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MUSIC

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November 7th, 2006, Chicago's O'Hare International Airport.

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On an overcast afternoon, an object suddenly appears over the tarmac,

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a craft that is not on the airport's flight schedule.

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During the rush hour at Chicago O'Hare Airport,

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which is one of the country's busiest airports,

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there suddenly appeared a metallic-looking disc about Gate C-17.

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The UFO was seen by pilots, mechanics and other airport personnel.

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These people who saw it knew this was not any kind of an airplane.

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Witnesses describe a large disc-shaped craft hovering approximately a thousand feet over the airport.

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There are eyewitness reports saying this UFO was between 20 and 80 feet in diameter

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and it was right out in the open, just sitting there in plain view for over five minutes.

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Nobody knew what to make of this.

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People started putting it through on the radios that somebody had seen this disc up above Gate C-17.

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There was also a manager from United Airlines who heard the chatter.

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She went out on the tarmac, looked up and she was able to see it.

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A United Airlines manager reports the UFO sighting to O'Hare's control tower.

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This is Sue from United. There was a disc out there flying around.

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What?

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There was a disc flying outside above Charlie's 17.

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A disc? Like a Frisbee?

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Like a UFO type thing.

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After several minutes, the UFO suddenly takes off.

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It was seen by everyone, baggage handlers, pilots, passengers,

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and then all of a sudden it shot up with such tremendous force,

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it punched a hole right through the clouds and you could see the blue sky.

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And then the UFO was gone, vanished into the sky.

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And with so many credible witnesses, this is a breakthrough sighting, right?

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Well, think again.

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As many as 12 United Airlines employees saw the UFO,

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but when they were debriefed the next day they were told not to talk about it.

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Are pilots and airline professionals who witness UFO events

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discouraged from revealing their stories to the public?

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If so, who is behind these cover-ups?

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And what secrets are they keeping in the unfriendly skies?

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The Mutual UFO Network, known as Mufan, is an independent organization

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not bound to any government.

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They investigate reports of UFO sightings from around the world.

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Over the past five decades, they have collected more than 70,000 files

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stored at a secure location known as Hangar One.

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Now, for the first time, Mufan is granting access to their fast archive.

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These are the files of Hangar One.

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Airline pilots spend hundreds of hours in the air each year,

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which places them on the front line of the UFO phenomenon.

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Is it possible they are encountering UFOs and not reporting them?

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What are they seeing?

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And why is the public not told about these events?

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The 2000s are the first to know about the UFOs

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and are told about these events.

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The 2006 incident at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport is just one example.

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On November 7th, 2006, at about 4.30 in the afternoon,

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we have an unknown object hovering over an airport,

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a major airport at Russia, an object nobody knew what it was,

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nobody knew where it came from, why it was there.

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It was not an airplane. This is obviously a dangerous situation.

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This event took place just five years after the 9-11 terrorist attacks.

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Airport security was at an ultimate high.

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We were having bomb squads come in to check unattended bags.

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Passengers were being searched almost bordering on harassment.

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Not only are they looking for conventional weapons,

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they're looking for exotic weapons like shoe bombs.

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They're looking for anything that's out of the ordinary.

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Even though that was the case and there was this serious safety problem,

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there was no official investigation that was conducted.

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In this time of heightened vigilance,

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why would authorities ignore such an incident,

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especially one that involves multiple witnesses?

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You've got at least 12 united employees,

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that is pilots, ground crew, wide range,

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who reported the same thing with remarkable consistency.

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They reported it to their superiors.

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We're told not to go any further with this.

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One of them broke ranks, reported it to the National UFO Reporting Center.

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That's how it got out.

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The Chicago Tribune breaks the story,

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encouraging more witnesses to come forward.

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Now, whether it was for concern for public safety

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or the public needed to know,

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at least six came forward to speak to the media,

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but only anonymously because they were afraid of repercussions.

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When the Chicago Tribune reporter contacted the United Airlines,

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the airline did not acknowledge that this event had even happened.

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The Tribune reporter received this response from United Airlines while on the phone with them.

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My concern is that people, that employees, are coming forward and talking to you,

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which we have not authorized, and we will not authorize.

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If there is a further investigation to be done, it is the FAH's job.

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So, why would an airline want to keep such a tight lid on this story?

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Well, when you start to look at these cases,

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it seems like the airline industry and the FAA are really dedicated

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to enforcing an unofficial code of silence when it comes to UFOs.

