New Witness To UFO Incursion at Nuke Missile Complex, Tom Delonge's New Gig and The Media

Still looks like rain

Sports writer Mic Huber and I worked together for 10 years at the Herald-Tribune here in Sarasota. Different shifts, different departments, which meant we didn’t see each other all that much. Small talk, mostly, much of it focused on the whereabouts of an elusive relentlessly self-deprecating mutual friend. We got a lot of mileage out of you, David, so thanks for that, wherever you are. At his voluntary-buyout farewell office party early this year, Mic retraced the steps that led him to his long run in Sarasota. What made him appreciate Florida was his Air Force hitch in North Dakota.

By Billy Cox De Void 10-13-17

The winters were so grim he applied for a transfer to Vietnam during the height of the war. Uncle Sam sent him to Germany instead.

Anyhow, during his sayonara to the newsroom, Mic mentioned something about how he’d been on duty when he got sucked into a UFO incident, an experience that impressed him so deeply he saw fit to bring it up during impromptu remarks to colleagues nearly half a century later. But it was a small fleeting recollection and he didn’t linger there.

Mic still freelances, and a few months later I pulled him aside one afternoon and asked for more details. I couldn’t help but smile as he rattled off words like Minot Air Force Base, 1968, B-52, radar, radio interference, security breach, etc., etc. Mic isn’t a UFO geek, he doesn’t follow this stuff, so he was unaware of just how significant this incident was, in terms of evidence. At the end of his recollection, Mic repeated another phrase that actually made me laugh out loud because I’d heard it so many times before. He said he’d been debriefed by an Air Force colonel, his testimony had been tape-recorded, and that the officer left him on this note: “This didn’t happen.”

In fact, I’d just ordered a book called It Never Happened,written by a USAF veteran who’d been stationed at the same outpost, Minot, just two years earlier, 1966. Same general idea, though – unauthorized UFO activity over a Strategic Air Command base armed with nuclear missiles. No trifling matter. I suggested Mic take a peek at the www.minotb52ufo.com website, an impressively detailed reconstruction of that sliver of history he’d been a party to in the wee hours of Oct. 24, 1968. Researcher Tom Tulien had constructed an underappreciated narrative packed with veteran eyewitness testimony, the Strategic Air Command’s own documents, and assessments from technical analysts. I thought maybe he could test his memory against the record.

Mic dropped in a few weeks later. He’d been to the site, and he was jazzed. The details – everything he remembered about what happened lined up. Everything. He was in air operations that night, he’d heard it all.

Mic’s job was to know the flight plans of everything in the immediate sky to make sure nobody bumped into each other; sometimes, civilian neighbors near the base made inquiries about other things they’d seen. “We did get some UFO reports, probably a lotta farmers who were drunk,” he conceded. “But this was completely different. It lasted such a long time, and I guess that’s what made it stick with me.”

Shortly after 2 a.m., maintenance and security teams outside the remotely spaced launch control facilities – each of which housed Minuteman nukes – began noticing at least one, maybe more, large bright glowing object in the sky. It or they changed colors, white to amber to green. It or they went high, dipped behind treelines, reversed course on a dime. Air traffic control alerted a B-52 returning from a training mission to a bright glowing bogey off its 1 o’clock position as it executed a 180-degree turn for its final approach. The UFO wheeled with it and maintained its distance, at a rigid three miles. But as the bomber completed the turn, within a three-second sweep of the radar, the object pounced to within a mile. For the next 10 seconds, the plane’s two radios fuzzed out, even as an onboard camera took sequential photos of the radarscope recording the UFO when it changed positions.

Moments later, ATC diverted the plane to get a visual on a UFO reported on or near the ground. One pilot spotted it immediately, some 10 miles away and below, comparing it to “a miniature sun.” As they banked above it, another crew member described it as metallic, smooth, egg-shaped, a “dull reddish color like molten steel.” Once again, the ground briefly lost radio contact with the B-52, which landed at 4:40 a.m. But additional sightings trickled in for nearly an hour afterwards.

