Monday, 7 November 2022

Well, So It Was The Chinese All Along?

Well, I was right again.

I'm sure Elizondo will say "I never said they wuz aliens!"

LiveScience https://www.livescience.com/ufo-chinese-drones-report

Most UFOs are 'Chinese surveillance' drones and 'airborne clutter,' Pentagon officials reveal

published 4 days ago

The U.S. government has officially started to explain some of the most infamous UFO encounters of the last decade, with China and weather balloons as top offenders.

Intelligence agencies in the U.S. have spent the last few years analyzing footage of hundreds of recent UFO encounters, and they want the American people to know: It's still not aliens.

According to several U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) officials who spoke anonymously to The New York Times last week, many recent sightings of UFOs — or unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs), as the government prefers to call them — are likely just observations of foreign surveillance operations or airborne clutter, such as weather balloons.

Several UAP incidents have been officially identified as "relatively ordinary" Chinese surveillance drones, the anonymous officials said. China has previously stolen plans for advanced U.S. fighter planes, and is interested in how the U.S. trains its pilots, the DoD officials added.

Other UAP sightings recorded by military aircraft, which appear to show airborne objects moving in seemingly physics-defying ways, are likely the results of optical illusions. This includes the infamous video known as "GOFAST," which was recorded by a U.S. Navy aircraft and leaked to the media in 2018. (The video, along with two other leaked films of military encounters with UAPs, was eventually declassified by the government.)

While the object in the GOFAST video appears to be zooming over the water at incomprehensible speeds, this is just an optical illusion created by the angle of the recording relative to the water, the DoD officials told The Times. In reality, the object is moving at no more than 30 mph (48 km/h), the officials added.

A classified UAP report delivered to Congress this week by the DoD's intelligence agencies likely includes the findings reported by The Times. The new report adds new details to cases described in a document that officials publicly released in June 2021, describing 144 alleged UAP incidents reported by U.S. government personnel between 2004 and 2021.

The 2021 report acknowledged that, due to a lack of high-quality data, most alleged UAP encounters could not be conclusively explained. However, the report offered several blanket explanations for UAP in general, including "technologies deployed by China, Russia, another nation, or a non-governmental entity," as well as "airborne clutter" such as birds and weather balloons.

Nowhere in the report were aliens or extraterrestrials mentioned — however, that did not stop alien conspiracy theories from arising, due in part to the government's general lack of transparency about UAP incidents.

Sue Gough, a DoD spokesperson, told The Times that the government was committed to sharing whatever UAP information it could without putting national security at risk. Government officials also tend to refrain from discussing UAP incidents publicly because there is simply not enough data to conclusively explain them, Gough added.

"In many cases, observed phenomena are classified as 'unidentified' simply because sensors were not able to collect enough information to make a positive attribution," Gough told The Times. "We are working to mitigate these shortfalls for the future and to ensure we have sufficient data for our analysis."

As the DoD continues its investigation into UAP sightings, NASA has also launched an independent UAP study team, which will operate from October 2022 to mid-2023. According to NASA, the team will focus on collecting and analyzing as much UAP data as possible, in order to develop new methods for identifying the unidentifiable objects in America's skies.

Yes, We Have Classic Encounter Cases In The UK -Ufologists Ignore Them

If I had to look at how badly Ufology in the UK treats CE3K cases then, excluding the books by British "New Ufologists" who have really contributed nothing in almost 40 years, then there are reports such as:

the 1954 Jessie Roestenberg case which is the earliest recorded and credible observation and thanks to John Hanson and the Haunted Skies project we at least have more than was originally knopwn AND we have video footage of Mrs Roestenberg -which should be getting used in UFO documentaries.
Jessie Roestenberg (c)2022 John Hanson/HS Project

Hanson also interviewed the observers of the entity from Bradford, 1955? 

There are a good few other reports that were basic book filler then dump the percipients. The Shamrock Cafe (1983) case -another that is basically ignored.

New Ufology decided from the outset that the whole business was to debunk but appear scientific and make various claims for why accounts were not real but psychological.  We see cases where other percipients are ignored while one who has a history of possible "waking dreams" is concentrated on as that proves it was not real (yeah, those other percipients did not want to undergo hypnosis out of fear of what it might reveal so stuff them, right?).