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Our culture and the industry we operate in puts a high value on a pilot's psychological makeup.

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It's at the very core of what we do.

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It must never come into question.

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Clearly, a pilot does not want to be thought of as having any psychological issues.

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It's really something that's just never discussed within the industry.

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The files contain numerous stories of pilots conflicted between revealing their encounters or keeping their jobs.

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Here's one case that illustrates the point.

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Captain Neil Daniels, a 35-year pilot with over 30,000 hours in the sky.

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March 1977.

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Captain Daniels is piloting a commercial flight from San Francisco to Boston

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when a bright object suddenly appears in the passenger plane's flight path.

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Captain Daniels and his co-pilot saw what they both described as a large, perfectly round, glowing ball.

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And it was hovering less than a mile in front of their plane.

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And whatever this thing in front of them was, it was acting aggressively.

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The plane makes a sudden left turn, one that is not under the pilot's control.

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This might have been electromagnetic interference. Who knows?

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But something about this UFO knocked the plane off course.

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The tower was radioing in. What do you think you're doing?

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It was chaos. And then it was over.

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Captain Daniels regained control.

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But the UFO continues to rapidly approach the plane.

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The blinding light flew alongside their DC-10 for several minutes,

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then shot away at a mind-numbing speed that they didn't even think was possible.

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The object disappears, and Captain Daniels safely lands.

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But he is concerned about coming forward with the story.

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Like any pilot, he was worried about what people will think of it.

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Well, they think he's crazy. But Captain Daniels knew what he and his flight crew saw.

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And eventually, he couldn't keep it to himself any longer.

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A few months later, Daniels is on a duck hunting trip with his boss.

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He tells him about this incident. And his boss' reply is,

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I'm sorry to hear that. Bad things can happen to pilots that report those type of incidents.

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Commercial airline pilots often speak of the stigma attached to the aircraft.

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They often speak of the stigma attached to reporting sightings.

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We talked about this. It was pretty much a guaranteed medical disqualification.

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Airlines didn't want pilots saying they'd seen flying saucers.

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It was pretty much a given. If you shut your mouth off about this stuff, you were going to lose your job.

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Because there's so much stigma and ridicule towards people who do talk about UFOs,

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it takes a tremendous amount of courage for any pilot or any aviation person

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to speak out about a UFO event.

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Hanger 1 contains numerous stories of pilots who experience frightening UFO encounters

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and decide to remain anonymous. But there are others who are willing to risk it all.

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After the two UFOs took off, a third one came.

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Captain Teruci described it as a white, flat light.

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It was matching his airspeed, altitude and direction.

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Eventually they witnessed a huge, what they described as a mothership.

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One pilot's decision to go public brings his world crashing down.

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The files in Hanger 1 chronicle over five decades of UFO sightings.

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Many of which come directly from airline pilots.

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One report documents an unidentified disk that hovers over Chicago's O'Hare International Airport

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and is seen by dozens of witnesses.

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And in 1977, a commercial flight is threatened by a UFO flying in its path.

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Millions of airline passengers fly every year.

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How many of them have a close encounter with a UFO without even realizing it?

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There's definitely a code of silence when it comes to the airline industry and UFOs.

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None of these pilots want to be the crazy UFO guy.

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You could be putting your reputation or even your entire career on the line

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if you report a sighting to the wrong person.

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MUFON files reveal that pilots who break this code of silence can face serious repercussions.

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The International Airport

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November 17th, 1986.

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Captain Kenji Tarachi pilots Japan Airlines Flight Number 1628 over the Arctic Circle.

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Captain Taruchi is a respected former fighter pilot with over 10,000 hours of experience.

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There's also a co-pilot and a navigator in the cockpit.

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They're transporting cargo to Alaska.

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Something in the distance catches the pilot's eye.

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Captain Kenji Taruchi noticed two points of light in the distance.

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He assumed that they were military aircraft.

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It was matching his airspeed, altitude and direction.

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They noticed that it was 10 miles away, but when they radioed to ground control,

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the ground control wasn't picking up anything on radar.

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Not only were these unidentified aircraft somehow able to elude radar detection,

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they also started moving in a really unexpected way.

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They stuck the dart all around the air.

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He even said they looked like a pair of cubs playing because they were moving at all incredible angles.

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The thing was flying as if there was no such thing as gravity.

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The UFOs then execute a dangerous maneuver.

