UFOs Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record (11 page)

Schultz did not file a report with TWA, but instead worked diligently with me to accurately reconstruct the event in the cockpit of his aircraft. This allowed me to ascertain many important facts about the event. Its approach and departure speed was calculated to be about 1,000 mph, with a high G turn, as well. No shock wave or turbulence was felt at any time. The aircraft’s autopilot remained coupled throughout the encounter, and no electromagnetic effects were noticed. The first officer saw the final two-thirds of the event, but the flight engineer did not see anything as a result of his position in the rear of the cabin. Chicago Center had no other air traffic in the area, although their radar at the time had a range of about 150 miles.

My sketch of the cockpit windows and apparent size, shape, location, and flight path of the UAP seen by Captain Schultz
. R. Haines

With extensive experience as a U.S. Navy fighter pilot in the Korean War and afterward, Captain Shultz never accepted the reality of UFOs prior to this incident. This encounter instantly changed his belief. When I asked him what he thought the object was, he quickly replied, “There is no doubt in my mind. It was an extraterrestrial craft.” He said as much in his handwritten report that he filled out for me, saying he believed the thing was a “spaceship.”
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Also in America, a very puzzling, low-altitude, in-flight apparent collision occurred on October 23, 2002, just northeast of Mobile, Alabama, according to a National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) accident report. En route from Mobile to Montgomery, Thomas Preziose, fifty-four, with 4,000 total flight hours to his credit, was piloting alone, carrying about 420 pounds of paper records cargo. He took off for this flight at 7:40 p.m. The preliminary accident report stated that the Cessna 208B, a Cargomaster with the FAA registration number N76U—a high-wing, single-engine commercial airplane—
“collided in-flight with an unknown object
[italics mine] at 3,000 feet and descended uncontrolled into swampy water in the Big Bateau Bay in Spanish Fort, Alabama.”
⁹
The crash occurred about six minutes after take-off, at approximately 7:46 p.m. Interestingly, the NTSB saw fit to issue a later report that did not mention the collision with an unknown object.

Based on data from an automated surface-observing system 7.7 miles from the accident site, recorded at 6:53 p.m., there was a layer of scattered clouds at 700 feet and a more solid overcast beginning at 1,200 feet with clear air in between, and a visibility of five miles. The wind was 11 knots at 60 degrees. It may be significant to this fatal accident to note that a DC-10 passed about 1,000 feet above the Cessna after approaching him from about his eleven-o’clock position at 7:45—seconds before the crash—and would have produced wing-tip vortex turbulence.
¹⁰
Afterward, the pilot uttered his final words before his death: “Night Ship 282, I needed to deviate, I needed to deviate, I needed to deviate, I needed—” (end of transmission at 7:45:57 p.m.).

If Preziose collided with a physical object, it was never located. Yet a strange red residue (referred to as “transfer marks”) was found coating at least fourteen different areas of the downed airplane that were widely separated in location both inside and outside the aircraft. The engine block had been split, suggesting a very great force of impact. Unfortunately, radar data recording hardware was inoperative at the time of the accident, yet the NTSB did not request radar data from the Pensacola Naval Air Station, less than an hour away. The DC-10 that passed over the Cessna just before the crash was inspected upon landing, and no damage of any kind was found.

The final NTSB report indicated that the accident was caused by pilot disorientation. However, an independent investigation found numerous discrepancies with regard to both the FAA documentation and the investigation conducted by the NTSB.
¹¹

Several samples of the red residue on the Cargomaster were analyzed using a Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy device. One red sample was found to be most similar to reference material consisting of tere- and isophthalate polymer with the “possible presence of inorganic silicate compounds.”
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Another sample of bare metal from the wing was found to be most similar to reference material consisting of “epoxy materials with some inorganic silicate fillers.” While certain segments of metal from a U.S. Air Force unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) were also subjected to the same analysis for comparison, little has been said of these findings except that their composition was “significantly different” from the red residue marks. The nearest Air Force base flying UAVs is Tyndall at Panama City, Florida, some 150 miles to the ESE.

If something struck this airplane, it certainly qualifies as a UAP until it is positively identified.

Considering the many kinds of UAP flight maneuvers that have been reported, it is clear that whatever the phenomenon is, it appears to be able to outperform high-performance aircraft in virtually every respect. This same conclusion was made in a recently unclassified report from the United Kingdom.
¹³
In most of these pilot reports the aircraft appears to be the focus of “attention” of the phenomenon; this conjecture has been supported by many hundreds of high-quality foreign pilot reports as well.
¹⁴
Hundreds of reports in my files suggest that the variety of phenomena are associated with a very high degree of intelligence and deliberate flight control.
¹⁵

The majority of pilot reports indicate that UAP tend to approach aircraft during darkness. At night, it is possible to see the readily discernable colors either within relatively small, localized regions (similar to individual light sources) and/or more diffusely over their entire surface. The appearance of the UAP’s lighting patterns takes many different forms; they might be interpreted as some type of aircraft anticollision or navigation lights, even though intense blue lights, generally not permitted in America, are reported in some cases.

Most pilots understand that they will experience a wide range of visual phenomena in the atmosphere over the course of their flying career, but they do not expect that some will remain unexplained after considering all known natural phenomena and man-made objects. When this happens, each witness is left with a lingering uncertainty, a doubt about the core identity of what was seen, and must wrestle with a decision about whether or not to report the event.