“I was on the phone with the guy who called it in from the missile site,” Mic recalled. He was monitoring comm chatter when the radios blinked out, and he remembers how the object looked on radar. “The return was more intense than a C-135 during refueling.” He saw the B-52 team when they returned – “they were visibly shaken” – and got a look at their subsequent illustrations of the object(s). After Mic’s shift ended, he was interrogated about what he’d heard and seen, this Thing That Never Happened. Obliged to say something, anything, official investigators concluded that Minot AFB personnel — these defenders of the world’s most destructive weapons — had simply been confused by Vega, Sirius, ball-lighting plasmas, a combination of all three, whatever.

Incidentally, It Never Happened involved an even spookier case. In 1966, writes (Ret.) Capt. David Schindele, launch operators lost control of as many as 10 nuclear-packed missiles when their power blinked off during apparent UFO surveillance. Which means Mic Huber has a lot of company. UFOS and Nukes author Robert Hastings has gotten more than 150 veterans to go on record about a phenomenon’s apparent fascination with our nuclear armaments. No telling how many more eyewitnesses who were told to shut up are out there.

But even if each and every one of these guys stepped up tomorrow to share what they knew, it wouldn’t make any difference. Events over the last year have only reinforced how deeply into denial and aggressive ignorance our culture has descended. In spite of that, amid turdstorms of truly fake news, some of the most diligent investigative political journalism I’ve ever read is unfolding right now, daily. Downright heroic, in some cases. And yet, American journalism is no match for The Great Taboo. Because most of the people who dare to own it tend to lack, umm, conventional pedigrees.

Wednesday, for instance, classic example: Former Blink-182 frontman Tom DeLonge sparked what will be, if traditional patterns hold, a quick-hit flurry of sensational headlines. The details are posted at To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science and — once again — are straight out of left field. DeLonge is the California punk-pop rocker whose self-parodying music videos — dancing around in brief undies, licking coin-operated viewfinders, bored on the commode, babes weeping with desire — were so convincing during the Blink days you just wanted to punch the smirk off his face.

And yet, as early as 2015, DeLonge was telling “Us” magazine he was in contact with heavy-hitting government types he hoped to coax out of the shadows to address the UFO conundrum head-on. It was easy enough to blow him off until, late in the 2016 campaign, WikiLeaks (or somebody) hacked the emails of Hillary Clinton’s campaign director John Podesta, which showed DeLonge was indeed in the loop with a couple of two-star USAF generals and an advanced projects director for Lockheed Martin. And even then, who knew, maybe they were just big fans of “Enema of the State” and “Take Off Your Pants and Jacket.”

Then came Wednesday. Lo and behold, there was DeLonge, introducing business partners in a half-hour video presentation designed to drum up crowd-sourcing to support something called To The Stars Academy. Its stated purpose was, with the UFO mystery at its core, to provide “gifted researchers the freedom to explore exotic science and technologies with the infrastructure and resources to rapidly transition them to products that can change the world.” And whoa, get a load of their cred:

Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence; Senior Intelligence Service, CIA Directorate of Operations; Lockheed Martin “Skunk Works” Advanced Systems Director; director of scientific research programs for the Defense Department, the CIA and the DIA; a counterintelligence agent who ran an “aerospace threat identification program” out of the Pentagon. The jewel of this narrative was relayed by Chris Mellon, the former SecDef assistant. He discussed an hours-long incident in 2004 involving the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz, F-18 jet fighters, a UFO that seemed “to defy the laws of physics,” and footage of the whole thing. Captured by gun cameras. Plus infrared images. Property of the U.S. government.

Holy cow. This could be huge. Just like Hillary Clinton’s UFO remarks last year on the campaign trail could’ve been huge. Just like the half-dozen USAF veterans who testified in 2010 at the National Press Club to UFO activity over American nuclear bases could’ve been huge. Just like the MUFON 2008 radar analysis of UFO and jet fighter activity that caught the Air Force in a lie could’ve been huge. Just like CIA image-doctor Chase Brandon’s revelations about finding Roswell ET documents in the Agency’s archives could’ve been huge.

