THE SUMMER OF ‘65
All across the country people were seeing lights and
objects in the skies they could not identify.
Groups and clusters of things
they had no name for and which acted in ways that were odd enough for seasoned
sky gazers, outdoors man, and professionals to raise an eyebrow.
Debunkers of the
UFO phenomenon will use terms like frenzy, hysterical and fearful when they
discuss these mysterious “flaps” of spurts of extreme, hard to identify
activity of the ‘what the heck’ variety. Yet, oddly, the only people who appear
to match any of those descriptions are the military persons scurrying around
trying to determine what is being seen in the skies, acting in ways unknown,
and with no familiar lighting, propulsion or shapes to guide them.
At Tinker Air Force Base the month of August – with pages
and pages of sightings across the country in just a two day period - and then
more pages of sightings well into September, they were one of the sightings
that kicked off events for July 31, August 1-6. On July 31, 1965 at 0705 hours
observers reported an object that was white with an illuminated bottom and
white top and color that changed from white to a bluish-green. Appropriately at the center portion, starting
from the right side, there was a flashing red lighting turning to a faded red.
There were no discernible details, features or propulsion features (trail or
exhaust). There was also no sound. When first sighted it was at 30 degrees
elevation and 35 degrees azimuth. It made a figure eight pattern maneuver at an
estimated 700 mph and then returned to its original location and path. It was
observed for some fifteen minutes. Observers apparently began to talk to one
another and no one saw it leave but it disappeared completely by the time the
observers turned back to the sky.
The Air Force tried out several explanations: it was the
planet Jupiter, it was a weather balloon launched from Will Rogers Airport
across on the west side of the Oklahoma City metropolitan area as far west as
Tinker was east. That launching took place at 2313 Zulu on 30 July 1965.
Prevailing winds for the time would seem to rule out it sticking around the
Oklahoma City area. Besides that, Tinker
launched a balloon at 0515zulu on 31 July 1965.
So, it seems unlikely that people on the ground would be too excited
over something that was no doubt pretty familiar around any base or airport
that regularly sent balloons up for weather information purposes. A favorite excuse of the Air Force was the
old standby of ‘weather inversions’ (used frequently in Project Blue Book) and
the ‘radar ghosts’ or ‘angels’ explanation (but since many of the 1865
sightings did not involve solely radar readings that did not ‘fly’ too well).
Standbys were : Venus (or Jupiter, Mars, Arcturus, Capella or any of several
astronomical bodies), Meteors, Air Craft, Balloons, or weather reflections (mirages, lights on fog,
etc.) and misidentifications in general.
The late summer of 1965 saw eerily similar sightings from coast to coast, in Nebraska military scrambled to understand the fleets of nine or more objects being seen by eye heading off in three different directions! Others tried to understand the round, oval, glowing red to red-yellow objects that was reported to have landed more than a few times. Some even took photos - which are all oddly missing from the Project Blue Book file containing these accounts (one labeled for Bunkie, Lousiana 1952).
One of those military men in Nebraska, Colonel Johnson called through to SAC command post. He said that at 1000z Q Flight reported nine (9) UFO's in sight. Four to the northwest, 3 to the Northeast and 2 over Cheyenne, Wyoming. At 1025z, a single object was descending toward a nearby site with lights on each side and red blinking lights in the middle areas. A pilot of an airline reported something orange glowing beneath him. Denver radar found NO RESPONSE for these objects.
There was definitely something in the skies that summer...
For more information on these and other oddities of Oklahoma read Cullan Hudson's Strange State book (available on Amazon).
No comments:
Post a Comment