Brazil's Roswell.
In September 1977, something amazing appears in the night sky over the Brazilian island of Colares in the Amazon delta--a luminous object hovering about 15 feet over the water. For nearly two months, strange flying objects visit the island--some big, some small, saucer-shaped, cigar-shaped, some luminous and some not. Witnesses report they felt as if blood had been sucked from them by the strange rays. More than 30 residents suffer puncture wounds or burns after their encounters. Two islanders reportedly die from their injuries. The Brazilian Air Force sends a task force to the island for three months and it returns with 300 night photos and several motion picture reels. Though a 500-page report is compiled, along with a catalogue of the sightings, maps, and interview transcripts, it's kept from the public. Then, in May 2005, a few of the details are released, but many questions go unanswered. In this unique hour, we examine these mysterious happenings in depth.
Britain's Roswell
Over three nights in December 1980, Air Force personnel stationed at a NATO installation in England witness strange lights in the sky above the RAF Bentwaters and Woodbridge bases. On the night of the 25th, when servicemen spot a glowing object in the woods, they investigate and come upon a triangular metallic craft. One of them touches it and records strange etchings in his notebook. It shoots above the treetops and the men are later found in a daze by other troops. Two nights later, the Deputy Base Commander and a team investigating the alleged site see lights over a field beyond the woods and a red object. It speeds off, beaming lights over the bases. Some witnesses allege use of force and sodium pentothal during interrogation. A memorandum issued by the Deputy Base Commander, which records some statements, is later released via the Freedom of Information Act. More files are released in 2002 but, to this day, the events remain a mystery. We'll try to unravel it.
New UFO Revelations: China's Roswell.
Legends from China tell of 716 mysterious stone discs, known as "The Dropa Stones". Some believe the stones hold secrets about ancient contact with extraterrestrials. Discovered in a cave in 1938, each 12" disc contains a double spiral of tiny hieroglyphs that are said to contain the historical record of an alien race called the Dropa that crash-landed in an isolated region of China 12,000 years ago. The story of the Dropa Stones is an amazing tale filled with mystery, deceit, and conspiracy, and today, skeptics and true believers wage an ongoing battle over what they are, what they mean, and if they even exist at all. Regardless, the Dropa Stones continue to consume the imaginations of scientists, journalists, historians, UFO buffs, and stargazers in general.
Real UFO's
Ever since the military started using sophisticated airplanes, they have sought ways to build an aircraft that can fly undetected, maneuver like a helicopter and fly like a jet. The Nazis were the first to pursue the idea of building a disc-shaped aircraft. After the war, the Americans, Canadians and Russians all were able to build aircraft similar to the German prototype, perhaps based on the concepts smuggled out by German engineers. This episode looks at top secret flying saucer designs of the Air Force, with specific dates, times and locales of flights that may point to the real explanation behind the many UFO sightings beginning in 1947, and why the saucer design was abandoned for stealth technology.
Russian Roswell
Welcome to the remote, top-secret military base Kapustin Yar, the Soviet "Area 51"--where the wreckage from no fewer than eight UFO crash incidents and their occupants were transported and studied between 1945 and `91. We expose this never-before-seen installation through interviews, on-camera tours, dramatic reenactments, and extensive recreations. We also explore the many Russian UFO crashes over the decades and show the ways in which Soviet UFO research scientists at Kapustin Yar used and processed the wreckage...and the alien bodies. Join us as we investigate the facts and myths surrounding Kapustin Yar, as well as the many UFO crashes that still circulate in the lore and consciousness of the Russian people.
The Day After Roswell
Delve into the aftermath and repercussions of the 1947 Roswell incident, when many believe an alien spacecraft crashed in New Mexico. Based on The Day after Roswell by Lt. Col. Philip J. Corso and William Birnes, we explore if technologies like the laser, fiber optics, the integrated circuit, super-strong fibers, and night vision were developed with the aid of aliens. Career officer Corso claims his first alien encounter came on July 6, `47, while on late-night security rounds at Ft. Riley, Kansas, where he saw bodies of EBEs (extraterrestrial biological entities) inside shipping crates. In 1961, as Chief of Foreign Technology in the Army's department of Research and Development, his job included analyzing alien technology from Roswell, then introducing it into America's technological mainstream--thus, reverse-engineering alien artifacts. And we talk to many scientists involved at the time, who credit hard work, not alien contact, with these technological advances.