But this stuff can only be huge if the press is interested enough to dig, to background these guys, to pursue every lead and put it out there. What we’ll probably get instead is a convulsion of wry headlines, some “the truth is out there/out of this world” segues, maybe even some cursory reporting, but it’ll all wander off soon enough. Whatever followups occur will be tepid and of little consequence, or at least without the persistence essential to stoking public interest. And without public interest, this ship doesn’t sail. Or at least not very far.

And that’s one of the reasons De Void has been dormant for so long. Ultimately, this space started sounding futile and whiney. The only reason for this posting is to send one more shoutout to all the Mic Hubers, to all you folks who saw and may still be seeing crazy airborne stuff snooping around the most dangerous weapons in the history of warfare. This is news. Just because the media doesn’t think so, that doesn’t mean you’re crazy.

Unfortunately, yes, you do live in a superpower nation that has degenerated into an absolutely certifiable full-tilt nuthouse. But it’s not your fault.

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See Also:

U.S. Air Force 'UFO Cover-Up' Revealed

On Breaking 40 Years of [UFO] Silence

UFO Hovered Near Missile Launch Control Center at Minot AFB: Retired Officer Says Several ICBMs Dropped “Off Alert”

UFO Tracked on Radar at Minot AFB: It Was Near Nuclear Missile Sites At The Time

Officials Suppress UFO, Nuclear [Missile] Site Ties

UFO NEWS: UFOs at Defense Sites Told in CIA Documents

UFOs & NUKES | A Narrative of UFO Events at the Minuteman Missile (ICBM) Complex Surrounding Minot AFB

UFOs & NUKES | Carpio Grano, North Dakota: UFO Lands Near Minuteman Missile Base; Affects Radio Transmissions - Defensive Measures Taken!

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"Oval-Shaped and Maybe 200 Feet Long, the Enigma Began To Rise With A Roar..."

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Back when you couldn't ignore it ...

By Billy Cox De Void 11-20-15

     A little after 1 a.m., on Nov. 3, 1957, truck driver James Long was heading east out of sleepy Levelland, Texas, when he noticed something dark and huge and weird straddling the highway ahead. Long closed to within less than a football field of the mystery roadblock when it suddenly flared its lights, a move that simultaneously killed the engine of Long’s rig.

Oval-shaped and maybe 200 feet long, the enigma began to rise with a roar as Long stepped out to get a better look. At that point, he momentarily blacked out; upon regaining his bearings, he noticed thing was hovering about 200 feet above him. Then it went dark again, as if it never existed. But his vehicle was working again – and Long high-tailed it back to town to inform authorities. But the law was way ahead of him.

Police, sheriff, and highway patrol units were already on the lookout for what motorists and local residents were describing not only as major UFO activity near and above area roads, but as the cause of electrical failure for vehicles in the immediate vicinity. Even the fire marshal’s engine began to sputter. In fact, the sheriff and his deputy reported an object that emitted a 50-yard wide beam of light before going dark in a snap of the fingers. And the activity was apparently regional, as witnesses from the east Texas burg of Farmington all the way west to the military base at White Sands, N.M., reported UFO encounters in the wee hours of 11/7/57. In a nod to the USSR’s just-launched Sputnik mission, the unresolved mystery was nicknamed Whatnik.

Whatnik – which created engine failures in at least eight vehicles – is obviously an old story. What’s new is that old story's accessibility, and the accompanying anthology of literally hundreds of other Cold War cases. Drawn from original newspaper, magazine, military and civilian reports, “every UFO book available,” and collections from the likes of crusading atmospheric physicist Dr. James McDonald, this online collection at the Sign Oral History Project is the culmination of a lifetime’s work from veteran researcher Loren Gross.

Recently digitized by Tom Tulien with the Sign Oral History Project, Gross’s archives constitute more than a simple data dump. Combined and compressed into such tight chronological structure that it reads with a timeless urgency, this is a massive library that has laid primary-source foundations for so many historians looking to put UFOs in context. Borrowing on a phrase from University of New Mexico astronomer Lincoln La Paz concerning their potential for revelation, Gross calls his narrative “UFOs: A History/The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse.” It was completed in 2005 and circulated exclusively among a small clique of researchers.

