1: What are UFOs
An unidentified flying object (UFO) is any perceived aerial phenomenon that cannot be immediately identified or explained. Upon investigation, most UFOs are identified as known objects or atmospheric phenomena. But some of them remain still unexplained and unsolved…
This leads us to the belief that extraterrestrial life touring here…
2. How was the term UFO born
Before 1947, terms such as UFOs and flying saucers had not entered the vocabulary of the people.
But, on the 24th of June 1947, when businessman Kenneth Arnold claimed to see a group of nine high-speed shiny objects flying near Mount Rainier in Washington while flying his small plane. Arnold estimated the speed of the crescent-shaped objects as several thousand miles per hour and said they moved “like saucers skipping on water.” In the newspaper report that followed, it was mistakenly stated that the objects were saucer-shaped, hence the term “flying saucers” was born.
The term UFO was coined by Officer Edward J. Ruppelt who investigated aerial phenomena for the United States Air Force in his role as leader of Project Blue Book during the 1950s( we will see what
is called Project Blue Book later ). Before Project Blue Book, UFOs were often referred to as “flying saucers”.
Ruppelt explained that “the term ‘flying saucer’ is misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape and performance”.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Arnold_UFO_sighting
3. Identification of UFOs
Sometimes, we see aerial phenomena in the sky which act like a UFO. But it is not always the same as we expect it as a UFO sighting.
Basically, moving objects in the night sky leads us to believe that they are some stranger objects. But you can use some satellite tracker software ( Satellite Tracker by Star Walk) to see whether this is something stranger or man-made stuff.
Generally, artificial objects like airplanes, rockets, and helicopters can be easily recognized as they have blinking light systems and color types ( red, green, and white ) and also from their sound. The same theory can be applied to the drones we see, but some of them mislead our theory because of changes done by the owners.
So the sightings of stranger sky objects may depend on our visual aspect and our knowledge regarding that.
But regardless of all those, there may be exceptions. That is what we called UFOs and they are really far away from our dimension of knowledge.
The image at the right was a cloud type called Lenticular clouds that appeared in the California desert. Lenticular clouds are lens-shaped or saucer-shaped clouds. Generally, they typically form where stable moist air flows over mountains, but also near flat lands.
The image at the left was taken in New Jersey in the USA under clear climate conditions. If we discard photo-shopped images, what is the best explanation for this if it does not behave like an artificial flying object? So it remains still mysterious…
If we consider sightings that appeared around the globe, identifying unidentified flying objects (UFOs) is a difficult task due to the normally poor quality of the evidence provided by those who report sighting the unknown object. Observations and subsequent reporting are often made by those untrained in astronomy, atmospheric phenomena, aeronautics, physics, and perception. Nevertheless, most officially investigated UFO sightings, such as from the U.S. Air Force’s Project Blue Book, have been identified as being due to honest misidentifications of natural phenomena, aircraft, or other prosaic explanations. In early U.S. Air Force attempts to explain UFO sightings, unexplained sightings routinely numbered over one in five reports. However, in early 1953, right after the CIA’s Robertson Panel, percentages of unexplained sightings dropped precipitously, usually being only a few percent in any given year. When Project Blue Book closed down in 1970, only 6% of all cases were classified as being truly unidentified.
4. Mysterious sky objects in the paintings
Before the age of UFOs, there were so many mysterious signs for the category of unexplained sky objects. In the early ages paintings, artists were trying to show what they saw in the sky and they tried to highlight what they were amazed about through their paintings and in certain areas of their drawings
Here are some attractive paintings that keep the mysterious category still safe…
This is an interesting painting hung above the altar of the Visoki Decani Monastery in Kosovo, Yugoslavia. You can see that two UFOs are seen on both top corners. In the right corner of the UFO, the pilot seems to be looking back at the craft behind him. And neither of these pilots has a halo around them, which discards the possibility of them being divine beings or depicting diving objects. But, what they were really riding through the sky…
The Madonna with Saint Giovannino is a fascinating painting as it shows a UFO in the top right corner behind Madonna’s shoulder. You can notice that the UFO has an irregular spines-like structure around its body. Basically, it could be the reflection of sun rays, and it suggests that the object had a well-finished reflective surface. Some have speculated that her position is such that it seems like she’s trying to protect her children from that alien object. Also, a man is seen looking at that UFO and his dog barking at it.
