1965: Edwards AFB - AF Audio record of Oct. 7

The audio was made public only after some researchers slogged through FOIA requests and did some deep searching. The initial conclusion was - no surprise - astro (stars, planets) after which someone penciled in "balloon". 

As an isolated incident it can be simple and easy to blame people seeing stars or balloons (even when they have trouble finding any in use for a region). Seen in totality of all of 1965 - there is a commonality of "lights" seen flashing red and white with a touch of green, behaving in atypical ways. Remember, the AF did send up a jet but by that time the "lights" were high and - according to some witnesses - heading higher.  Scanning across the year (which I have been doing in reference to some projects of research) there is a sameness: red glowing objects, faster than jets, coming alongside vehicles, crossing or stopping on roadways, moving in formations, sometimes displaying combinations of red, green, white, and even some purple. Repeated incidents of electromagnetic interference with electronic transmissions or automotive systems. A seeming targeting of military weapons, nuclear, or military sites and chemical locations (raw and manufactured). Witnesses of objects that rose out of large bodies of water and oceans. They were stories - so similar - coming often on the same day hundreds of miles apart. Often from the other side of the globe. 

Given the crucial importance to national security of having optimum quality radar equipment, given the fact that this was an excuse used in 1952, and was still brought out in 1965 causes some major questions of defense spending priorities. Were we really guarding our air space with "crappy radar" in the middle of a "Cold War"? If so, why????? Talk about reckless endangerment....

Hear the Air Force Audio from Oct. 7, 1965 - 1965 UFO Over Edwards AFB : United States. Air Force : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Read transcripts  here : transcript (nicap.org)

and summary here Edwards AFB Incident, Oct. 7, 1965 (nicap.org)

Retrospectively, some authors (such as What the 1965 UFO Sighting at Edwards Air Force Base Means 50 Years Later (inverse.com)) fall back on the idea that the Cold War was making everyone jittery (including skilled and trained observers such as those at Edwards' that day) and "crappy radar systems" that tend to ignore the visual sightings that rode tandem with the equipment sightings. 

That was a technique perfected by those in charge of Project Blue Book as early as 1952 when bad radar (radar angels) and temperature inversions were first widely used to discredit major sighting events (many witnesses and locations). 

In 1965, the Cold War was shoved to the background with an ongoing situation in Southeast Asia. Some attempted to pound the patriotic drum about fighting the surge of Communism into free lands, but for many of that day it rang a little hollow. There was such a large counter movement at work that familiar refrain failed to capture the larger part of the imagination and heart of the American people. 

It was a crucial time in American history - one that periodically comes to every land when the younger demographic is gaining control and the old guard is decreasing. The new generation had some different ideas, not necessarily better, but definitely different. This conflict was fought beneath a dozen banners in the form of sub-cultures, counter-cultures, social movements, and anti-everything movements.

Caught in the middle was a generation of brothers, sons, and husbands who donned the uniforms and sought to serve their country.

To dismiss the nuances of change at work and to label it all "Cold War jitters" in this "Edwards Incident" is to dismiss the training, integrity, and seriousness of professionals in the prime of their lives doing a highly technical and important national work. There is an old saying that "Victors write the history" and the same can be applied to these early reports of sightings found in government records. We assume they are truth; we can really only know they were one vision of the truth of an episode. Most reports were not even investigated. They were looked into via phone calls, some wired or mailed in reports, and maybe looking at some select photographs, radar images, or reports of physical specimens. Yet, the inconsistency of those very records begs to argue there was no true investigation going on but merely the public relations work so many have claimed. In essence, the Fox was guarding the hen house and if a few turned up missing.... who was there to question the Fox?

To suggest the men in the tower in this instance were witnessing some 'need to know' new technology opens a can of worms about the integrity of the U.S. Government and the Military at large. It is possible given that with twenty years a lot of dirty laundry will be exposed as being SOP for military and security agencies. Those included tests without consent, deliberate exposure to chemical and nuclear weapons or fallout, and much more. This is pulled out so often but in reality, there were only few great leaps matching witness statements and official claims of secret projects to verify the claims from 1947 to 1965.

