THE UFO CHRONICLES


nam et ipsa scientia potestas est
- Knowledge is Power -

     Strange spheres have been seen flying in the skies of Bury St Edmunds this week.

A resident phoned police after seeing four black spheres flying in formation over the Howard estate and out towards Fornham St Martin.

A police spokeswoman said the sighting was reported at around 9.30am on Saturday, but they have received no further calls.

The police have now passed on the information to the Ministry of Defence.

An MoD spokeswoman said: "We have received a report that says four black spheres were seen flying over Bury St Edmunds at 9.27am on April 21, 2007. The report was passed to us by Ipswich police.

"Unless there is corroborating evidence to suggest that the UK's airspace may have been compromised by a hostile or unauthorised foreign military aircraft, the MoD does not investigate or seek to provide a precise explanation for each of the 200-300 'UFO' reports we receive each year.

"We believe it is possible that rational explanations, such as aircraft lights or natural phenomena, could be found for them, but it is not the function of the MoD to provide this kind of aerial identification service.

"We could not justify expenditure of public funds on investigations which go beyond our specific defence remit."

The sighting comes just months after an alleged incident involving jets from RAF Lakenheath.

It is claimed that military air traffic control contacted the jets to intercept a UFO on January 12 – but air traffic control denied making the call, while the MoD claimed it could have been part of a weather balloon.

Labels: Black Spheres, Bury St Edmunds, MoD, UFOs

     My name is Jack Phillips.

I am 51 years old and ex-military police. I was stationed in West Germany from 1974-1976. Two different types of 'duty stations' while serving there. 'White hat' and Physical Security. I had two separate sightings, one at each unit.

The first was at a 'highly sensitive weapons assembly depot' in the NW section of West Germany(back then it was W. Germany). Specifics I will share later as the actual location. I was a 'tower rat'. Physical security 'specialist'. 12hrs up and 12hrs down, from 00:00hrs to 12:00hrs, 12 day shifts with 3 off.

To say protocols were handled in a nonchalant manner would be putting it mildly...back then. When I first arrived at this unit, the 00:00hr 'guard mount' was assembling and awaiting the OD's inspection. Out of the roughly 20 MPs present, 18 of them were in a questionable state of readiness.

In fact 5 of them were propped against the wall with their M-16s acting as a brace from the floor to their chests, to keep them upright at 'attention'. The OD was relieved to hear that those individuals were assigned to the least security sensitive areas on site.

It was roughly three months after I arrived, around the middle of May 1974. There were three areas of interest. Area 1 where assembly of the 'sensitive weapons' was performed...payload to carriage. Area 2 where the delivery carriage devices were stored(least secured). Area 3 where the payloads were stored.(highly secured).

I was in Tower 4 of 7, of Area 3, from the 00:00hrs to 12:00hrs shift. It was the fourth day of my 12day cycle. It was around 03:30hrs as it was starting to become dawn. We were discouraged from wearing watches as to not count down the minutes...

I must tell you, right now, about the "50-5 Program". We 'tower rats' were required, every three months, to undergo a psychiatric evaluation to determine...well you can guess why if you have ever spent anytime in a 4'X4'X8' box 40ft in the air through all kinds of weather day and night for any length of time.

Unfortunately, there was a shortage of replacement personnel within the 50-5 Program and the evaluations were not allowed to be performed. An MP's answer to "Catch-22". You could request an evaluation, all you wanted. Getting the evaluation was a whole different matter. If you did manage to receive one, the results were always..."fit for duty".

I had just awakened from a period of 'deep observation' and noticed an intense 'star' in the northern sky. It wasn't there any of the other shifts, but it was the first clear sky I had seen since my arrival in Germany. I grew up in NW Michigan and had never seen a star so illuminating as this. If it had been the eastern sky, you may have convinced me it was Venus. A Venus that has the ability to instantly go from a point far away to roughly 100yds from my tower and increase in size. From a 'star point' to approx. 60ft in diameter.

A 'bluish green glow' more to the side of green, surrounded the craft(?) No sound. Just hovering above Area 3, inside of the fence line. I was about to use the field phone that connected each tower to the guard shack at the area to report. Hand crank bell alert, when all power went out for about 30secs. The base had two 12cylnder powered generators that were to kick in immediately during power outages. This is to initiate within 10secs. Nothing happened until 'Venus' instantly departed. Then all hell broke loose.

