Filer's Files

#37-1998
September 17, 1998

MUFON Skywatch Investigations
George A. Filer, Director, Mutual UFO Network Eastern

George Filer: Majorstar@verizon.net
Webmaster Chuck Warren
My website is at: www.nationalufocenter.com

MUFON's Amateur Radio Net is on 40 meters-7.237MHz on Saturdays, at 8 a.m. EST. A compilation of these reports can be seen at mufon.com or http://ufoinfo.com/filer/index.shtml.

FLORIDA

NICEVILLE: Tig reports that, "My friend and I spotted an unexplainable object on the out-skirts of town on September 12, 1998, at 11:00PM. It was a hundred yards above the ground and the size of an C-130 Hercules, but Triangular in shape. Living in a military town, (Eglin Air Force Base), for twelve years we have seen about every kind of airplane that they have to offer! Never once have I seen an object that looked or acted like this! As we drove by parallel to the object and in the opposite direction, I slowed down to look at it. It sat there at the same position the entire time and did not budge or make a sound. I know that the Air Force is up to something since most sightings are reported near a military base. This is not strictly coincidental!" Thanks to Tig.

UNITED KINGDOM

OLDHAM: Paul Davies writes that at midnight on June 19, 1998, while sitting on my balcony I witnessed what appeared to be a laser beam type straight line between two fluffy white clouds straight above me. The unusual thing was that as the clouds moved, the line stayed connected to them. I took three photos of the phenomena. Two of the photos showed nothing, but the third one revealed a bright, intense burst of light within or behind one of the clouds. There appeared to be a disc of some sort attached to it. On further inspection and through the use of enhancement, the object appears to resonate. I did not see the light at all. A photo is available.,40 Longfield Crescent, Oldham, Lancashire, England, Phone 0161 652 2853. Thanks to John Thompson and ISUR.

NORWAY

HESSDALEN: Five people were frightened July 9, 1998, when an "eerie ball of light" was seen when driving at 01:07 AM. The green ball of light was so near the car that my sister had to slam on the brakes. The light disappeared behind the trees as it changed color to red," a Trondheim woman told NTB (The Norwegian News Agency.) The observation occurred outside of the range of the automatic camera set up at Hessdalen designed to capture unexplainable phenomena. Five minutes before the observation, the camera captured a strange yellow light further to the Southwest. One of the witnesses describes the experience as not just strange, but disturbing and frightening. The car, approaching from Øyungen, encountered the green light in winding roads north of Hessdalen as it appeared from a hollow by the river. It was only three to four meters away, and strongly lit up the inside of the car before disappearing silently between the bushes. It shifted to a red color leaving a kind of tail of light behind it. The head of the monitoring project says it is impossible to ascertain if the sighting is linked to the light phenomenon registered by the camera moments before. Thanks to Dagbladet's net site, http://www.dagbladet.no/ Jonathan Tisdall jtisdall@c2i.net

FRANCE

VOREPPE: On September 6, 1998, a family living in Voreppe, a town near Grenoble in the French Alps, received the shock of their lives. Looking up, a husband, wife, their three-year old child and the grandmother spotted "a slow, hovering, metallic shiny sphere about seven 6 feet above a cherry tree." As the UFO hovered and hummed, the man ran indoors to fetch his camcorder. He switched it on and "shot two minutes of videotape, showing the departure of the object." The family then telephoned the French police. The officers took the videotape, contacted SEPRA, the French government agency devoted to UFO research, and reportedly advised the witnesses "not to speak to any ufologists about the incident." Two investigators from the SEPRA office in Toulouse spent two days investigating the encounter. They took burned branches from the cherry tree for lab analysis. In a brief statement, SEPRA said the videotape was "very interesting" and "useable" in terms of further UFO research. Jean-Jacques Velasco of CNES said the UFO "looks as if it is floating and then moves away in a curious way." He described the object as "a round disc, about 5 meters (16.5 feet) across with a few protuberances coming out of it and a red ring around its bottom." Voreppe is 240 miles southeast of Paris. Thanks to Perry Petrakis de SOS OVNI and Larry a122.ppp.tsoft.com.