To suggest that the witnesses were jumpy -  well, one need only listen to the audio. These were men trained in calm.  They described in detail objects, noted similarities and differences to known aircraft and more. 

To suggest that, although they notified NORAD and or the Pentagon, the apparent lack of response from them labels the event an non-issue, means little.  Like a telephone conversation, the audio only shares events going on in one tower on one occasion; what would be more interesting - and enlightening - would be the tapes of conversations in NORAD, the Pentagon, and the White House for the times designated. What was going on we still - after more than close to sixty years later - do not know the total truth about? I suspect the people really getting nervous were in those chambers of clandestine power.

An "Unexplained Mysteries" episode. Although they make something of a "UFO Officer" - nearly every major base or installation had one in the days of Project Blue Book - it is an interesting visual to the whole.  Those base officers who served as on-site contacts to the Wright Patterson offices were sometimes very detailed and determined to do an admirable job.

Closing quote: "Lunar Astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell was at Edwards the night the UFO chase occurred. The 6th person to walk on the moon said, "The night it happened I investigated it myself and this was a real event."  link

DAMON AND EXETER: TWO IMPORTANT UFO CASES (SEPT.3, 1965)

A UFO Double-hitter?

CASE NO.1

Location: Exeter, New Hampshire, September 3, 1965.  Late evening; Just before midnight; and approx. 1:40 a.m.

Object: Unidentified object with several very bright red lights, flew low (about 100 ft), erratic at times, silent, and no vibration.

 On September 3, 1965, in states geographically distant from one another two extraordinary sets of incidences occurred.  Many people are aware of the "Incident at Exeter" due to a bestselling book on the subject and many skeptics and true believers have promoted it as evidence of confusion or proof of alien presence.

The stories are similar also in that both have law officers playing primary roles in the events. As witnesses they are the guys in the "white hats" and hard to ignore. In Exeter, there are also two women driving on the road, a woman in a local farmhouse and a young man hitchhiking to get home.  Each one of these people would have significant testimony and a lot to say.  

The Air Force would try its hardest to prove they had seen (1) only the lights of Pease Air Base (they were embarrassingly shown to be invisible from the locations), then it was a desperate attempt to claim that (2) refueling aircraft on maneuvers were in the area, (3) a night infra-red photographic practice run, but then  (2) and (3) were categorically proven unable to account because thet exercise ended much earlier and too far away to be involved and all requests for proof of the infra-red flight proved "inconclusive." 

In more recent days, skeptics have taken one piece of evidence and made it fit a refueling scenario while ignoring other, and very blatant facts, such as the low elevation of the object seen was too low for a refueling maneuver (about 100 feet above a tree). They ignore the witness statements that the lights came very close, there was no sound and no vibrations associated with the lights. Also ignored, the frank admittance that there was nothing in the area at the time to account for the described objects.

From the PBB file: Project Big Blast had a/c in the area but the times they were there did "NOT correspond to the times of the observation. Since no aircraft can be placed in the area at 0200 hours the case is listed as unidentified by the Air Force."  Also, same file, "no refueling in NE area for Big Blast. No refueling on nights 2-3 & 6 of September." Yet, recent skeptics select to ignore the inconvenient facts that argue against their answers.

After being ignored, insulted, and accused of all types of fabrications, the Air Force finally had to say the case was an "unknown." The cover sheet of the Project Blue Book states that but hurriedly added the non-fact that a refueling exercise was going on in the area. In not noting the time conflict it is clear the desire of the Air Force was to read it as "we are calling it unknown but we really think it was this but can't prove it." Once again, ignoring witness testimony that contradicts the presumptive answer. 

A timeline based on testimony indicates--

3:30 p.m. There were many sightings in southern New Hampshire of somethings. Details are sketchy; this may be sightings of Operation Big Blast as it seems to conform to some information as to their activities.

10:00 p.m. A M/M Clyde Russell, Kensington, New Hampshire said they saw a large, mysterious object that looked like a large red ball with flashing lights.

12:30 Exeter Policeman Bertrand encounters two women in a car who have been very frightened by a large red object that followed them and hovered over their car. If this was "refueling" tanker, there was reckless endangerment involved to fly that large a aircraft low enough to appear to be following and hovering over an automobile along a road.