UFOs and the White House
Did you know that the office of President of the United States has had a direct involvement with UFOs for over 50 years? Since WWII, every Chief Executive has publicly discussed, issued, or received documents from the White House pertaining to "Unidentified Flying Objects". Many of these documents have never been seen on television before and some of the stories surrounding these UFO-presidential encounters are broadcast for the first time. Find out which administrations had to defend our country from unidentified objects...who was sitting in the Oval Office during the biggest UFO sightings...and how the government's UFO files are handled, depending on political affiliations. We'll gather the facts and glean information from presidential libraries that reveal startling insight on UFOs and the White House.Did you know that the office of President of the United States has had a direct involvement with UFOs for over 50 years? Since WWII, every Chief Executive has publicly discussed, issued, or received documents from the White House pertaining to "Unidentified Flying Objects". Many of these documents have never been seen on television before and some of the stories surrounding these UFO-presidential encounters are broadcast for the first time. Find out which administrations had to defend our country from unidentified objects...who was sitting in the Oval Office during the biggest UFO sightings...and how the government's UFO files are handled, depending on political affiliations. We'll gather the facts and glean information from presidential libraries that reveal startling insight on UFOs and the White House.
UFOs then and now Alien contact.
Not only do the aliens walk among us but, until recently, they were working tentacle-in-hand with the US military--or so British ufologist Good (Above Top Secret, 1988) implies in this erratically organized, incredible report. While Good's earlier book made a well-documented case for clandestine federal involvement in UFO research, this more anectodal study will convert few to the cause. Despite the tantalizing subtitle, much of what Good presents is familiar fare, beginning with his selection of reported run-ins between aircraft and UFOs. He focuses next on the provocative (and well-covered elsewhere) controversy about alleged UFO culpability in cattle mutilations. A close-up look at strange doings at a Colorado ranch plagued by mutilations sheds more mystery than light (``At about two a.m...a mechanical-sounding voice was heard coming from all the radio and TV speakers....`Attention. We have allowed you to remain. We have interfered with your lives very little. Do not cause us to take action which you will regret' ''), while Good's rapid-fire rundown of assorted purported human-alien contacts rehashes old cases like the Roswell incident (alien bodies recovered in 1947 in New Mexico). A gnarly discussion of intelligence community disinformation about UFOs follows, leading to Good's core case: the testimony of physicist Bob Lazar, who claims to have worked at an Air Force test site in Nevada where he tinkered with extraterrestrial craft and learned that aliens had been in ``liaison'' with the military until a 1979 ``incident'' resulted in the death of 66 humans and the flight of the ETs, who left their craft behind. Good does admit that Lazar's credibility has been shaken by a recent conviction for pimping. True believers will be interested to learn that Jesus may have been a ``genetically engineered'' alien; others will want to pass in favor of the more grounded work of Jacques Vallee (Revelations, 1991, etc.).
The Central Intelligence Agency says it has finally come clean about UFOs. To absolutely no one's surprise, it knew more than it ever let on. "Over half of all UFO reports from the late 1950s through the 1960s were accounted for by manned reconnaissance flights," says Gerald K. Haines, a historian for the National Reconnaissance Office who studied secret CIA UFO files for an internal CIA study that examined the spy agency's involvement in UFOs through the 1990s. Why lie about UFOs? "The Soviets could use UFO reports to touch off mass hysteria and panic in the United States and overload the U.S. air warning system so that it could not distinguish real targets from phantom UFOs," Haines says. If Cold War hysteria seems to be a less than satisfactory explanation, perhaps it is because there really is more to the story.