The alarm system is attached to all bunker doors. Pedestrian and access. Each guard shack had a master board where you could reset each door's electromagnetic switch. Electrical storms, if close enough, would occasionally cause a(singular) door's alarm to be set off. Every alarm on site was going off. Bell's, 'clackers' and klaxons were all sounding. The guy's in the shacks were frantically trying to silence the sound by resetting the board switches. To no avail.

The 'roving unit', where you spent the other 12hrs of your shift, was dispatched and had to reset every alarm by opening and closing every monitored door physically. "Shit!", one NCO remarked. "I've been stationed here seven years and nothing has ever happened to cause something like this before."

Did I report? Yes. Was I taken seriously? Remember...50-5. No paper...no problem. A variation of "Don't ask. Don't tell".

Labels: MP, My UFO Experience, UFO, Weapons Depot, West Germany

     Frederic Sargent was studying economics at Colby College in Maine when the draft for World War II beckoned. In 1942, the 22-year-old joined the 415th Night Fighter Squadron of the Army Air Forces and studied at a series of radio schools.

For 31/2 years, he was stationed throughout North Africa, Sicily, Corsica, Germany and England. As a corporal, he never flew, but his principal job was to take care of the lights on the landing strips for night fighters.

He peeled potatoes in the kitchen police and learned the mechanics of aircraft engines. In 1946, as the historian for the group, he wrote an unpublished account of his unit's interaction with foo fighters, titled "Foo Fighters and the 415th."

Sargent went on to teach economics at various U.S. universities before retiring to Sarasota with Shirley, his wife of 60 years. (Below are some of Sargent's writings and ruminations on the topic of foo fighters.)

The British developed radar and night fighting, so when the U.S. went into World War II, we had to learn everything from the British. My squadron was the first one to do that.

Our pilots and crew chiefs would go to England and Scotland to learn from the British. I was in the ground echelon, so I met up with them in North Africa.

Pilots in the 415th encountered and reported 'foo fighters' (or luminous, unidentified objects) during the night over the German-occupied Rhine River valley. The sightings were recorded between November 1944 and April 1945, when the 415th was operating from landing strips in Dijon and Ochey, France.

The sightings posed a baffling question to air war buffs, scientists, the media and the public. What were they? The pilots could find no explanation that fit all of the sightings. The Air Force was in a position to answer the question, as they had sequestered tons of German air war records. But their focus was on developing the next generation of fighters and bombers, not in information dissemination.

The proliferation of sightings, or imagined sightings, of UFOs and flying saucers by people everywhere complicated the search for an answer. When the Allies captured the area east of the Rhine River, the foo fighter sightings ceased.

A few investigative air science researchers studied records and archives in Italy, Germany and the United Kingdom. Recent investigators point out a possible line of progressive development of radar invisibility from the foo fighter to the stealth fighter and bomber.

Eventually, as the U.S. becomes militarily secure, the Air Force will probably declassify its records of German World War II research."

Some excerpts from the unit's log:

Nov. 27, 1944: Lt. Edward A. Schleuter returned from a mission and reported that he saw a red light flying through the air. It came in about 2,000 feet off starboard and then disappeared in a long red streak.

Dec. 15, 1944: A pilot's mission report stated: 'Saw a brilliant red light at 2,000 feet going east at 200 miles per hour in the vicinity of Erstein. Due to AI failure, could not pick up contact but followed it by sight until it went out. Could not get close enough to identify object before it went out."

Labels: 415th, Foo Fighters, Fredrico. Sargent, UFO

     Another pilot, Flybe’s Troy Queripel, put forward that
theory yesterday.

‘There is military air space all around Guernsey and there is a lot of activity in that space. We call them danger areas,’ said the 40-year-old.

‘My theory is that it could have been some sort of military test aircraft that entered our air space by mistake.’

The objects were seen by Aurigny captain Ray Bowyer and confirmed by the pilot of a Blue Islands aircraft.

Reports were sent to the Ministry of Defence for further investigation.
French military air space starts 20 miles west of Guernsey and occupies an area of approximately 150 square miles.