“Remarkably,” Gross states in his introduction in comparing military accounts with civilian accounts, “there is very little overlap aside from well-known incidents. The Air Force explanations are a joke and I paid little attention to them. Having reviewed tens of thousands of sighting reports, I did not use every case while compiling the UFO histories – only the ones I thought were the best.”

A joke indeed. In a verdict that rendered the USAF a laughingstock to the residents of Levelland, the Pentagon kissed off the 11/3/57 incident this way: “Weather phenomenon of electrical nature, generally classified as ‘Ball Lightning’ or ‘St. Elmo’s Fire,’ caused by stormy conditions in the area, including mist, rain, thunderstorms and lightning.” Nevermind that the skies over Levelland that evening were relatively clear that evening, that not a drop of rain fell on the west Texas town during the event, or that some of these split-second “ball lightning” incidents elasticized for three to four minutes.

“Reading Loren Gross’ almost continuous narrative is like eating pistachios,” Project 1947 director and collaborator Jan Aldrich states in an email to De Void. “Once you start, you can’t stop.”

Spot on analogy. You can point and click just about anywhere in Gross’ monographs and find a surprise. The collection starts with the so-called “airship wave” of 1896 and concludes seven decades later, in 1963, just before the Betty and Barney Hill UFO abduction experience injected a formidable level of subjectivity into the controversy. For sheer drama, Aldrich suggests new readers first hop the time machine back to a single night in 1952, July 22-23, in the midst of a nationwide flap involving jet-fighter scrambles, when it appeared as if air corridors from Virginia to New England were being deliberately tested for response capabilities. It almost has a cinematic quality.

This stuff matters today because those were the halcyon days, only nobody knew it. Back then, the federal investigation of UFOs was obliged to pay lip service to transparency, even at the expense of its credibility, like the ball-lightning snow job on Levelland. What a difference half a century makes.

As recently as 2005, the CIA was resisting, in federal court, a Federation of American Scientists lawsuit to disclose its secret budget – from 1963. Really. The FAS merely wanted verification of its independent analysis that the spooks’ budget 42 years earlier was $550 million. Today, 2015, without the existential threat of the Soviet Union, America’s black budget is nearly $60 billion and growing. Federal agencies routinely classify even the most innocuous information, because they can, and 4.5 million Americans hold security clearances. That's more than the combined populations of the Northern Marianas, American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, Wyoming, Vermont, the District of Columbia, Alaska, and both Dakotas. And not a one of these vetted employees is required to look stupid by making excuses for the elephant in the room.

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See Also:

Multiple UFOs Reported By Truckers Over CB Radio

Mystery Object Called Inter-Planetary Craft
11-4-1957

State Trooper's Amazing Account of 'Triangular Shaped UFO'

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UFO Tracked on Radar at Minot AFB: It Was Near Nuclear Missile Sites At The Time

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By Robert Hastings www.ufohastings.com 1-28-12

     This follow-up article compliments the last one I posted.

During the pre-dawn hours of October 24, 1968, a UFO was tracked at Minot AFB—by the base’s weather radar as well as onboard a B-52 Stratofortress bomber preparing to land at the base. Significantly, this simultaneous tracking occurred during the same period of time when USAF missile security teams and missile maintenance teams were reporting UFOs maneuvering near Minuteman missile Launch Facilities (LFs) O-6 and N-7.

Over a five year-period, researchers Tom Tulien and Jim Klotz painstakingly investigated the events which occurred at Minot that early morning in 1968, interviewing many eyewitnesses and reviewing numerous declassified USAF files and radarscope photographs. In fact, this case is so spectacular and so well-documented, ABC Television chose to include a detailed discussion of it in its February 2005 two-hour special, UFOs: Seeing is Believing, hosted by the late Peter Jennings.