This painting is kept in the Bayerisches National Museum in Germany, the Triumph of Summer Tapestry was created in 1538 in Belgium. It depicts the victorious ascension of a ruler to power. However, there is something far more interesting depicted in the tapestry, which would be easy to miss unless you were looking closely – multiple objects in the sky, which have the classical UFO body shape.
Some historians have suggested that these objects represent the significance of this ruler coming to power and that he had the support of the ‘divine’. But since when are flying disc-shaped objects considered a symbol of divine intervention? And if they are, why? If the people in that era associated flying saucers with divinity, it means they were seeing such objects in the sky and linking them to a ‘godly’ phenomenon. If they attached supremacy to that godly sky object, they had an exact knowledge of UFOs such that they are more powerful than everything they had in that period.
The above painting is by Dutch artist Aert De Gelder in 1710 and it hangs in the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge. You can see that, there is a UFO-like (disc-like) object directing beams of light down on John the Baptist and Jesus. So, what would be the best explanation…
After the UFO incident that happened in June of 1947 I have mentioned in the above chapters, here comes the revolutionary incident that appeared in July of 1947 called the Rosewell UFO crash.
5 . Rosewell Incident 1947
One morning around Independence Day 1947, about 75 miles from the town of Roswell, New Mexico, a rancher named Mac Brazel found something unusual in his sheep pasture: a mess of metallic sticks held together with tape; chunks of plastic and foil reflectors; and scraps of a heavy, glossy, paper-like material. Unable to identify the strange objects, Brazel called Roswell’s sheriff. The sheriff, in turn, called officials at the nearby Roswell Army Air Force base. Soldiers fanned out across Brazel’s field, gathering the mysterious debris and whisking it away in armored trucks.
On July 8, “RAAF Captures Flying Saucer on Ranch in Roswell Region” was the top story in the Roswell Daily Record.
But was it true? On July 9, an Air Force official clarified the paper’s report: The alleged “flying saucer,” he said, was only a crashed weather balloon. However, to anyone who had seen the debris (or the newspaper photographs of it), it was clear that whatever this thing was, it was no weather balloon. Some people believed–and still believe–that the crashed vehicle had not come from Earth at all. They argued that the debris in Brazel’s field must have come from an alien spaceship. So, this is what happened in Roswell in 1947. Left image: Brig. General Roger Ramey, left, and Col.
The Roswell incident was not widely discussed until the late 1970s, when retired lieutenant colonel Jesse Marcel, in an interview with ufologist Stanton Friedman, said he believed the debris he retrieved was extraterrestrial
Here we have to consider both aspects, we have to look clearly through the observations done by the people who saw this incident in real-time, and the other aspect is the perspective of the US air force and CIA.
If we look through the eyes of the CIA, they clearly point out what had really happened in 1947 in Rosewell. They said that it was debris from a weather balloon created under a secret military project called Project Mongul, and the disk-like structure is just the bottom part of that balloon.
– In 1994 and 1997, US Government reports concluded that the Roswell Incident stemmed from a Project MOGUL balloon –
But if we look through the observations and live experiences experienced by the people who had directly involved in this incident, there are so many entanglements and conspiracy theories. But we can think that the CIA and US government did a great coverup for the Roswell incident because we only receive information that is directly filtered by the US government.
So, the Roswell Incident still has some unsolved parts even though the CIA released an official report for the Roswell incident based on Project Mogul.
Roswell incident becomes the most famous UFO incident among UFO believers, this leads to the improvement of public interest regarding UFOs and extraterrestrial life. As a result of that people engaged to observe sky more and more not like before, so the number of UFOs sightings increased rapidly giving no chance to hide alien guys.
6 . UFO sightings happened in World War 2
In World War 2, UFOs are renamed in several sub-names.
Foo fighters, Ghost Rockets, and Flying discs are the main types. foo fighters(UFOs) were observed by a German pilot in 1945 near Germany.
a. UFOs in the end of world war 2
It was nearly the end of World War II. But for the airmen of the 415th Night Fighter Squadron, it felt more like the beginning of War of the Worlds.
Lt. Fred Ringwald was the first to see it. He was riding as an observer in a night fighter piloted by Lt. Ed Schlueter, with Lt. Donald J. Meiers on radar. It was a late November evening in 1944, partly cloudy with a quarter moon. They were roaming the Rhine Valley just north of Strasbourg on the French-German border when Ringwald said, “I wonder what those lights are, over there in the hills,” according to an American Legion Magazine story on the sightings from 1945.