The July, 1994 Silbury Hill CE3K has a numkber of elements that would see it tagged as High Strangeness yet what happened to Paul, Sonya and Rob that morning has only been covered to an extent in Andrew Collins' book Light Quest (2012).

Elsie Oakensen (c)2022 John Hanson/Haunted Skies

The 1978 Elsie Oakensen encounter which, although there was only one percipient there was independent back up of UFOs at the same time.  Hanson has interviewed Oakensen and it is interesting that, again, the only thing Ufologists could come up with was that it was "a hoax" even though they can produce no evidence of this.

We have High Strangeness cases in the UK that are mainly unknown to people in Ufology in the UK let alone outside of it. This is why these cases have to be recorded and John Hanson has done a great deal to achieve this.

Perhaps it needs an independent documentary company to do a series of short films?

The (ever growing) Hooper Archives

In 50 years you gather a lot of books and files. Regular readers will be familiar with the above CE3l/AE files (there are other CE3K files below that bottom row!). Today, rather than goin g back and forth from my room to the "book room" (far too many books) I decided to put up plastic shelving and arrange all the CE3K/AE dedicated books or books with CE3K reports in them,

Here is a side shot.

Top shelf

below: closer look for yhe nosies!

Below the shelf with the heavy stuff -note the Haunted Skies volumes which I highly recommend

Below the more intense reading

Below the more classic books on the subject

Below the books are the 150 plus files on various phenomena from lake and sea monsters. mystery hominids, The Great New England Darkness, Project Twinkle, Red Spray Events, Thunder Axes, Angel Hair, Falls of Gelatinous substances, alleged UFO crashes, UCOs (Unidentified Crashed Objects), the British Army, Royal Navy, Royal Air Force and UFOs, Attempted communications with UFOs, Animal Disturbance cases, Military intercept attempts and a whole bunch more

Whoever gets this lot when I pop my clogs has to take the lot as a job lot and guarantee that researchers, if ever interested, will get free access to it all.

They will also need a van to move the lot as my ghost and paranormal as well as cryptozoological books are also thrown in!

Sunday, 6 November 2022

Aerial Encounters Over Austria.

Just in case anyone thinks that I spent 50 years only looking into Close Encounters of the Third Kind here is one of the air-intercept cases I covered back in the day. Three reports were written up for Flying Saucer Review only one was printed and it was heavily edited and photographs removed. So, here is that report taken from the book Some Things Strange & Sinister.

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It has to be said that,like the Royal Air Force,the Austrian Air Force have been quite helpful in supplying information. A captain in the air force drew my attention to this case even though it was “some time after the event” and, as it was addressed to me at the AOP Bureau address, it was looked into.

An AUA DC-9

At 19:05 hours,18^th March,1972,an Austrian United Airlines [AUA] DC-9 took off from Vienna Airport Schwechat. On board were some 35 passengers. The weather was clear as the aircraft flew at 6000 metres above Linz on the Vienna-Frankfurt run. The pilot was Alexander Raab and his co-pilot was a Mr Herold.

Herold was in contact with Linz Air Traffic Control when Raab looked up to see a strange object flying ahead of the DC-9. All instruments suddenly failed and the warning lights began flickering. Passengers also spotted the object and a certain degree of panic began.

The object was described as cone-shaped,whitish in colour with the underpart glowing an orange-reddish. For twenty minutes the object flew along with the aircraft before moving off to the west and eventually disappearing. The instruments began working normally.

Raab reported the incident to Linz ATC as it was occurring but their radar controllers,who also spoke to radar,got no radar contact. Luckily,Raab also informed ATC at Munich and Vienna –both reported radar contact with the object. There was an additional aspect to the incident as the object was sighted over Genf. The object was now undeniably real and Mirage interceptors were scrambled.

Dachstein Mts.

The Mirage jets made contact but,as they seemed to be gaining, the object vanished. Suddenly, however,the flight commander saw the object on his radar and for several minutes the object “played with them” until it finally disappeared.