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The one craft stations itself about 500 feet in front of the 747 and puts on its afterburners.

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Captain Taruchi can feel the heat from the afterburners as the object passed right over them.

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Taruchi and his crew just watched as the craft just sped away and disappeared at a point on the horizon.

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There's more to the story after the two UFOs took off, a third one came.

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Captain Taruchi described it as a white, flat light and it was matching his airspeed, altitude and direction.

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And eventually they witnessed a huge, what they described as a mothership,

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a huge kind of round thing with a rim around the center that had lights all around it.

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Absolutely massive as they described it.

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Captain Taruchi could actually look out the window and see all the detail of this massive craft.

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He described it being as large as two aircraft carriers.

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And these smaller objects were going in and out of it and it was just this dance that went on.

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We wondered and feared as to their purpose.

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At one point the pilot was trying to outmaneuver the objects that were flying around

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and he was making all these turns and he was communicating the whole time about it.

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The tower can now see these objects on radar.

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Concerned about the encounter, they offered to scramble military jets to escort Taruchi's plane.

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But unexpectedly, he turns them down.

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Even the F-15 with the newest technology had no guarantee of safety against the creature

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with an unknown degree of scientific technology.

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After nearly one hour, Captain Taruchi and his crew believed they have finally evaded the attack.

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We were relieved thinking the object may have left us but when we checked to our rear,

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the object was still there in exactly the same place.

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The spaceship was still following us, not leaving us at all.

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The UFO eventually disappears and Captain Taruchi safely lands the plane in Anchorage.

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He reports his encounter to the FAA, which is the largest aircraft carrier in the world.

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The FAA, which launches a thorough investigation.

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John Callahan at the time was the director of the Accidents and Investigations Bureau at the FAA.

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A very high position.

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He took the voice cockpit tape, which was the audio tape of the conversations,

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and put it together with the radar tape so that they were synchronized,

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so that you could see what was going on on the radar scope while listening to the conversation.

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And in doing that, you could see that the radar blips corresponded to the sightings that the pilots were reporting.

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So he had this video that he put together, and that's what was so powerful about it.

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The files report that within days Callahan receives an unexpected visit from the CIA.

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Callahan's team was ordered to present the radar reports and other evidence to the FBI,

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CIA, and President Reagan's scientific study team.

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Upon completing the presentation, according to Callahan, one of the CIA guys stepped forward and said,

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quote, this event never happened. We were never here. We're confiscating all this data, and you are sworn to secrecy.

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The audio recordings and evidence are allegedly confiscated, but there is one loose end. The pilot.

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Teruchi's report to the FAA clearly stated that he saw a UFO. No other explanation was possible,

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but he may have crossed the line when he'd discussed it with a local Japanese newspaper.

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Japan Airlines was not too happy with him, and even though he had an impeccable record, he was told to fly a desk.

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That's the expression they use when somebody is taken off piloting and put on a desk job.

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That happened to Captain Teruchi because he spoke out about this UFO case.

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There was once a time when airlines and the government used to take UFO reports very seriously.

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They'd actively investigate sighting reports by pilots, and pilots weren't punished for coming forward.

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One event in particular from 1952 was widely covered in the media.

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You had two pilots, William Nash and William Fortenberry.

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They noticed below them there was a squadron of eight UFOs in tight formation.

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This story got a lot of media attention, and Pan Am Airlines wasn't concerned with covering anything up.

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Inside Hangar One, MUFON files contained thousands of reports of UFO sightings from airline pilots around the world.

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But these encounters often remain unreported and uninvestigated by authorities.

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Is it because the pilots who report them can face severe consequences?

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However, an examination of the files reveals that this has not always been the case.

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During the 1950s, pilot UFO sightings were actually quite common, and in fact, in 1952 they were very common.

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That was a big year in general.

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July 14, 1952, 9 p.m.

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A Pan Am flight flies over the dark waters of the Chesapeake Bay, when the pilots notice strange activity below.

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July 14, 1952, you had two pilots, William Nash and William Fortenberry.

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They noticed below them there was a squadron of UFOs in tight formation.

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The pilots both described these craft in great detail.

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These UFOs all had an intensely bright, burning orange glow.

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They were flying in an echelon formation, which is a diagonal straight line.

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They were able to clock at speed due to the terrain, and they clocked it at an astounding 12,000 miles per hour.

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As the pilots watch these objects, the UFOs abruptly change course.