There were eight to 10 of them in a row, glowing fiery orange. Then Schlueter saw them off his right wing. They checked with Allied ground radar, but they registered nothing. Thinking that the lights might be some kind of German air weapon, Schlueter turns the plane to fight…only to have the lights vanish.
At first, the men said nothing, fearing they’d be ostracized. But then the sightings spread through the unit.
b. More crew, more sightings of Foo fighters
On December 17, 1944, near Breisach, Germany, a pilot was flying at approximately 800 feet when he saw “5 or 6 flashing red and green lights in ’T’ shape.” The lights seemed to follow him, closing in “to about 8 o’clock and 1,000 ft.” before disappearing as inexplicably as they came.
Then on December 22nd, two more flight crews sighted lights. One crew, near Hagenau, reported two lights in a large orange glow, seeming to rise from the earth to 10,000 feet, tailing the fighter “for approximately two minutes.” After that, the lights, “peel off and turn away, fly along level for a few minutes and then go out. They appear to be under perfect control at all times,” according to Keith Chester’s Strange Company: Military Encounters with UFOs in World War II.
And then there was Lt. Samuel A. Krasney’s experience: a wingless cigar-shaped object, glowing red, just a few yards off the plane’s wingtip. Lt. Krasney, justifiably spooked, instructed the pilot to attempt evasive maneuvers, but the glowing object stayed right next to the jet for several minutes before it “flew off and disappeared.”
3. It is not “combat fatigue“
An Associated Press reporter broke the news of the foo-fighter sightings on January 1st, 1945, and theories about their origins quickly abounded: The sightings were flares, weather balloons, or St. Elmo’s Fire(a phenomenon where light appears on the tips of objects in stormy weather). But the members of the 415th rejected all those theories. Flares and weather balloons can’t track planes like these objects could, and they’d seen St. Elmo’s fire and could distinguish the two.
Then there were those who claimed that the airmen were suffering from “combat fatigue,” a polite way of saying that war stress was driving them insane. But there was scant evidence to suggest collective psychosis: The 415th had an otherwise excellent record, and when a reporter for American Legion
Magazine went to report on the squadron he described them as “very normal airmen, whose primary interest was combat, and after that came pin-up girls, poker, doughnuts and the derivatives of the grape.”
Lt. Krasney’s son, Keith Krasney, says his late father didn’t fit the stereotypical profile of a UFO theorizer. In fact, he never even suggested that the glowing wingless cigar-like object that flew next to his plane was extraterrestrial in origin.
“He was very level-headed, very analytical,” says Krasney of his father, adding that he kept a notebook where he wrote about (and drew) his foo-fighter sighting. But although he never seemed prone to conspiracy theories, Krasney says his father was open to one: “He entertained the idea that it could be late-breaking German technology. He did express the view that there were a lot of things during the war that were kept quiet.”
7. UFOs and Nazi
During the Second World War, unusual sightings in the skies above Europe were often interpreted as novel Nazi technology. In the first years of the Cold War, Western nations speculated that unusual sightings might stem from Soviet deployment of captured or reverse-engineered Nazi technology.
Holding Nazi Germany responsible for the flying glowing orbs isn’t too far-fetched. For one thing, the sightings took place over Nazi-occupied Europe, at a time when Germany’s Luftwaffe was making tremendous impacts. Then there’s the fact that the sightings stopped once the German army was defeated.
But the most compelling link to the foo fighters might be Wernher von Braun, a 32-year-old wunderkind rocket engineer.
Von Braun helped the Nazis develop the V-2 rocket ( the first ballistic guided missile to use advanced rocket technology and to be used in war by the Nazis against the Allies )
By 1952, von Braun had reinvented himself as a space-flight advocate, writing a piece that year in Collier’s magazine declaring that “within the next 10 or 15 years, the earth will have a new companion in the skies, a man-made satellite that could be either the greatest force for peace ever devised, or one of the most terrible weapons of war-depending on who makes and controls it.” His prediction proved overly conservative: The Soviets launched Sputnik 1 only five years later. Von Braun helped the U.S. Army launch Explorer 1 shortly thereafter. By 1960 he was with NASA, where he became the chief architect on Saturn V-the rocket that sent Neil Armstrong and the Apollo 11 crew to the moon.
So, several conspiracy theories have circulated linking UFOs to Nazi Germany. The German UFO theories describe supposedly successful attempts to develop advanced aircraft or spacecraft prior to and during World War II, further asserting the post-war survival of these craft in secret underground bases in Antarctica, South America, or the United States, along with their creators.