TNT TELEVISION PROGRAM: THE SECRET KGB UFO FILES

Alex Hefmann writes, "I was a long time skeptic of UFOs. Now I am converted after the TNT television program. (The three Soviet researchers doing the alleged autopsy of the extra terrestrial died within a few days.) I am originally from Russia and know how 60's Soviet documents look like. I did not find any faults with the documents that were shown frame by frame on TV. They looked very authentic. Deputy Minister of Soviet PVO would NEVER sign any such document (like "Operation Sverdlovky Karlik") without a VERY SERIOUS REASON!. Death certificates of the 3 researchers (Kamyshov, Savitsky, Gordeenko) are VERY impressive! With 3 people dead -- this is not a joke) All footage looks GENUINE (I served in the Soviet army plus I know how medical stuff looked like in those years). It is almost impossible to cook the tapes together with all corresponded documents! It would cost too much money. One of the people on the tape during autopsy was called "Pavel" and there is a Pavel Gordeenko who signed the report, and the same name is on the death certificate. I am not sure which institute was used for report. Semashko and "Anatomy department" are the only the names readable. However, there was the "3rd Medical Stomatology Institute imeni Semashko" with an Anatomy department. This is the only body in Moscow with the name Semashko. It was signed "in presence of Deputy Decan" Tolmakov. I'm now checking now, about existence of these people. Thanks to Alex Hefman, New York

GEORGIA

LA GRANGE: John Thompson MUFON and ISUR reports he interviewed a witness who saw a UFO on Saturday, September 5, 1998. The craft was seen for only a few seconds but was extremely bright white and shaped like a boomerang. It made no noise. The craft was only 60 yards away and about the size of a mini-van. There was no fuselage just a wing. A similar craft was reported to ISUR and forwarded to John by Michael Norris, ISUR's webmaster.

NORCROSS: Elaine Belisha reports her 14 year old daughter, Marilyn Chen, saw a translucent, boomerang-shaped aircraft on Sunday, Sept. 13, 1998 at 8:00 PM. "I asked her to draw a picture, thinking it might be a stealth bomber, but it has a much larger wingspan relative to the size than a stealth." The UFO appeared and disappeared almost magically even though it was at close range at dusk. Thanks to E. Belisha, 2019 Lia Hills Drive Norcross, GA.

HEARD COUNTY: Also on September 13, 1998, a huge red pulsating light was seen at 10:56 EDT. The UFO was moving ENE, just "bobbing," along at 1,000 feet altitude. The huge red light dims and grows brighter, but never goes off completely. This is uncharacteristic of most airplane lights. The light was estimated as 2 to 3 miles away, and the apparent size of at least four times the planet Venus. There was also a bluish-white light that remained steady and seemed diffused. The witness could not understand how a pilot could fly with so much light coming out of the craft. The bright lights are apparently underneath, because the huge light obscures the plane. Thanks to John C. Thompson and ISUR’s Michael Norris.

ROSWELL CRASH MAY HAVE BEEN A US BUILT AIRCRAFT?

British Aviation Expert, Tim Matthew's writes, "I read with interest ex-CIA man Karl Pflocks' fascinating and lucid article entitled "For Your Eyes Only" featured in the September 1998, Fortean Times, FT114 -, pp.34-38. It seems to me that the UFO debate is only allowed to exist within certain parameters whereby; On the one hand the 'believers' believe that an ET craft crashed at Roswell or elsewhere and that subsequently the material and or bodies were taken to a classified location for testing and evaluation. On the other hand the skeptics argue, through an examination of declassified documents and by pointing out the sometimes obvious inconsistencies in witness’ statements, that no flying saucers crashed. They often further conclude that there are therefore no saucers, period. This dead end debate fails to consider the strong possibility (or reality in my opinion) that the US military was engaged in the construction of flying disc-type aircraft. Technically speaking these were only UFOs to the uninformed observer and were in fact low aspect ratio aircraft. I fully recognize that the skeptics and believers are not prepared to admit to this and as a result both myself and the few aviation researchers who research this area of interest plow a rather lonely furrow.