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And two more craft suddenly appear in the night sky, joining the formation.

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So now they saw 8 UFOs that were moving way faster than any known aircraft at the time,

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and the Pan Am pilots reported that the way these things were maneuvering, they had to be intelligently controlled.

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They wrote a full report on this.

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Then suddenly the lights on all the objects blinked out, and a moment later blinked on again with all of them climbing in a graceful arc.

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The pilots are observing these UFOs and they're zipping all over the sky at impossible speeds.

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These guys had no idea what was going to happen to them, wondering, are they going to crash into us, are they going to attack us,

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and then the UFO formation changed yet again.

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The UFOs climb above the plane, and their lights blink out one by one.

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This time, they do not reappear.

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So the flight crew saw this amazing event, and the pilots, Nash and Fortenberry, they're not your average witnesses.

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These guys actually knew quite a bit when it came to cutting-edge aircraft.

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Fortenberry served the World War II in the Air Experimental Unit.

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Nash also served in identifying experimental aircraft and submarines.

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The veteran pilots are stunned by their aerial encounter.

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We looked around at the sky, half expecting something else to appear, though nothing did.

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There were flying saucers, and we had seen them.

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Captains Nash and Fortenberry report the event to the airline and the military.

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So this is interesting to note, because if this incident were to occur today, the story would probably have ended there.

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But in 1952, we see that there was a very different, much more open and transparent attitude when it came to UFOs.

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This story got a lot of media attention, and Pan Am Airlines wasn't concerned with covering anything up.

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Pan Am releases a statement standing by their pilots' accounts, stating the disks obviously were not figments of their imagination.

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The United States Air Force took pilot sightings very seriously because pilots spend thousands of hours in disguise.

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They're trained observers, and when they report something strange like a UFO, they damn well pay attention.

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Incidents, like the Pan Am encounter, prompt the government to create an official UFO investigation unit.

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In 1952, Project Blue Book is founded to track reports from both military and commercial pilots.

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Project Blue Book was an investigative branch with two goals.

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One, scientifically analyze UFO data, and two, determine if UFOs could pose a threat to national security.

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Project Blue Book investigates thousands of UFO reports from airline pilots.

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There's a report about an airline pilot who's famous for debunking UFOs, until he winds up face to face with one.

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I saw what we thought was a brilliant meteor, and we expected to see it burn out with a customary flash, which pilots often see.

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All of a sudden, it darted back and forth, rising and falling, sometimes making 90 degree turns in an instant.

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After 30 seconds, the object stopped and it hovered in front of the plane.

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What happens when a UFO skeptic becomes a true believer?

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Could this be the proof that authorities are trying to hide?

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And later, a UFO reportedly strikes an airliner, causing a near disaster.

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Three miles from their landing approach, the pilots radioed that three objects had just intersected with their plane.

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Then there's a May Day call. The pilots reported that they had lost control of the plane.

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While another mid-air encounter has a more tragic outcome.

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MUFON files archived in Hangar One reveal that UFO sightings by commercial airline pilots were once taken seriously,

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and led to an official government investigation known as Project Blue Book.

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UFO pilot sightings continue throughout the 1950s, including one close encounter that turns a leading UFO debunker into a believer.

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November 14th, 1956. Captain W.J. Hull pilots' capital airlines flight 77 to Alabama.

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This was 1956, an era when there's a big surge in UFO sightings being reported by pilots, but Captain Hull did not believe in UFOs.

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Captain W.J. Hull, he was a true skeptic. He even authored an article for an airline magazine called the Obituary of the Flying Saucer.

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During the flight, Captain Hull and his co-pilot observe a bright light in the skies.

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They saw this light up ahead, and at first they thought it was a meteor, but then the object did something that no meteor can do.

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I saw what we thought was a brilliant meteor. It decelerated rapidly, just as any meteor does when entering the denser layers of the Earth's lower atmosphere,

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and we expected to see it burn out with a customary flash, which pilots often see.

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But the object suddenly changes direction.

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All of a sudden, it darted back and forth, rising and falling, sometimes making 90-degree turns in an instant.

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After 30 seconds, the object stopped and it hovered in front of the plane.

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So Captain Hull, this pilot who didn't believe in UFOs, suddenly found himself face-to-face with one.

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After several moments, the UFO resumes movement and darts away from the plane.