British military air space starts 40 miles north of Guernsey and Captain Queripel believes military involvement was the likeliest explanation.

‘I am not trying to discredit anything that Ray said because I saw him 45 minutes after the incident and he was clearly shaken. He obviously saw something.

‘But think about the stealth bomber and the U2 spy plane. They were being tested for years before anyone was aware of them.

‘The stealth bomber had been around for 25 years before anyone knew about it. The first the Iraqis knew of it was when it was above them dropping bombs.’

He said it is impossible to know what is being tested today.

‘The U2 spy plane was taking photos over Russia and they knew nothing about it at first.’

Captain Queripel, who has been a pilot for seven years, said military air spaces around the island are off-limits to commercial planes.

‘They are called danger areas for a reason: enter them at your peril. You can ask for permission to go through, but it would usually be denied.’

He added: ‘Two per cent of me thinks it was little green men, but the other 98% thinks it was the military testing new technology that we haven’t even heard of.’

Labels: BBC, British, Flying Saucers, Guernsey, MoD, Pilot, UFO, UFOs Yellow

      Sixty people shelled out as much as $225 apiece this past weekend to relive the days when thousands made annual pilgrimages to the San Bernardino County desert town of Landers to soak up the sun, breathe the clean air, stretch out under the stars and wait for the space aliens to land.

The attendance at Retro UFO2 was a disappointment, event organizers said, but there was no shortage of believers.

Frank Stranges, president of the National Investigations Committee on Unidentified Flying Objects, said 95 percent of the people who listened to his lecture were true believers.

They even gathered around him and embraced each other as he passed along the wisdom he says he got from "the commander," a space alien whose invisible space ship, the Victor One, is parked at Lake Mead.

Stranges, 79, of Chatsworth, first came to Landers in 1960 to attend a space convention at Giant Rock by George Van Tassel, a former test pilot for Howard Hughes.

Stranges said he has never seen an alien in the desert here.

"There is no reason for him to contact me here," Stranges said. "He meets me at my office, at my home, in a restaurant, or he'll meet me down at the courthouse."

Robert Short, 76, of Cornville, Ariz., said he met five extraterrestrials when he was sitting at a table next to Giant Rock in 1964.

"This family, a gentleman, his wife and a child came over with two other beings," he said. "The two other beings were a little over 5 foot tall and had short-cropped black hair, T-shirts and swarthy skin."

And they had no fingerprints.

Their leader, who did all the talking, wore a plaid lumberjack shirt and a cap and had a pipe in his mouth, Short said.

"He said to my wife, 'We understand that you get communication.' She said, 'Yes. We get our communication from Mars.' And he said, 'We get our communications from Venus.' "

Scientists have yet to discover life on Venus, Short said, because the Venusians have gone underground. Like most UFOlogists, as they call themselves, Short is convinced that there is a government cover-up of alien contact.

Keeping History Alive

The 200-member Morongo Valley Basin Historical Society organized Retro UFO2, the second such retro convention, to "bring back the history" of Van Tassel's conventions in the 1950s, '60s and '70s, said society promotion coordinator Barbara Harris.

"We have speakers here who are getting up in age and were part of the original UFOlogy time period," she said. "They carry with them a lot of information, a lot of experience and a lot of stories. It's all about the storytelling."

As many as 10,000 people would attend the events during the height of the conventions.

"Some of them brought tents that they erected behind their cars and some of them brought trailers they could sleep in," said Wendelle Stevens, 84, who first came in 1958. "They came in everything. Some even flew in airplanes."

As did Hughes himself, the story goes. He couldn't get enough of the apple pie baked by Van Tassel's wife and sold at the Come On Inn cafe they built next to the rock.

That's just one of the stories visitors share about the convention. Others range from alien flybys to the tale of Frank Critzer, a miner who dug out a home underneath Giant Rock in the 1940s, stored dynamite there and was blown to bits when a sheriff's deputy tried to root him out with tear gas.

Fascination With Integratron

But no story captures the imagination of Landers devotees quite like the Integratron, a two-story wooden dome that Van Tassel began building in 1953 and left unfinished when he died a quarter of a century later.

He claimed that a Venusian named Solganda implanted the plans for the Integratron in his mind.