POPULAR MECHANICS has learned from nonclassified sources that the United States had a serious reason for wanting the public to keep believing that the strange lights in the sky were of unearthly origin. The government kept the UFO myth alive to disguise the embarrassing fact that during the hottest days of the Cold War, America's two most secret intelligence gathering assetsâthe A-12 and SR-71 spyplanesâflew toward hostile terrain with the equivalent of cow bells dangling from their necks. The deception of the public began in the early 1950s. It involved the then highly secret, and to this day little-known, A-12. If you think you saw an SR-71 Blackbird at an air and space museum, the odds are you were actually looking at an A-12. The idea for the plane was conceived in 1954 by CIA director Allen Dulles. The objective of this secret program, according to aviation historian Paul F. Crickmore, was to build a spyplane capable of flying higher and faster than the U-2. The secret development program, which was originally called Project Aquatone, and then Gusto and then Oxcart, led to the first A-12 mockup. It became connected with UFO lore in late 1959 when, according to Crickmore, it was trucked from the famous Lockheed Skunk Works, in Palmdale, California, to Groom Lake, Nevada. (Also known to UFO enthusiasts as Area 51, this formerly secret test site is located about 100 miles north of Las Vegas, Nevada.) Hidden in the desert and surrounded by then active Atomic Energy Commission testing grounds, the A-12 mockup underwent a series of tests to determine and then reduce its ability to deflect and absorb radar signals. The CIA liked what it saw and ordered a dozen.
Lockheed had built what to this day is considered the most amazing aircraft of all time. But before it could fly, it needed engines that could propel the plane to Mach 3.2 and an altitude of more than 97,600 ft. In February 1962, Pratt & Whitney announced its already overdue J58 engines could not be delivered anytime soon. As an interim solution, they offered less powerful J75 engines that, according to Crickmore, would take the A-12 to about 50,000 ft. and a speed of Mach 1.6. CIA engineers accepted the offer after calculating that an A-12 equipped with a pair of J75 engines should be able to fly faster than Mach 2. The radar-deflecting shapes of the F-117A (top) and SR-71 (above) lend themselves to misinterpretations as UFOs. "In order to placate the directors who controlled the agency's purse strings, [Lockheed test pilot] Bill Park dived an A-12 to Mach 2," says Crickmore. "[It] relieved some of the high-level pressure on the design team." Without intending to, Park also opened a new chapter in UFO history.
One of the features about UFO sightings that has consistently baffled the experts is their apparent ability to swoop downward, hover and then soar into the sky at impossible speeds. Viewed head on, this is exactly how an A-12 or an SR-71âits J58-powered successorâappears to move at times during a normal flight. The maneuver is called a "dipsy doodle." Col. Richard H. Graham, who commanded the U.S. Air Force 9th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing and has written a history of the SR-71 titled SR-71 Revealed, recently explained the dipsy doodle to PM. The pilot begins by climbing to about 30,000 ft. with the afterburners glowing. At about 33,000 ft., with the plane at Mach .95, he noses the aircraft over. Heading down at a pitch as great as 30 degrees, the plane falls as fast as 3000 ft. per minute. After 10 to 20 seconds, the pilot pulls out of the dive, then accelerates skyward at more than twice the speed of sound. There is one more very UFO-like characteristic of the SR-71: The glow of its exhaust periodically turns green.
The SR-71 burns fuel modified to withstand high temperatures. It doesn't light easily. "One early 'hiccup' was ignition," Crickmore recalls. "The [J58] engine would not start no matter what procedure was tried." Eventually the problem was solved by the introduction of a chemical that explodes on contact with the atmosphere. Graham says it must be introduced into the engine when it is started, and it also kicks-in the afterburners. This happens after each aerial refueling, which, given the SR-71's enormous thirst, is quite often. Each time, it produces another image that could be misinterpreted as a UFO flashing colored lights.
The green flash and distinctive dipsy doodle can be spotted from miles away. Observing the pattern created by these strange sights provides a map to the SR-71's target area, giving those on the ground enough time to hide whatever the spyplane has been sent to photograph. Curiously, the ebb and flow of UFO sightings in the Southwest correspond with the comings and goings of secret aircraft. Some of the most intense UFO spottings coincided with the testing of the F-117A stealth fighter, which was stationed just west of Area 51. These may account for the yet unexplained sightings.
What better way to hide extraordinary aircraft than to wrap them in the compelling fiction of aliens?
 |
