When The UFO's Harried the Air Force: Wyoming and Nebraska August 1965

 The copy is printed overlarge and in a file of over three hundred pages. Command post records of communications during a fast-paced time the Air Force will later struggle to hide under sightings of stars and planets and mirages from temperature inversions. The truth was far stranger...

"8. Warren Command Post. Sighting seems to be a blob approximately 20 feet in diameter orange in color. No sound. About as tall as one-story building. Descending. Observed for 2 minutes. No
sighting aids used. Report by Staff Sgt. Boast."

In early August the Army Ammunition Depot at Sidney, Nebraska and the Missile Silos at Warren AFB near Cheyenne, Wyoming burned up the communication lines to Wright Patterson, NORAD, and other locations. It was not merely the high number of civilian sightings of things in the skies, the military itself was experiencing dozens of men seeing things with their own eyes. Men trained to guard missile silos and protect the nation were reporting in official communications "formations of objects", "circular in shape", depending on vantage points, the size of "a dime" or "a quarter". Some were size of peas seen in the distant sky blinking red, green, white.  They were "stacked" and they moved to the west, to the south, to the north and all different directions from both locations

[Note these will be similar to sightings in Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas and elsewhere.]

The duty officer reports are filled with scrawls as someone attempted to label a sighting as a natural astronomical event with a hasty "Jupiter" in heavy thick pencil or grease-pen. Yet there were so many of the same or similar in all positions in the skies that excuse was flimsy and uninformed. 

"No.10: 2 GI's at Golf 1 Warren missile site...0600. Extremely bright moving very fast. No sound or propulsion. 10 to 20,000 feet north to south. Approx. 30 minutes to cross sky horizon to horizon.... Appeared size of a quarter at arm's length."

The massive file containing these is labeled "Bunkie, Louisiana."  The contents reveal the harried atmosphere of the Air Force in the 31 July to August 1-6, 1965.  The time of the "Midwest Flap", the "Summer of the Saucers" and other designations.

Hot off the press Monday, Aug.2, newspapers had a press release where the Air Force said the sightings were the result of people seeing stars and planets. They even named them. 

Meanwhile, down in Oklahoma, where July31- August 4 the state and regions would report hundreds of sightings of lights and object moving in formation and in various directions, even landing briefly in Oklahoma and Texas, the scientists shook their heads. Astronomers at two public planetariums quickly questioned where the Air Force was getting its information. The stars and planets offered as explanations where not even visible at that time of the year to account for the sightings. As nimble as an elephant on skates, the Air Force switched its words  and were quoted in an Oklahoma newspaper (Chickasaw Daily Express, Tues, Aug. 3, 1965):

"The "Blue Book" spokesman at Wright-Patterson  Air Force Base said Monday's statement mentioning certain stars was intended as an explanation of UFO sightings in Wyoming not in Oklahoma."

The problem with that statement was the stars and planets in the sky for Oklahoma would be the same for Wyoming. If they were not visible in Oklahoma then they were not visible in Wyoming. I checked a historical star chart that showed that the stars and planets offered in the press release were indeed not visible during the hours of the sightings and reports either in Oklahoma or in Wyoming.