The Integratron, with its giant outside armature, was supposed to generate 50 million volts of electricity, channel it inside the structure and allow people to travel through time. It was also supposed to regenerate bodies so humans could live longer.

"It's a crying shame that he didn't finish it before he died," Stranges says, "but I believe, in a time to come, somebody else might receive the information to complete it."

Van Tassel left no plans behind, but there are plenty of Integratron fans.

"I read about it in a coffee table book called 'L.A. Exposed,' which was full of weird things," says John Hickie, 37, who came from London for the convention. "There was one page about the Integratron. It didn't go into much detail. I read it and I was absolutely captivated by the story."

He has been a frequent visitor at the Integratron for the past five years.

"I wouldn't say it changes your life," he said. "Undeniably, there are special things about this place and the way it was built, without a single metal nail."

He doesn't buy into the alien visitor stories, although he said he spotted a UFO once.

Seeing Is Believing

Short believes it all.

"We are descendants of these visitors," he says. "They have actually showed up at the conventions. We were here last year. As a matter of fact, I've got photographs of the ship that showed up here last year around 8 o'clock."

"I was here that night," said Bob Connors, 78, of Yucca Valley, "and I didn't see a space ship."

Connors, president of the historical society, is skeptical about the aliens, but doesn't dismiss the Integratron.

"I like to think it would have worked," he said.

Harris, who organized the convention as a fundraiser for the society and to maintain the Integratron, added a new twist: a depiction of alien encounters with cowboys in the 19th century.

Many people, including skeptics, have seen aliens, but don't recognize them, she said.

"That's the thing about most of the aliens," Harris said. "You wouldn't know them. They look like the rest of us. They kind of blend in.

"For all you know, I might be one."

Labels: Frank Stranges, George Van Tassel, Giant Rock, Integratron, Landers, Retro UFO2

      The BBC says a commercial airline pilot reported seeing two unidentified flying objects in the sky near Guernsey.

The pilot reportedly estimated the bright yellow flat discs were twice the size of a Boeing 737, and spotted them Monday, 12 to 15 miles north east of the island.

"This is not something you see every day of the week -- it was pretty scary," pilot Ray Bowyer said, adding he originally thought the sun was reflecting off greenhouses in Guernsey.

John Spencer, deputy chairman of the British UFO Research Association, says pilot UFO sightings have been reported since the 1940s, and generate excitement because pilots are trained observers. In Monday's case, the sightings were verified by passengers and other pilots in the area.

Of course, many UFO sightings are later dismissed as misidentified aircraft, weather balloons, or unknown natural phenomena. Britain's Ministry of Defense says it will not be carrying out an investigation in this particular case.

Still, Spencer tells the BBC you can't just dismiss them all.

"Such light effects are often popularly thought to represent alien visitors but many UFO researchers believe they more likely represent natural, atmospheric, phenomena not yet fully understood by science," he said.

"However, a similar encounter in 1978 over the Bass Straits in Australia, where the pilot was in radio contact with the ground throughout, resulted in the pilot never being heard from again, so these phenomena are important to study."

Labels: BBC, British, Discs, Guernsey, MoD, Pilot, UFO, UFOs Yellow

     Sir Mick Jagger has been visited by aliens.

Michael C. Luckman - author of 'Alien Rock: The Rock 'n' Roll Extraterrestrial Connection' - says The Rolling Stones rocker developed an interest in extraterrestrial phenomena after a close encounter of the third kind in the 60s.

Luckman told BANG Showbiz: "Mick Jagger has been very involved with the subject of UFOs for many years.

"In 1968 he went camping in Glastonbury with his then girlfriend, singer Marianne Faithful, and encountered a rare, luminous cigar-shaped mothership.

"Around the same time Mick had a UFO detector installed at his British estate. The alarm kept on going off whenever he left home, indicating the presence of strong electromagnetic activity in the immediate area."

The 63-year-old singer also sighted a UFO over the crowd during The Rolling Stones' infamous 1969 Altamont Concert in California.

Mick is not the only member of the band to believe in aliens. Guitarist Keith Richards has also admitted to "seeing a few".

Labels: Alien Rock, Michael C. Luckman, Mick Jagger, UFO

Note: The photograph above is that of a piece of "slag" taken from Maury Island in 1947.