First, there is no doubt that one element of the reality behind low aspect ratio aircraft is German in origin. The work of Alexander Lippisch, the Horten Brothers, Gunter Boch, Walter Dornberger, Von Braun, Dr. Richard Walter Miethe and others was way ahead of the allies. Before I go any further let me first add the standard disclaimer; Mention of German wartime technologies is in no way evidence of my support for right-wing beliefs, so-called "Nazi superiority", a 'secret agenda of holocaust revisionism' or any of the other smears and BS that have been put out by a few malicious characters. In fact, what is so ironic is that it is precisely because of war crimes that some of the men above were involved in, directly or indirectly, that their work remains classified by the US government. Any supposed UFO "cover-up" has very little to do with "crashed saucers" and a great deal more to do with the political and military realities of the immediate postwar period. Beginning with work into VTOL aircraft within the Heinkel company at Marienhe, Rostock, in the late 1930s the work progressed and one of the places that it ended up was at one of three BMW facilities near Prague. This led to the development of a rather primitive circular-wing aircraft that was able, in early 1945, to take off and fly for several minutes before returning home. There are several witnesses to this event. Film was made of this test-flight and is beyond our grasp at this stage. The scientists involved were almost certainly on the "black list" of wanted technical specialists drawn up by allied intelligence operatives and hunted down by a combination of FIAT and CAF Teams from June 1944. Operations Overcast and Paperclip were examples of allied attempts to get hold of German experts. Karl Pflock uses intelligence documents. So will I. Incidentally, these quotations are taken from the CIA FOIA Popular (UFO) Documents site; www.foia.ucia.gov." Reported Sightings of Unconventional Aircraft" Pflock -- dated October 19, 1955--paragraph 4; "Project 'Y' is being directed by John Frost. Mr. Frost is reported to have obtained his original idea for the flying machine from a group of Germans just after World War 2. The Soviets may have obtained information from this German group. (Project Y was a saucer-type design.)
From a Counter Intelligence Corps region Vl document dated 10th November 1947 (declassified 1994); Flying Saucers - paragraph 2 "The opinion was expressed that some sort of object, such as the flying saucer, did exist. At the present time, construction models are being built for wind tunnel tests. It is further suspected that the flying objects may have been developed from original plans and experiments conducted by the Germans prior to the capitulation. Headquarters, 970th CIC detachment, European Command, is desirous of locating German aircraft specialists or test pilots who might have some knowledge of similar aircraft. This canvass is to be made discreetly and to conceal our interest in the subject." Resulting information was to be sent to Air Material Command. This puts an entirely different perspective on things. This is nothing to do with crash retrievals, alien spacecraft but man-made technologies. I received an E-mail with detailed information from a man involved in early radar testing of flying wing designs constructed in the USA using German plans. He told me that they had a low Radar Cross Section (RCS) and were stable in flight with excellent lift. What is more, such flying wing aircraft (and a disc is a flying wing too) were said in USAF Air Intelligence Report 100-203-79 to 'most closely resemble' those objects reported as UFOs. Back on 23rd September 1947 the Schulgen Memorandum, and I quote from a copy of the original, stated that; "It is possible within the present US knowledge - provided that extensive detailed development is undertaken - to construct a piloted aircraft which has the general description of the object in subparagraph (e) above which would be capable of an approximate range of 7,000 miles at subsonic speeds." Beyond the good ol' UFO myths about lightning speeds of travel - where no observer would see a thing - many of the early sightings of so-called UFOs noted a heel-shaped planform and an aircraft that traveled at estimated speeds of between 300 to 600 mph. I take these approximate speeds from reports by aircraft pilots who saw structured craft and who might reasonably expected to make a better estimate. Of course, the usual suspects will debunk all this but I think that we're getting near the truth of the matter. Even more fascinating was Nathan Twinings' association with 'Operation Paperclip' and the transportation of those questionable Nazi scientists to the US. 'Operation Lusty', the postwar effort to get hold of data on German wartime projects was, not unlike the efforts made by CIC staff both during and after the war, very similar. There was a clear need to control the information about these advanced technologies and to recover the data and develop the aircraft in secret. So who did all the work and where did it take place? Initially - White Sands Proving Ground and Muroc Field. The source mentioned above did the flying wing tests at that location. The USAF was not the prime mover in disc aircraft. The US Navy was most responsible. The men who worked on the Chance-Vought XF5U1 - Flying Pancake was often held up as an example of a 'failed' circular wing aircraft - had high security clearances. I spoke to a 78 year old former employee living in Pennsylvania. He worked on the skins for the XF5U1 and contrary to popular opinion the aircraft flew, often at low speeds at night in the Bridgeport, Connecticut area from 1946. Initially a prop driven aircraft of circular planform the XF5U1 is said to have suffered from several deficiencies. Nevertheless, the postwar rush to replace prop engines with jets affected the XF5U1 and we now strongly suspect that a jet-powered 'pancake' was indeed responsible for its' share of saucer sightings. The man I spoke to was fully aware of this - he in fact worked on plans for the jet-powered version. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the US Navy was interested in this aircraft and in fact supported its' development as a possible STOL aircraft from 1942. The project went into the black and I have in my possession a Project Sign document which says that the US Navy had an experimental aircraft built by Vought.