Raab landed and made his report and the passengers went on their way. However, the Austrian writer Peter Krassa got wind of the story and, after many delays, managed to contact Raab and visit him. It seems that, four days after the incident, the 22nd, while at home, Raab’s phone rang and he answered to receive the following message from a man who did not identify himself:

“Mr Raab: please take note that our organization

is well informed about the UFO phenomenon. I

should advise you not to give any statements about

your experience to the public –it would be better

for you!”

The man then hung up. Raab assumed that this was an official warning and told Krassa: ”I have to say that this is what I have done since that day”.

The suggestion made by some researchers was that Raab had been threatened by the mythical “Men-in-Black”. However, it is far more likely that the message was a friendly warning to not draw too much attention himself –some pilots reporting UFOs to news media at this time faced problems at work.

Austrian Air Force Mirage

Certainly Raab never received an MIB visit. The Austrian Air Force were unaware of the phone call but were at a loss as to why anyone should threaten Raab; the opinion, in 1980, was that it may have been a friendly warning or, possibly, a hoax caller.

As will be seen from the diagram provided, the object was quite large and the cone-shape could well be an optical effect of the glowing object. The electrical effects seen when the object appeared “suddenly” are not uncommon and the engines [obviously] were unaffected.

I’d suggest that the initial AOP B/Austrian Air Force “Unidentified” tag be replaced with “UNP” [1 & 2].

It was approximately 15:50 hours, on the 7^th May, 1980, while flying a Dutch [KLM] airlines plane at 10,000 metres over the Dachstein Mountains, that Captain M spotted a grey “thing”, described as a dark grey ball, flying above him. Shaken, the pilot reported the incident to Vienna ATC.

Vienna ATC officers decided to alert the Austrian Air Force headquarters. Major Karl Schwarz was informed and ordered three Saab-Draken 105 to attempt an intercept in the hopes of identifying the ‘UFO’.

Entering the area,the pilots made visual-contact with the object and two tried to get closer. The object, however,”made some unsteady manoeuvres and made it impossible for the pilots to get closer. During these manoeuvres, the third intercepter pilot attempted to take as many photographs as with the gun-camera. The object suddenly took off at incredible speed.

The interceptors returned to base. The ‘UFO’ incident was, seemingly,”over"

At approximately 18:00 hours, a Lufthansa airliner over Dachstein observed ‘the same’ object. Vienna ATC was contacted and Major Schwarz ordered another intercept by two Saab-Draken. Although radar-contact was not made, having entered the area, the interceptor pilots made visual-contact. According to one of the pilots:

“We operated now at a height of 12000 metres. The “thing”

was flying very fast,and then very slow. It seemed to be

playing with us. The UFO was flying 3000 metres over us,

and although we tried all possible manoeuvres,we couldn’t

catch it.”

On both occasions, Oberst Karl Schaffer had informed the office of the Austrian President. It was revealed by the Austrian Air Force HQ that a “great deal of footage and many still photographs” of the object had been taken. It was later claimed that “the films are useless”. This seemed odd as the film and cameras used were top of the range for obvious military reasons. The problem seems to be that what was shown was a “grey ball” which, of course, is interesting but provides no information when it comes to identifying an intruder in your air-space. “Useless”.

After a month,it was revealed that Commander-in-Chief at military headquarters, Major Wolfgang Brauner,was of the opinion that the ‘UFO’ was “a simple balloon”.

This statement came about after Ufologists and news media demanded answers and had become,really,a nuisance. Colonel ‘K’ told me:”It was embarrassing. Pilots,both civilian and military,had seen the ‘UFO’. Our best aircraft could not catch it and we could not identify it. The ‘balloon’ conclusion was a personal opinion but it calmed things down”.

The original AOP Bureau conclusion was “Unknown”. Today,this would be changed to “UNP”.

These two cases were,in a way,outside our remit,however,they were fascinating and the camera footage convincing [3 & 4].

References.

[1] UFO OVER LINZ,AUSTRIA. AOP Bureau File ref. 180372/AF 0106

[2] Correspondence with Rainer Scheiblberger,1981

[3] DACHSTEIN UFO INTERCEPT. AOP Bureau File ref. 070580/AF 0107

[4] UFO News Bulletin,vol.2,no.4,1981:pp.1-2

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