     Unidentified flying discs. Secret military missions. Government cover-ups.

The story Philip Lipson and Charlette LeFevre have been researching for years has almost all the elements of a made-for-TV movie.

As the story goes, a government employee swore he saw flying saucers three days after a Tacoma man said similar UFOs spewed metal and lava onto his boat. There was even a man in black.

A witness later recanted his statement -- some say out of fear -- after a military plane supposedly transporting classified debris exploded into flames.

"You don't want to know how complicated and bizarre this is," said LeFevre, who, with Lipson, runs the Seattle Museum of the Mysteries on Capitol Hill.

Lipson and LeFevre believe that 60 years ago a plane that crashed in Kelso contained slag from a UFO. They've tracked down newspaper stories and testimony, and gathered the clues at their museum.

But it's the black chunk of rock they keep locked in a glass case that may be their best clue, and a scientist may test the rock this week.

Officially, the story is poppycock. The government dismissed it as such decades ago.

Damaging debris

On June 21, 1947, Harold Dahl was salvaging logs near the shore of Maury Island. Dahl said that at 2 p.m. he saw six doughnut-shaped aircraft, about 100 feet in diameter.

He said five of the metallic aircraft, which didn't appear to have signs of propulsion, circled above one, which dropped to about 500 feet and spewed what he thought was 20 tons of metal and molten rock.

Dahl reported to co-worker Fred Crisman that the falling debris injured his 15-year-old son, killed their dog and damaged the boat's wheelhouse.

Three days later, U.S. Forest Service employee Kenneth Arnold said he saw nine similar flying saucers between Mount Rainier and Mount Adams. The Associated Press published Arnold's claims that when one of the aircraft dipped, the others did, too.

The day after Dahl's sighting, a man in a black suit arrived at his Tacoma home in a black 1947 Buick, Dahl said later. Books by UFO historians say the man in black threatened Dahl, saying that if he cared about his family, he'd never speak of the incident again.

He spoke of it at least one more time in July 1947, when he met with Arnold in a secret meeting in Room 502 of Tacoma's Winthrop Hotel. Arnold wrote about the meeting in his 1952 book, and said they were also joined by United Airlines pilot Capt. E.J. Smith -- another who claimed to see the discs -- as well as Air Force Lt. Frank M. Brown and Capt. William L. Davidson.

Smith told The Idaho Statesman that Brown and Davidson were given six pieces of "metal or lava."

The chunks were loaded onto a B-25 bomber at McChord Field to be shipped to a California military base, according to the now-defunct Tacoma Times.

B-25 crash

It was still dark in the early morning of Aug. 1, 1947, when a fire erupted in the left engine of the B-25.

Longview police officers reported watching the B-25 circle over Longview and Kelso, leaving a streak of smoke behind the burning motor.

When attempts to extinguish the fire failed, two other crew members -- Sgt. Elmer L. Taft and Tech. Sgt. Woodrow D. Matthews -- parachuted to safety. Brown and Davidson, who some believe knew there were UFO parts on the plane, stayed with the bomber.

The B-25 crashed into the base of three alder trees. Brown and Davidson's mangled bodies were thrown clear.

On Aug. 3, 1947, an Associated Press report said the men died investigating flying saucers.

Black chunk

Kelso resident James Greear heard about the crash 10 years ago and had made several attempts to find clues. He found almost nothing in the woods until earlier this month, when Bob Davenport told him the exact location. Davenport, now 75, was 15 at the time of the crash and one of the first people to rush to the wreckage.

Greear went to the crash site April 15 with Lipson and LeFevre.

In the north fork of Globe Creek, a friend of Greear's found a black chunk slightly larger than a softball that looks as if it could have once been lava.

"We are not making any claims of what it is," Lipson said.

But he and LeFevre are hopeful.

"You can tell it's been liquid because it's all full of bubbles," said Bill Beaty, a research engineer in the University of Washington's Chemistry Department. He plans to have a colleague analyze the chunk this week.

"We have to look at the bedrock in the hill and see what's there," he said. "If it looks like that, then it's probably the same.

"If this is totally different than the bedrock that's there, then this will be very interesting."

Rarely spoke of sighting

Though popular among conspiracy theorists, Dahl's claim that a UFO spewed debris onto his boat is likely to remain folklore.