But, still, there is no explanation for how did Nazis make such an advanced flying machine and how they gained such knowledge to build up those advanced air crafts.
According to some conspiracy theories, Nazis had stolen some ancient Hindu books including Vimana technology (Vimana are some epic ancient aircraft which are even mysterious today for further study).
So, did Hilter use such technology or did he have a relationship with extraterrestrial beings? Then why he didn’t win the war, is he still alive? those are some burning questions for us… and have no exact answers.
8. Area 51
On a remote portion of land along Groom Lake in southern Nevada, about 80 miles northwest of Las Vegas, Nevada, is a top-secret US military installation popularly known as Area 51 (land size about 37×40 km). Since the military started using the area in 1955, many conspiracy theorists have scratched their heads wondering: What exactly does the “51” in Area 51 refer to? The answer, apparently, has less to do with alien autopsies than with mundane naming conventions.
But the main question is, why this area, which the government only officially recognized in 2013, became designated as Area 51 isn’t exactly known, but diagrams from the 1960s refer to it as Area 51. It’s thought this number was used by the Atomic Energy Commission in its grid naming system for the land. Nearby is the Nellis Air Force Base, which has conducted “safety experiments” designated and numbered as Areas, e.g.: Area 13. According to the US government, area 51 is one of the highly secured lands for the testing of their highly advanced military weapons and extreme flying machines and also just a runaway for their test flights.
But is not accessible to the public and is under 24-hour surveillance. Area 51 employees reach the facility by way of airplanes.
As of today, Area 51 is visible on Google Maps. The only confirmed use of the installation is as a flight testing facility. During World War II, the US Army Air Corps used the site as an aerial gunnery range.
In 1955, the area was selected by the CIA as a testing site for the Lockheed U-2, a high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft. President Dwight D.Eisenhower authorized the testing, which was to be conducted under the code-name Project Aquatone. After the U-2 was put into service in 1956, Area 51 was used to develop other aircraft, including the A-12 reconnaissance plane, also known as Oxcart and the stealth fighter F-117 Nighthawk.
But the existence of Area 51 is accepted by the US government in the year of 2013. Why is that? It means there is something going deep inside it than we think. This leads people to introduce conspiracy theories related to UFOs and extraterrestrial life.
But it is not only just theories and ideas, there are so many UFO sightings around Area 51 and signs of extraterrestrial relationships happened inside it.
Bob Lazar’s Reveal of Area 51
The scientist, Robert Scott Lazar, said he had worked in the S-4 section of Area 51, a corner of the Nevada Test Site. There, he had read documents indicating the existence of ongoing research on an “anti-gravity reactor” for use in propulsion systems. He was astonished, he said, but he was even more shocked to be shown nine flying discs “of extraterrestrial origin” stored in a hangar. As part of the gravity-harnessing propulsion, the craft used an element that is still unknown on Earth, because it is “impossible to synthesize an element that heavy here on Earth… The substance has to come from a place where super-heavy elements could have been produced naturally.” From the recovered craft the U.S. government had collected some 500 pounds of the stuff.
Those were the words that came out from Lazar about mysterious Area 51. After Lazar’s revealing of Area 51 mysteries, several sub-conspiracy theories related to Area 51 had risen up quickly.
But, the US government discarded every single word told by Lazar and turned him into a liar by disproving his identity as a scientist and disproving his career as an engineer at Area 51. But there are some gaps and unconfirmed points forwarded by Lazar. Still, they have no explanations for that. Does the US government runs a vast coverup for this incident too?, no answers yet…
9 . Project BLUE BOOK
Project BLUE BOOK is the main revolutionary step for the confirmation of UFOs and extraterrestrial life.
Project BLUE BOOK contains a huge amount of UFOs sightings and related for further examinations.
From 1947 to 1969, a total of 12, 618 sightings were reported to Project BLUE BOOK. Of these 701 remain still “Unidentified”.
But the paradox is, a conclusion made after the termination of BLUE BOOK is there was no evidence indicating that sightings categorized as “unidentified” were extraterrestrial vehicles. But what about the 701?
Inside the BLUE BOOK, sightings were broken down into six different characteristics—color, number, duration of observation, brightness, shape, and speed and then these characteristics were compared between knowns and unknowns to see if there was a statistically significant difference.
