there to make sure innocent civilians were properly warned of the impending rain of fire. When they arrived, they saw a mysterious vehicle in the shape of a "lighthouse".
Suddenly we noticed to our right what looked like a lighthouse coming down from above. At first, no one thought about it. We noticed that the thing continued down to the village, where artillery fire had already begun. At first it had an orange glow. We noticed that the object was [so] fast that it could get into the middle of an artillery explosion and still remain unscathed. But then he approached us. And it changed color from bright orange to blue-green. Its size is difficult to determine; there is no way to compare it. The light pulsated.
The men were very concerned at this point because the object clearly did not belong to the US, and was not any aircraft they knew of. The soldiers radioed the situation to their superiors, asking for permission to open fire. Permission was granted, and Wall claims he began firing on the facility with his M-1 rifle loaded with armor-piercing bullets. He claims he hit the object several times, hearing the bullets ricocheting against what sounded like metal. The bullets seemed to have some effect on it, which was strange considering the object had previously escaped an artillery shell unscathed.
According to Wall, the ship launched some sort of retaliatory attack on them. The craft allegedly emitted some type of ray or beam that appeared in pulses. As the beam passed over them, the men felt a tingling and burning sensation. Although it didn't seem to cause any visible damage, they could feel it seeping through their skin, and the pain was enough to send them running to a nearby shelter. Over the next few days, the soldiers felt the consequences of this encounter. Confusion, memory loss, headaches, abdominal pain, nausea and extreme weakness were so severe that some of them had difficulty walking.
The doctors could find no reason or cause for these symptoms, and the only evidence that something was wrong was an unusually high white blood cell count. Even though there was officially nothing wrong with them, all the men were physically sick and suffering. Wall and his company were certain that a mysterious beam had caused it. It is difficult to deny that the symptoms they exhibited closely resemble mild radiation sickness.
Everything indicates that similar incidents also occurred during the Vietnam War. One such incident allegedly occurred on June 15, 1968, along the demilitarized zone (DMZ) between North and South Vietnam, where a patrol boat known as PCF-12, commanded by Lt. Pete Snyder, was on a routine night patrol near Cua Viet .
The lieutenant reported that around noon he received a frantic distress call from another patrol boat (PCF-19), whose personnel claimed that they had been attacked by unidentified lights that they called "enemy helicopters". This seemed strange because the North Vietnamese enemy was not known to use attack helicopters at that time. As they approached, one of the strange lights emitted a bright flash, and the PCF-19 exploded before their eyes. Immediately after the explosion, two enigmatic lights accelerated rapidly towards the sea.
PCF-12 was scouting the area for any possible survivors of the massacre they had just witnessed. Two injured men were found and said that two UFOs followed them for several dozen minutes along the river. The deck officer decided to fire at the mysterious objects, and that's when one of them fired a piercing blast of light that destroyed the boat. Interestingly, a later dispatch from Saigon quoted a military spokesman who attributed the loss of PCF-19 to an "unidentified object" rather than enemy coastal batteries or missiles.
Around the same time, another incident occurred in the South China Sea involving a Royal Australian Navy ship, HMAS Hobart. About 20 km from Cap Lay, sightings of 30 unidentified and slowly moving lights were reported floating in the night sky. Initially thought to be Russian M-14 "Hound" helicopters, but upon closer inspection, it was clear that they were something else. Fighters were sent into combat, but the objects easily escaped pursuit and fire.
The lights were sporadically observed for months afterwards along the DMZ, confusing those who saw them. On radar they appeared to be low and slow moving objects, much like helicopters, but often there was no visible confirmation or they did not look like helicopters at all. They also had a tendency to vanish into thin air, and the jets called in to intercept them were too SLOW.
The origin of these strange lights remains a mystery to this day. Existing theories assume that radar signals were somehow misread, causing other friendly ships to appear to be slow-moving flying objects, or that North Vietnam had more helicopters than previously thought.
Another American ship was not directly attacked but nevertheless had a very dangerous encounter with an unidentified submarine (USO). In 1974, the ammunition ship USS Kilauea operated in the Indian Ocean. One night, the crew's attention was drawn to eerie streaks of light created by fluorescent algae, when suddenly, the depths of the sea lit up with something else. A mysterious flaming ball rose spectacularly from the water and arced just above the destroyer before falling back into the ocean on the other side and sinking into the depths of the ocean.
The above incident was not described in the official report and was only leaked by an anonymous officer. This doesn't speak particularly well to the credibility of the whole incident, but here's what he had to say about it:
We all stared at each other with our mouths open. We couldn't believe what we were seeing, but I asked my friends who were on bridge watch if they had seen it and they all confirmed it. But nothing was reported that I know of, and we just stopped talking about it. I bet the destroyer saw it right. It flew right over the bridge of that ship and it was big. It may have been 150 to 200 feet in diameter. This was my big meeting.
This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to observations of unidentified flying objects. We already know that such incidents continued until the end of the 20th century and did not stop even with the arrival of the new millennium. Publication of the already famous naval recordings entitled GIMBAL, GO FAST and FLIR revealed to the world the true scale of this problem and the complete helplessness of the "world's strongest army" in the face of the unknown. Many of these accounts have probably never been documented, which further distances us from answering the most important question. What were these soldiers and pilots dealing with?
No comments:
Post a Comment