"I didn't know anything about it until 2003 when a man from Sacramento sent me about 50 pages of research about it," said Dahl's 76-year-old daughter, Louise Bakotich of Aberdeen. Though Arnold insisted his sighting was real, Dahl rarely spoke of his sighting after 1947, and often said it was a hoax when he did. Charles Dahl, who was supposedly injured by the falling debris, didn't confirm the injuries before his death, his sister said.

The Army and Air Force have repeatedly denied that UFO fragments were on the B-25 flight. An August 1947 document, said to be from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, states that the story of the B-25 having flying disc fragments was a hoax.

Those statements, however, only fuel the curiosity of UFO researchers such as Lipson and LeFevre.

"We're starting where they left off 60 years ago," LeFevre said. "There's a lot more out there."

Labels: 1947, B-25, Crash, Flying Disks, Goble Creek, Maury Island

     Moose Javians are interested in flying saucers.
Quite a few people filed into the Mae Wilson Theatre on Saturday night for “An Evening With Stanton T. Friedman”, a nuclear physyicist delivering his lecture “Flying Saucers ARE Real”.

“There’s no way to tell you everything you ever wanted to know about flying saucers in one lecture or ten lectures,” Friedman began.

Friedman is a self-described UFologist. For all the time he has spent researching flying saucers, he has spent almost as much in battle with the “noisy negativists” who dismiss everything out of hand.

He spent the bulk of his presentation on the famous Roswell crash.

A rancher found wreckage of an unidentifiable craft in his field. The military swiftly sent in men to retrieve the wreckage. Maj. Jesse Marcel investigated the site, and described metals that were unheard of: small beams that were incredibly light but couldn’t be broken by hand, and metal that could be bent and then reform into its original shape. Marcel and the others who recovered the wreckage were silenced by their general.

The wreckage was explained as a weather balloon, which contains nothing similar to the wreckage nor any flight patterns similar to what was witnessed before the crash.

There were two reports of bodies found: small, grey, with spindly limbs. These were explained as crash-test dummies (which are made to look human).

He discussed another incident where a small craft was seen landing. The soil that it imprinted was studied, and discovered to be sterile and non-absorbant.

Many studies have been done into flying saucers. The largest ever was Project Blue Book. It concluded that there were only 3 per cent of UFO sightings that were not identified, and only because of insufficient data. However, within the actual report, the figures put unknown sightings at 21.3 per cent, and list insufficient data in another category.

Friedman sought after the hundreds of UFO documents in the possession of the CIA and NSA, and had to take them to court before they would admit they had them. He eventually go the documents, though ... 90 per cent whited out.

He also talked about the elusive Operation Majestic 12, a top secret group reporting to President Truman, which remains as mysterious today as in 1947.

There are many remaining mysteries, but Stanton Friedman shows no signs of slowing down.

Labels: 2007 Roswell UFO Festival, Cosmic Watergate, Flying Saucers, Roswell, Stanton Friedman

Labels: 8-7-1947, Flying Disk, Kelsonian Tribune, Maury Island, UFO

      It was a mysterious, secret government mission. It ended in a fiery plane crash, and a crash site that was all but unknown. Almost 60-years after that plane went down, a curious explorer has found the wreckage, and is now trying to uncover its secrets.

Hundreds have searched the undisturbed corner of the Cascade foothills, about 25-miles to the east of Kelso, Washington. But for the last six decades, they found nothing. Newspapers from August 1, 1947 describe the crash of the Air Force B-25 bomber, as its left engine caught fire, and severed the plane's left wing. But as the deep forests of the Northwest had grown, they had hidden the crash site.

The real story, it turns out, wasn't on the front pages of those newspapers from 1947. It was buried deeper, where reporters said the plane's crew members were "flying disk" investigators, searching for UFOs, and carrying a payload of "top secret material." One newspaper reported that "material" included pieces of flying saucers, being taken to California for examination by the Air Force.

The lure of alien evidence has drawn hundreds of explorers to the area, with its steep slopes, deep canyons, overgrown ferns, and moss-covered trees. Jim Greean had been searching for the last ten years, concentrating on the higher hills surrounding the area. Jim didn't even think of the possibility the plane might have crashed into a ravine.