1:00 a.m. - Young Muscarello, hitch-hiking home, was walking down HWY 150 was traumatized by a red object and lights that kept pace and he observed for about an hour. The weather was clear with no winds but the object(s) would appear erratic, would disappear behind trees and houses. It would then reappear in a position different than it had been previously. He noticed a motion he described as a "floating leaf" (note this is a term that appears in several other Project Blue Book cases.   See June 21, 1947 – 11:50 am, 8 discs seen near Spokane, Washington. Witnesses said they fell with a ‘falling leaf motion.”)  Air Force authorities will try to insist this was a fuel nozzle on a rank 'flopping' in the air; again, as it refuels at a low altitude over towns and farms.  

When the object finally departed it headed away at a 160-degree angle. Times vary through the report records and printed accounts. Generally, it can be said that around midnight Muscarello contacted the police. The NICAP report (NICAP often got the jump on the Air Force in both detail and speed of data gathering and witness locating) placed the time Bertrand found the two women at 12:30 a.m. Muscarello walking down the road at about 1 a.m. and his arrive at the Exeter Police Station at 1:45 a.m.

1:45 a.m. Muscarello reports to Police Station. Officers go out and encounter the red lights as well. 

All told witnesses in the area observed for about two hours the strange red lights that flew very low, barely skirting the tops of tree lines and rooftops of farms and barns (often at an altitude of no more than 100 feet). The red lights appeared to be a line of lights (red) with two a little forward of the others, The lights bathed the area in a red glow and were bright enough the basic shape of the silent object was merely a dark vague form.

Of note is that 15 October Pease AFB would see a high number of sightings reported. The two Police Officers had to write several letters to Air Force officials attempting to clear their names and reputations. No real communication was received by them for nearly a year and just with the notice the file was "unidentified."

CASE No. 2

Location: Damon, Brazoria County, Texas, Sept. 3, 1965, 11 p.m.

Object: Described as having one or more bright red lights, on one side. On the other was a vivid PURPLE light or lights.  Object a triangular dark mass, thicker in the middle and tapering off to "tips" with a canister type shape at the end. Details obscured by night and brightness of lights. One set of lights seen appeared to rotate in a sequence (off/on). All witnesses mentioned red lights and that they were low over treetops and roofs.

Less well known is the fact that on the very same night - in Brazoria County, Texas along HWY 36 linking Damon and West Columbia, north of Houston, strange lights were also seen. The witnesses were two Deputy Sheriff's and they saw not only lights but an odd craft sitting or hovering just above the ground as well. 

[Project Blue Book]

The men were traveling county roads on business when they saw some lights off the road and across a desert line field or pasture. Oil Wells were in the area and at first one officer assumed that was what they were seeing. Then they noticed the object with the lights was moving, swinging itself around, above the ground. When that happened, it was apparent that the lights were far brighter than any oil wells, and there was a distinct strangeness to the lights and the colors. Purple was an extremely odd color to see. Some experts have pointed out that witnesses might confuse the blue and red lights of a craft - at a great distance - with a purple tone but this was a definite purple. 

It should be noted that a dark and mysterious craft landed in a Kansas pasture northeast of Wichita in the early 1960's and one of the lights witnesses reported was a PURPLE light. The lights of the craft were so bright fire departments and police from several Kansas towns had searched the backroads trying to locate a fire to account for the bright lights.

To date - no craft with a Purple light system has been found in researching experimental craft of the 1960's. No record of the FAA approving such a color system has been found either. 

The officers had been traveling from Damon, Texas to West Columbia on HWY 36. The object was seen off the road on their left and was thought to be moving to the south, slowly.  

The next days both the Air Force and civilian investigators returned the men to the area, took photos, and had them retell their stories in great detail and at great length. In waning years, both men affirmed the truth of everything they had told officials at the time. 

Both cases were labeled "UNKNOWN."  Both occurred on the same night.  After the famous "summer of the saucers" of 1965 and prior to bigger things in 1966, these two cases stand out as eerie and meaningful. 

What was really going on?