Tulien notes for the record, “The contents of the National Archives and Records Administration’s (NARA) USAF Project Blue Book microfilm file regarding the Minot incident (case number 12,548), consists of over 130 pages dated from 24 October 1968 to 14 November 1968.” The final report on the Tulien/Klotz investigation is now online and incorporates those declassified Project Blue Book files as well as additional witness testimony.¹

On 24 October 1968, at 2:15 a.m., 14 miles east-northeast of N-7, a missile security camper team posted at LF O-6 notified the Flight Security Controller (FSC) at the Oscar Flight Launch Control Facility that they were observing a UFO near their position. The camper team reported that, from their vantage point, the UFO had disappeared behind some trees. At the time, a missile targeting team was at work at O-6. Immediately after being notified of the situation by the FSC, the Combat Targeting Commander ordered his team to abort their work, secure the LF, and return to base.

At 2:30 a.m., two missile technicians assigned to the 91st Missile Maintenance Squadron (MIMS), Airmen 1st Class Lloyd Isley and Robert O’Connor, reported observing a strange light in the eastern sky while traveling to Minuteman Launch Facility N-7 for a routine procedure. Based on the documentation it appears as though it was the same UFO sighted earlier at O-6. Based on reports he was receiving from the maintenance team, the Base Operations dispatcher noted this in his log at 3:00 a.m.: “object S/E of N-7 moving toward site with brilliant light like the sun. Lights flashing on and off. It’s too brilliant and big for an aircraft now moving south and hovered over N-7 [my emphasis], turned green, amber off and on.” O’Connor later reported that the UFO “appeared self-luminous like a big ball of white light that seemed to change to a dim green light then later to a dim amber color.”²

The maintenance team notified Transportation Control and Base Operations, then radioed the FSC upon entering the site, at which point they reported the UFO to him. Eventually, both the FSC and his two-man Security Alert Team observed the UFO from their positions at the November Launch Control Facility. All of the observers, both maintenance and security personnel, reported that the UFO was extremely bright and had the ability to hover, as well as to move abruptly at great velocity.

Sgt. Bond hastily dispatched the SAT team to N-7. While en route, both men reported that a second UFO had appeared east of their position and then flew toward the first object, which was still located near the LF. After maneuvering near each other in the sky for a brief period, one of the UFOs suddenly disappeared.

In his report, researcher Tulien states, “During the period [that the November Flight SAT team was] on the road, the Wing Security Controller noted in his summary that between 3:20 and 3:25 a.m. ‘SSgt Smith at Oscar-1 saw the object separate in two parts and go in opposite directions and return and pass under each other. At this time Juliet Flight and Mike Flight Team observed the same things and described it in the same way.’”³

While these startling events were unfolding, the pilot of a B-52 returning to Minot after a 10-hour training mission received a radio call from the base’s Radar Approach Control (RAPCON) center, asking him to look for any unusual “orange glows” from his position. According to the declassified transcript of the radio conversation, the RAPCON controller told the bomber’s pilot and co-pilot, “Someone is seeing flying saucers again.”⁴ He then told them where to look. Shortly thereafter, RAPCON was informed that the base’s weather radar was tracking the object near Bowbells, ND, about 38 nautical miles northwest of the base.

Suddenly, that UFO flew toward the B-52, and began pacing it at a distance of one mile. The aircraft’s own radar was already tracking the object and recorded these maneuvers. The navigator, Major Patrick McCaslin, said that the UFO’s radar return was “as big or bigger than a KC-135 [tanker].”⁵

Radar Navigator Major Chuck Ritchey quickly activated the aircraft’s radarscope camera and the object’s radar return was captured on film. Later that morning, the images were evaluated by one of the 5th Bombardment Wing’s intelligence officers, Richard Clark, who recalls that he computed the UFO’s mean velocity at 3900 mph. This estimate was based on the fact that the UFO had covered two miles during one, three-second sweep of the radar. He told Tulien, “It had to be something other than what we were aware of, you know, and I didn’t think our technology had anything like that as far as capability—so it’s got to be a UFO.”⁶

As the UFO began to pace the B-52, the aircraft’s two UHF radios were apparently impacted by its presence, and normal outgoing radio transmissions were temporarily interrupted. However, the aircraft’s UHF receiver was unaffected and the crew continued to hear instructions from the RAPCON controller. The UFO paced the aircraft for approximately 20 miles, at which point it broke-off and moved away. As soon as it did so, and disappeared from the bomber’s radar, the aircraft’s transmitters resumed normal functioning.