Last Sunday, Jim was hiking along Goble Creek, following its narrow channel as it rushes towards the mighty Columbia River. It was along that Creek, a glint of sunshine caught his eye.

"I looked down and there was a piece of silver looking metal. I had a shovel and I touched it and it was metal, so I slid down the bank and it was the first piece of that plane I found," Jim said. "I started going back up the Creek and it was full of metal. It was like finding gold! I finally found it!"

Jim pulled dozens of pieces of debris from the mud and muck alongside the Creek. Many of the pieces were mangled, some ripped in two by the sheer force of the impact, and some charred, "This almost looks like it's black from being burned." Many more pieces of the plane, Jim left behind. "There were pieces sticking out and I just couldn't pull them out. I'm going to have to go out and dig them out."

Some of the pieces of the wreckage will go on display at Seattle's Museum of Mysteries. Still, Jim didn't find any signs of alien life, or any pieces of flying saucers. He doesn't necessarily buy all the hype, "Spacecraft parts? I don't know about that." But Jim says he's anxious to discover the plane's secrets, now that he's finally found the long lost crash site.

Labels: B-25, Goble Creek, Jim Green, Kelso Washington, Maury Island, UFO

     RACHEL, Nevada — Take a turn off State Route 375 here in south-central Nevada, drive up a gravel road and you come to a place that doesn’t exist.

That, anyway, is what the U.S. government says.

To you and me the huge swath of desert west of Rachel is known as Area 51.

It’s where—depending on which stories you believe—the U.S. military is testing top secret weapons; or building flying saucers from the wreckage of crashed extraterrestrial craft (as in the movie Independence Day); or experimenting with something else that Buck Rogers or Anakin Skywalker would recognize.

Pentagon officials predictably deny all this, even deny that Area 51 exists, although they admit there’s a gunnery and bombing range somewhere around here. Maybe, I thought, I should have a closer look, so I took the gravel road.

It stopped me short at a gate in a perimeter fence. “Warning. Restricted area,” said a sign. Behind it, surveillance cameras swivelled this way and that on their stilts.

I was about to climb over the gate when I read the line in red paint on the sign: “Use of deadly force authorized.” I decided to go no farther (though I did disobey the further warning: “Photography of this area is prohibited.”)

“They wouldn’t have shot you,” UFO “expert” Chuck Clark assured me later. “But they’d certainly have arrested you if you’d gone in and you’d have been fined $600. It’s an expensive lesson.”

Clark, author of The Area 51 Handbook, has spent years trying to find out exactly what is happening in the top-secret installation. He and the other residents of Rachel, the closest town to Area 51, know that something is going on in their backyard. They’ve all seen enough strange sights through the years.

Many of these, says Clark, can be explained rationally. Flares, dropped for bomb tests, can be mistaken for UFOs.

And this is probably one of the places where top-secret aircraft, such as the U-2 spy plane of the 1950s and the B-2 Stealth bomber in the 1980s, were tested.

Still, he says, there have been other sightings that defy rational explanation. And that’s what brings the tourists, many of them “UFOlogists,” to Rachel. The government’s veil of secrecy helps fuel the rumours.

Many believe that in a morgue in Area 51 there are the bodies of those little grey men allegedly recovered from the crash of a “flying saucer” in Roswell, N.M. in 1947.

“As they say in The X-Files, ‘The truth is out there’,” says Rachel’s Pat Travis, the owner of The Little A’Le’Inn (“little alien,” get it?), a pub, restaurant and motel, and gathering place for the curious. (“Welcome UFOs and crews,” says one sign; another, beneath a drawing of a flying saucer, reads: “Self parking.”)

Rachel (population: 98) is the only town on the 158-kilometre stretch of two-lane blacktop Route 375 running alongside Area 51.

To help the tourist trade, the residents persuaded the state to designate 375 “The Extraterrestrial Highway,” and signs along the road now carry that name.

ACCESS

For more information on the Extraterrestrial Highway visit the U.S. department of transportation’s National Scenic Byways Program website at www.byways.org/browse/byways/2029/.

For more information on Rachel, Nevada visit the town’s website at www.rachel-nevada.com.

Labels: Area 51, Chuck Clark, Rachel Nevada, UFO