The main results of the statistical analysis were:
- About 69% of the cases were judged known or identified (38% were considered conclusively identified while 31% were still “doubtfully” explained); about 9% fell into insufficient information. About 22% were deemed “unknown”, down from the earlier 28% value of the Air Force studies.
- In the known category, 86% of the knowns were aircraft, balloons, or had astronomical explanations. Only 1.5% of all cases were judged to be psychological or “crackpot” cases. A “miscellaneous” category comprised 8% of all cases and included possible hoaxes.
- The higher the quality of the case, the more likely it was to be classified unknown. 35% of the excellent cases were deemed unknown, as opposed to only 18% of the poorest cases.
On September 8, 1994, the Secretary of the Air Force, Sheila E. Widnall, announced that the United States Air Force had completed its study to locate records that relate to the alleged 1947 UFO incident near Roswell, New Mexico. Pro-UFO researchers claim that an extraterrestrial spacecraft and its alien occupants were recovered near Roswell in July of 1947 and that this fact was kept from the public. Finally, this project had closed by the US government in 1969 concluding that there are no any evidences for such extraterrestrial life and advanced technology beyond our limits.
9 . Classified documents officially released by the FBI about UFOs
Even though the US government concluded that there were no UFO cases they identified, the FBI released officially classified documents clearly saying that there was something really goes beyond our limits of knowledge and technology. In years 2020 and 2021, the FBI released 16 classified documents about UFOs and they really mentioned that with the name of UFO.
Here is the officially released document regarding the Roswell Incident.
Those are some classified documents regarding UFO sightings and their report.
10 . Footages released by Pentagon regarding UFOs
In the year 2020, the Pentagon officially released three short videos showing “unidentified aerial phenomena”, same as we called UFOs.
This is the screenshot of the video which was released by the U.S. Navy. On Monday, the Pentagon released three Navy videos that have driven speculation about unidentified flying objects for years, saying it meant to “clear up any misconceptions” about whether the unclassified footage was real or complete.
This is personified in the 2004 Nimitz encounter where two pilots spotted a white object shaped like a “Tic Tac”. The erratic craft reportedly responded to the pilots’ movements, before disappearing in a blink of an eye.
“We’ve got a few aircraft to our north here and he’s going around in circles, much higher altitude than us”. These were the original words that came out from the pilot who recorded that footage.
Any idea what they are?” pilot Mark Hulsey radioed in on August 18th while flying a charter jet off the Los Angeles coast. UFO sightings were reported by multiple pilots and captured on video in August and September, according to Hansen.
Finally, it is clear that the US government has done a great coverup for incidents like Roswell, BLUE BOOK reports, and so on. Does this mean that they are hiding something really mysterious from public attention about extraterrestrial life and UFOs?, and the overall collection of the United States and other governments doing the same job for the filtering of signs received by Aliens from ordinary people? Why do they do such a job, what is the reason…
Those questions are still haunted in our minds as we are extremely interested in extraterrestrial life and UFOs.
By Saumya Induwara Jayasinghe (SEDS UOC)
References:
- Air Force Declassification Office. (n.d.). Air Force Declassification Office > Top Flight Documents > Unidentified Flying Objects. https://www.secretsdeclassified.af.mil/Top-Flight-Documents/Unidentified-Flying-Objects/
- Yuhas, A. (2021, September 2). The Pentagon Released U.F.O. Videos. Don’t Hold Your Breath for a Breakthrough. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/28/us/pentagon-ufo-videos.html
- UFO. (n.d.). FBI. https://vault.fbi.gov/UFO
- Wikipedia contributors. (2023). Area 51. Wikipedia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_51
- Reilly, P. (2022, October 20). Several recent UFO sightings reported by pilots over the Pacific Ocean. New York Post. https://www.google.com/amp/s/nypost.com/2022/10/20/multiple-recent-ufo-sightings-reported-by-pilots-over-the-pacific-ocean/amp/
- Roswell – New Mexico, Alien & UFOs. (2009, November 9). HISTORY. https://www.history.com/topics/paranormal/roswell
- Byrd, D. (2023). EarthSky | Lenticular clouds look like UFOs. EarthSky | Updates on Your Cosmos and World. https://earthsky.org/earth/best-photos-beautiful-lenticular-clouds-around-the-world/
- Yahoo is part of the Yahoo family of brands. (n.d.). https://www.google.com/amp/s/sports.yahoo.com/amphtml/ufos-discovered-historical-paintings-114905870.html
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