Document; Special Report - Project SIGN - June 23, 1948, from Colonel R D Wentworth USAF, Acting Chief of Intelligence; "Suggest leaving out sales talk for low aspect ratio aircraft. We will find out their practical advantages from Navy tests. It is the opinion of this office that since the vast majority of the objects reported can best be described as being similar to the flying wing type aircraft of low aspect ratio, this concept must be retained in the letter. In deference to the views of the Director of Research and Development, however, it is recommended that reference be made to past experiments conducted under the auspices of the Engineering Division and the present experiments of the Navy with low aspect ratio aircraft and boundary layer control." It comes as no surprise to me to learn that the destination for 'Paperclip' scientists was Fort Bliss - on the New Mexico/Texas border situated close by the White Sands facilities. Chance Vought moved to Dallas, Texas in 1947. It was only marginally to do with German technology as the Pancake story indicates. The US and Canada built several saucers as other intelligence documents and reports, for instance the recently (1995) declassified 'Project Silver Bug' technical report, make clear. This was a circular-wing aircraft supposedly designed in Canada (by a team said to include Dr. Miethe) but which our sources tell us was actually built and flown at Papoose Lake from 1958/9. The plans were drawn up at AVRO Canada primarily as a diversion. It was here, at S4, that some of the secret planes tasked with combating Soviet intruders were built. The saucers used jet propulsion. The Soviet threat was a constant preoccupation for the US military and the threat was very real as Pflock will know. Klaus Habermohl, a BMW engineer who worked as part of the Flugzeug Special Projects Group in Prague, was captured by the Russians in Prague on or about 11th May 1945. He undoubtedly helped the construction of a Soviet disc and I recently came across plans for another Soviet low aspect aircraft that would have used Nuclear propulsion. I do not know whether this worrying development ever got off the drawing board. What I do know is that Senator Russell and his party saw a flying disc during a trip to the USSR in 1955 and that his most credible sighting was swept under the carpet by the same military intelligence personnel with knowledge both of unconventional US and Soviet aircraft. I very much doubt whether Russell and his party saw the disc by accident. There were many elements to the ongoing struggle between the Soviet and US military and their intelligence machines and this is reflected in several texts including John Ranelagh's definitive book "The Agency" (Sceptre 1988). Check out the few CIA documents in its' Popular UFO Documents collection and note the near hysteria about advanced Soviet aircraft and intentions. Perhaps the most important and hidden aspect of this was the increasing threat of Soviet penetration of US airspace via Alaska. In any case the CIA was most concerned about 'non-conventional air vehicles' under development by the Soviets as the 14th June 1954 memorandum entitled "Intelligence Responsibilities for Non-Conventional Types of Air Vehicles" makes very clear. The CIA also had a close working relationship with ATIC at Wright-Patterson where much of the official reporting relating to UFOs took place and also where, most coincidentally, the technical report for 'Project Silver Bug' was produced. Again I stress that the CIA and its' counterparts were fully aware that the US and it's allies were developing saucers and triangles. From the 14th June 1954 document - paragraph 2a) "....report the use by any foreign power or nation of non-conventional types of air vehicles, such as similar to the "saucer-like" planes presently under development by Anglo/British/Canadian efforts." This is most likely a reference to the 'Silver Bug' VTOL circular planform low aspect ratio craft. The advanced radial flow engine version. supposedly of WW2 German origin, was the favored model and the Technical Report, written in 1955 after the CIA had attempted to play down the significance of the aircraft the year before, made it abundantly clear that the development of 'Silver Bug' was not to be confused with 'science fiction' stories about flying discs. What is more, the October 1955 CIA document entitled "Reported Sighting of Unconventional Aircraft" noted that 'Project Y' - the overall project designation for the AVRO family of saucers including 'Silver Bug' - wind tunnel tests had already been funded to the extent of $800,000 thus indicating that this was NO paper plane. Let me also make it clear that the AVROCAR hovercraft can only be seen as a failed cover story. AVRO, it should be remembered, built the Arrow, a most radical aircraft decades ahead of its' time. I have information from a number of witnesses who saw disc-type aircraft in hangars at the AVRO-Canada facilities near Malton, Ontario, which had nothing to do with AVROCAR. They were guarded by USAF personnel. All we are left with now is a filling-in-the- gaps exercise. This is hardly the whole story but these facts are irrefutable. More information on this is set to emerge in the next few months and as we approach the millennium the truth about "UFOs" is starting to emerge. This has nothing to do with aliens, crash retrievals and recovered ET technology. I hope that new evidence although I suspect that the usual debunkers will posit a psycho-social type argument - or more likely simply ignore it. Its true declassified documents are very good evidence and in most cases were not seen for 30 years after they had been written. In conclusion I feel he is wrong to state that previously declassified documents contain within them "no physical evidence of the nature and origin of UFOs" at any time before 1955. The documents indicate that flying saucers and the objects described as UFOs were, more than likely, the product of terrestrial technology. Thanks to Tim Matthews.

Editor’s Note: I have long felt that some UFOs are classified government aircraft.

My numerous requests for data concerning these projects have been ignored. The Chance Vought Jet Flying Pancake may have caused many early UFO reports.

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