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Captain Hull stated the UFO shot out over the Gulf of Mexico, rising at the most breathtaking angle,

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and at such a fantastic speed that it diminished rapidly to a pinpoint and was swallowed up in the night sky.

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Obviously, after this, Captain Hull wasn't quite the skeptic he had been.

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He actually called in to report the sighting to the tower.

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But by 1956, in spite of Captain Hull's report, the effectiveness of Project Blue Book is becoming questionable.

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Project Blue Book was only charged with investigating the reports and deciding what this unknown thing was and is there a way to identify it.

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And if they could not identify it, then that's simply where it ended with Project Blue Book.

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They documented these UFOs flying around over our heads, but still, nobody was getting any closer to figuring out what these things were or where they came from.

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But rather than investigate them, we started to see UFO sightings ignored or ridiculed.

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Before we knew it, there was a stigma attached to pilots who reported UFO sightings.

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And from that point onward, its mandate was not to explain UFO sightings, it was to explain them away.

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Pilots in the late 50s were starting to feel more resistance within the status quo to them filing reports.

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In 1969, when the Air Force closed Project Blue Book, that was the end.

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People were kind of left out there to deal with this on their own.

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With Project Blue Book now closed, the government's official position on UFOs is that they do not exist.

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This is like an ostrich bearing its head in the sand.

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In less than 20 years, we shift from investigating this phenomenon to pretending that it isn't even happening.

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Hanger 1 files indicate that by the 1970s, the U.S. government's position on UFOs shifts from investigation to suppression, which is officially enforced by FAA rules.

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In Section 981 of their rules and regulations, they explicitly tell pilots,

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if you as a pilot are concerned over an unknown object actually endangering your life or the lives of your passengers due to a UFO,

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they still don't want you to report it to them.

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They actually say report it to local law enforcement authorities.

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So does that mean what?

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Like to the sheriff 30,000 feet below you in the town where this happens?

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What are these people going to do?

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So by the 1970s, UFO reports were being completely downplayed by the FAA.

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And this is especially interesting because during this same era in other parts of the world, we're starting to see some of the most well-documented modern UFO cases on record.

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Inside Hanger 1, MUFON archives contain thousands of UFO sightings by commercial airline pilots.

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But the files also contain reports from military pilots around the world who say they have aggressively engaged with UFOs in the air.

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The unfriendly skies include one Air Force dogfight over the Iranian city of Tehran.

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Iran has reported a wealth of UFO encounters, but none more notorious than the 1976 Tehran Air Force encounter.

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1976 Iran. Multiple witnesses observe an anomaly in the skies over the city of Tehran.

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Citizens on the ground started calling in reports of a diamond-shaped bright object in the sky. It looked kind of like a star only brighter.

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There are reports that this UFO was visible from over 70 miles away.

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The object is witnessed by an Iranian Air Force general.

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Fighter jets are scrambled to investigate.

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The planes went up and each one had two pilots in it. One of them was Parviz Jafari.

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He described this main thing, though, as this brilliant, brilliant flashing like a strobe light, he described it as.

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Red, orange, yellow, blue, green, all these colors just flashing like a gigantic strobe light and it just sat there.

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And so bright, he said that you couldn't see any body underneath it, any physical shape. You could just see these brilliant, brilliant, brilliant light.

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As the pilots approached the UFO, the situation quickly turns dangerous.

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As they got too close to the object, they would lose their equipment and then they would fly back.

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And it wasn't until they veered away that the plane and their systems came back online.

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The pilots approached again and this time when they got close to the UFO, it suddenly launched projectiles toward their jets.

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This diamond shaped object started sending out what he described as projectiles.

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They were round objects that came out from the main one and started zooming towards his aircraft as if they were going to hit him.

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And so Parviz Jafari and his co-pilot prepared their missiles to fire and defend themselves.

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And when they were just about to press the button to fire the missile, the missile systems would go out.

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It was almost as if somehow the object knew and when they were just putting on their button, out it went and that happened three times.

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And so here they were facing an apparently hostile UFO and they had no way to defend themselves.

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Their equipment kept failing. They couldn't rely on their own weapons.

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At this point they needed to get away from that thing. Captain Jafari tried to eject, but even that failed.

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The pilots execute evasive maneuvers and return to base.

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Parviz Jafari was then debriefed in a big meeting at the Air Force headquarters.

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At the time, Iran is a U.S. ally and invites an American Air Force representative to assist in the investigation.