As the B-52 began its final approach to Minot, it was unexpectedly diverted, on the orders of an unidentified “general officer.” RAPCON provided the pilot vectors for the UFO—which was by then on, or hovering near, the ground—and told to turn the aircraft and fly directly over it.

Tulien and Klotz have interviewed the aircraft’s co-pilot, Captain Bradford Runyon, and the Instructor Pilot, Major James Partin, both of whom provided detailed accounts regarding the UFO’s appearance.

Partin noted that he first saw an orange object on or just above the ground and stated that it appeared “like a miniature sun placed on the ground below the aircraft.” As the aircraft closed on the UFO, the object’s shape became more visible. Partin said, “It was sort of oblong, there were—looked like windows around it that were lit, and it was just hovering there.”⁷

Captain Runyon later drew a picture of the UFO, showing an oval-shaped object with a tubular limb extending from one end. Beyond the other end of the tube was a crescent-shaped spray of illumination. He stated, “My first impression was that the orange [oval] portion was bigger than a large barn and the tubular section reminded me of a large grain silo lying on its side. The crescent-shaped part did not become clear until we rolled into the first 90-degree turn...I’m not good at estimating dimensions, especially 32 years after the fact, but to my best guess, I would say it was at least 200 ft in length and 100 ft in width and 50 ft. in height.”⁸

Navigator Patrick McCaslin, who did not see the object himself, added, “The description [given] to me [by one of the pilots] was that it was an elliptical shape—kind of a cough drop-shaped thing, glowing orange with a boomerang exhaust, or boomerang-shaped exhaust or whatever—a florescence off one end.”⁹

As the B-52 neared the UFO, its UHF transmitters were impacted once again. Upon landing, one of the crew was debriefed about the incident, but there was no further discussion among the crew until years later.

What was the Air Force’s official verdict on these events? On November 13, 1968, three weeks after the UFO incidents, Project Blue Book chief Major Hector Quintanilla issued an official statement about them. He wrote, “The following conclusions have been reached after a thorough study of the data submitted to Foreign Technology Division. The ground visual sightings appear to be of the star Sirius and the B-52, which was flying in the area. The B-52 radar contact and the temporary loss of the UHF transmission could be attributed to a plasma similar to ball lightning. The air visual from the B-52 could be the star Vega, which was on the horizon at the time, or it could be a light on the ground, or possibly a plasma. No further investigation by the Foreign Technology Division is contemplated.”¹⁰

This highly implausible official explanation for the UFO incidents at Minot AFB was reminiscent of Quinanilla’s earlier verdict on the August 1, 1965 UFO sightings at F.E. Warren AFB, Wyoming. In that case, several Air Force SAT teams had independently observed, over a three hour-period, as many as nine UFOs at a time maneuvering near and hovering over various Minuteman missile sites. The Blue Book chief concluded that the teams had not seen UFOs, but twinkling stars.

References

1. Tulien, Thomas. “A Narrative of UFO Events at Minot AFB, 24 OCTOBER 1968”, http://www.minotb52ufo.com
2. National Archives and Records Administration’s (NARA) USAF Project Blue Book microfilm file (case number 12,548)
3. http://minotb52ufo.com/
4. National Archives and Records Administration’s (NARA) USAF Project Blue Book microfilm file (case number 12,548)
5. Ibid.
6. http://www.minotb52ufo.com
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. Quintanilla, Hector. Project Blue Book Report, Case Number 12,548, November 13, 1968

. . . More


See Also:

UFO Buzzes ICBM Launch Capsule at Minot AFB: The Commander’s Control Panel “Lit Up” Indicating Missiles Away!

UFOs & NUKES | A Narrative of UFO Events at the Minuteman Missile (ICBM) Complex Surrounding Minot AFB

UFOs & NUKES | Carpio Grano, North Dakota: UFO Lands Near Minuteman Missile Base; Affects Radio Transmissions - Defensive Measures Taken!

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