Most likely, he or she will not do so. Pilots know how people are treated when discussing or reporting strange sightings, and they are not inclined to risk ridicule or job security. I call this the “law of diminishing reports”—a negative feedback effect that inhibits more and more people from saying anything about what they’ve seen. The long-term effect of this is that less and less reliable data becomes available for serious study, and the whole subject of UAP slides farther into the realm of myth and societal humor. Since this has been going on for many decades, airline administrators and government bureaucrats can validly claim that there is nothing to investigate or take seriously because pilots are not reporting anything. And scientists who rightly claim that they cannot study a phenomenon without having reliable data are justified for not becoming interested! Already rare “anomalous” phenomena seem to become even rarer, reinforcing the mistaken belief that these events don’t occur in the first place.

Air traffic controllers are often aware of these unreported encounters with UAP, since they are normally the first to receive radio calls from the cockpit crew about the UAP, or pick up the targets on radar. But they, also, do not report many incidents. A controller at Los Angeles Air Route Traffic Control Center wrote, “In my six years at the Center, I have personally been part of three bizarre encounters, non-military and non-civilian. I’m just one of 15,000 controllers, too, so there have to be many more that go unreported … In a fourth incident I was present for (in the area but not at the actual sector), the controller told the supe about the encounter, and after both determined there was nothing on radar, they just kind of shook their heads and rubbed their chins, and that was that. This I believe is what typically happens. Nobody knows what to do, really.”
¹⁶

Based on surveys and pilot interviews conducted by myself and associates at NARCAP, we estimate that only about 5 to 10 percent of pilot sightings of UAP are reported. Unless we implement policy changes, aircrew will continue to remain silent.

History is filled with accounts of previously ridiculed subjects that have turned out to be important to mankind, as a study of the history of science confirms. We must not simply overlook UAP because we are uncomfortable with the mere thought of them. Neither society’s current prejudice toward UAP nor its abiding ignorance about them is likely to prevent their continued appearance, nor do such responses prove that they don’t exist. These phenomena simply won’t go away.

CHAPTER 6

Incursion at O’Hare Airport, 2006

O
n November 7, 2006, something unimaginable happened at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport during the
¹
routine afternoon rush hour. For about five minutes, a disc-shaped object hovered quietly over the United Airlines terminal and then cut a sharp hole in the cloud bank above while zooming off. Hardly anyone heard about it until the story broke on the front page of the
Chicago Tribune
on January 1, 2007, almost two months later, which precipitated a flurry of national coverage on CNN, MSNBC, and other networks. With over a million hits, the
Tribune
’s story quickly achieved the status of being the most-read piece in the entire history of the newspaper’s website, but then faded from the media radar screen. No official assessment was ever provided to a fascinated but alarmed frequent-flying public or to the employees of United who were directly involved.

It was an ordinary, overcast day, with visibility of about 4 miles and winds at 4 knots. Between 4:00 and 4:30 p.m. on that afternoon, pilots, managers, and mechanics from United Airlines looked up from their ground positions at the terminal and saw the strange object hovering just under a cloud bank, which began at 1,900 feet above the ground. According to these witnesses, the metallic-looking disc was about the size of a quarter or half dollar held at arm’s length. Based on the collection of eyewitness testimony, the UFO is estimated to have ranged in size from about 22 to 88 feet in diameter, and was suspended at approximately 1,500 feet over Gate C17 at the United terminal.

A pilot announced the sighting over in-bound ground radio for all grounded planes; a United taxi mechanic moving a Boeing 777 heard radio chatter about the flying disc and looked up; pilots waiting to take off opened the front windows to lean out and see the object for themselves. There was a buzz at United Airlines. One management employee received a radio call about the hovering object, and ran outside to view it for himself. He then called the United operations center, made sure the FAA was contacted, and drove out on the concourse to speak directly with witnesses there.

Reports show the event lasted from about five to fifteen minutes. Then, with many eyes now fixated on it, the suspended disc suddenly shot up at an incredible speed and was gone in less than a second, leaving a crisp, cookie-cutter-like hole in the dense clouds. The opening was approximately the same size as the object, and those directly underneath it could see blue sky visible on the other side. After a few minutes the break in the cloud bank closed up as the clouds drifted back together. “This was extremely unusual, according to the witnesses,”
Chicago Tribune
transportation reporter Jon Hilkevitch told television news after interviewing the United witnesses for his story. “Airplanes just don’t react like this. They slice through clouds.”

This was definitely not an airplane, the observers said, and many seemed shaken by what they had seen. Some were awed; others afraid. “The witness credibility is beyond question, and safety was a big concern,” Hilkevitch said during a phone conversation. He noted that all observers independently described the same thing: a hovering disc making no noise as it shot up and left a clear hole in the clouds. “The only discrepancies were their size estimations and that some said it was rotating or spinning,” he told me.

Sadly, every one of these highly credible aviation witnesses to the O’Hare UFO—and there were many—has chosen to remain anonymous, due to fears for job security. One United employee told me he could otherwise be perceived as “betraying” his company. Witnesses do not want to be “caught talking to the media since the airline had officially claimed that nothing happened,” he wrote in an e-mail. These witnesses to something that’s not supposed to exist—something laughed at by their colleagues—were left alone with their unsettling observations. “I realize this is a controversial position, but with my extensive knowledge of modern aviation technologies, I know this UFO probably wasn’t created on this planet,” one told me a few months afterward.