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The American filed a very detailed document about the case describing everything that happened and that it had very high intelligence value

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and that it was really an example of why UFO cases should be studied and taken seriously.

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It came out that as the jets were landing, the objects buzzed the control tower and the control tower equipment went offline.

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So there was pretty strong evidence that whatever they were dealing with, it had the means to shut things down at will.

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Their jets, their radar and their communications.

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It's another event that has never been explained. We don't know what that brilliant object was.

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The Tehran incident suggests the possibility that UFOs can pose a real danger to pilots and aircraft.

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And if highly advanced military jets can be threatened, how safe are the skies for commercial flights?

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This jet was approaching the airport in a storm with thunder and lightning.

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Three miles from their landing approach, the pilots radioed that three objects had just intersected with their plane.

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Why would investigators ignore the most extraordinary detail in this case?

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A crash that resulted in 127 deaths.

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Music

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MUFON files held in Hangar One chronicle a history of pilots who report UFO sightings in our unfriendly skies

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and are met with resistance and obstruction, even when these UFOs might pose a threat to human lives.

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One recent file documents a reported mid-air collision over China.

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Music

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June 4, 2013. An Air China passenger flight departs Chengdu Airport.

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The Boeing 757 climbs at an altitude of 26,000 feet when all of a sudden they hear this big loud bang.

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After hearing the terrifying sound of metal hitting metal, almost immediately the pilots and passengers notice that something is very wrong.

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They have difficulty flying the aircraft so they had to turn it back around and land at the airport.

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And what they found totally shocked them.

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There is a massive dent across the plane's nose cone, as though the 757 collided with something in the sky.

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The passengers had to deplane and as they were exiting onto the tarmac, they all noticed that the front of the plane they were just on is totally caved in.

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Fortunately, a few of them snapped pictures.

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The airline conducts an investigation to determine what might cause this kind of damage.

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There was no other aircraft in the vicinity.

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The officials said that it was probably a flock of birds that hit the aircraft.

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But the possibility of a bird strike is quickly ruled out.

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According to the aviation herald, it couldn't have been birds because there were no traces of blood, feathers or any other kind of bird remains on the plane.

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Plus, the collision happened at 26,000 feet and birds don't fly that high.

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The inspection report notes that the plane may have collided with an unidentified object.

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Clearly, this plane collided with a foreign object.

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But if it wasn't birds and it wasn't another plane, then what was it?

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Was this air china flight struck by a UFO?

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The report says that this air china flight collided with an unidentified flying object.

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That, by definition, is a UFO.

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Despite the fact that this plane was impacted by something, it was still able to get safely back to the ground.

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But maybe next time, lives would be lost.

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According to other reports in the files, one such tragedy may have already occurred.

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April 20, 2012, Pakistan.

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A Buzha Air 737 jet approaches Bouteau International Airport, Islamabad.

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This jet was approaching the airport in a storm with thunder and lightning.

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Three miles from their landing approach, the pilots radioed that three objects had just intersected with their plane.

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Then there's a May Day call.

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The pilots reported that they had lost control of the plane.

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The plane goes down in flames, crashing into the town of Husseinabad, killing 127 passengers.

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An investigation later revealed that the plane's fuel tanks exploded during their approach.

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But seconds before this, the pilots reported three UFOs crossing over their plane.

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But no official explanation has connected these dots.

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The crash is officially blamed on weather conditions.

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While we can't be sure this mysterious triangle craft caused the incident,

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why would investigators ignore the most extraordinary detail in this case?

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A crash that resulted in 127 deaths.

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It seems that not one investigation has taken into consideration the pilots' reports of those three UFOs just prior to the explosion.

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You'd think that the authorities would want to know if these objects pose a real danger to our planes.

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Our authorities around the world continuing to withhold information on UFO encounters with airplanes.

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Even if UFOs might pose a real risk to the lives of pilots and passengers.

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There's no doubt that pilots are strongly discouraged from filing reports about UFO sightings.

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So they're left out to dry. They have nowhere to go.

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If they do file reports, they risk ridicule and repercussions for their jobs.

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If they don't, they're not contributing to the solving of the safety issue that is necessary within the airlines.

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The files in Hangar One clearly establish a pattern of pilots who continue to witness UFOs in our skies,

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but remain silent about the encounter.

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Are these pilots experiencing more UFO incidents than are officially reported?

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Next time you're on a plane, ask your pilot if they've ever seen anything unusual in the sky.

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They may have no one else they can tell.