1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:26,000 In 2 00:00:26,000 --> 00:00:36,000 2005 and 2006 documentary filmmaker Paul Kimball polled a select group of the world's leading UFO researchers. 3 00:00:38,000 --> 00:00:44,000 He asked each for a list of their 10 best UFO cases of all time. 4 00:00:47,000 --> 00:00:52,000 The cases were assigned point values, then averaged together. 5 00:00:53,000 --> 00:00:58,000 Over 70 UFO incidents from around the world received votes. 6 00:00:59,000 --> 00:01:09,000 At the end of the process, the following 10 incidents comprised the best evidence UFO cases of all time. 7 00:01:09,000 --> 00:01:16,000 The first case of UFO cases was the first case of UFO cases of all time. 8 00:01:17,000 --> 00:01:33,000 Though unidentified flying objects first gained a place in modern culture with Kenneth Arnold's sighting in 1947 and the thousands upon thousands of sightings ever since, the phenomenon itself was known long before that. 9 00:01:33,000 --> 00:01:41,000 From reports of airships in the late 19th century all the way back to biblical times. 10 00:01:42,000 --> 00:01:49,000 It appears to me that one can make a good case that there's nothing new about flying saucers. 11 00:01:50,000 --> 00:01:59,000 Earthlings have observed strange things flying in the sky that weren't birds, if well before we were flying airplanes or balloons, what else was flying in the sky besides birds? 12 00:01:59,000 --> 00:02:04,000 The history of this thing seems to go back if not hundreds, thousands of years. 13 00:02:05,000 --> 00:02:13,000 We have portraits painted back in the 1400s and 1300s and before that Japanese wood carvings and so on depicting these things. 14 00:02:14,000 --> 00:02:22,000 I don't know, it's pretty hard to blow it off when you see these things and they look pretty much the same as what everybody's reporting now. 15 00:02:23,000 --> 00:02:27,000 Did they know something? We didn't know back then or did they assume something we don't assume now? 16 00:02:29,000 --> 00:02:45,000 Of all the artistic portrayals of what may be UFOs from the pre-1947 era, perhaps the most important can be found in a wood carving of an incident that occurred in 1561 in Nuremberg, Germany. 17 00:02:46,000 --> 00:03:00,000 At dawn on April 14th, 1561, the skies over Nuremberg were reportedly filled with a multitude of objects, seemingly engaged in an aerial battle. 18 00:03:01,000 --> 00:03:06,000 Small spheres and discs were said to emerge from large cylinders. 19 00:03:06,000 --> 00:03:24,000 The objects were described in the Nuremberg Gazette as behaving in much the same way as some modern UFO reports, in that some of the objects would emerge from a larger object or, as we might call it today, a mothership. 20 00:03:25,000 --> 00:03:34,000 But if these objects have been seen and recorded since antiquity, why have they become so much more prevalent in modern times? 21 00:03:35,000 --> 00:03:38,000 Stanton Friedman offers a theory. 22 00:03:39,000 --> 00:03:45,000 Everybody in the neighborhood is concerned about their own survival and security. That means keeping tabs on the primitives in the neighborhood. 23 00:03:46,000 --> 00:04:02,000 And since they all know that things change with time, thinking beings have a habit of learning how to do things better and differently, you check them out every once in a while, but only closely once they show signs of being able to bother you. 24 00:04:03,000 --> 00:04:06,000 Boy, the end of World War II was certainly such a time. 25 00:04:07,000 --> 00:04:16,000 Evidence of nuclear weapon explosions, rockets being fired, and powerful electronics, radar systems and all that sort of stuff. 26 00:04:17,000 --> 00:04:29,000 So suddenly, it became incumbent upon the powers that be in the local neighborhood to check us out, make sure we don't take our brand of friendship out there. 27 00:04:32,000 --> 00:04:49,000 Probably the only unexplained astronaut UFO case on record is the Skylab 3 case from September 20, 1973. 28 00:04:49,000 --> 00:05:07,000 In this case, three astronauts. Alan Bean, Jack Lausma, and the first scientist in space, Dr. Owen K. Garriott of Stanford University, cited a bright red flashing object outside their spacecraft. 29 00:05:08,000 --> 00:05:12,000 They observed it for 10 minutes and took four color photographs. 30 00:05:13,000 --> 00:05:22,000 Dr. Garriott measured the delay between when Skylab 3 went into the Earth's shadow and when the UFO went into the shadow. 31 00:05:23,000 --> 00:05:33,000 This gave him a distance measurement, which showed the object to be between 25 and 30 miles away and over 800 feet in diameter. 32 00:05:33,000 --> 00:05:40,000 Now that is extraordinary. No one has ever orbited an object over a thousand feet in size in space. 33 00:05:41,000 --> 00:05:47,000 In fact, at that time in 1973, the Skylab itself was the largest object ever put in orbit. 34 00:05:48,000 --> 00:05:54,000 I've spoken with a number of astronauts, and if you remember what the original requirements were, they had to be the best of the best. 35 00:05:55,000 --> 00:05:57,000 They all had to be pilots for one thing. 36 00:05:58,000 --> 00:06:03,000 And pilots are familiar with things in the atmosphere. They don't live very long if they're not. 37 00:06:04,000 --> 00:06:10,000 So yes, I'm very impressed with astronauts. Are they 100% perfect about everything? Of course not, but that isn't the question. 38 00:06:11,000 --> 00:06:16,000 Are they as dependable as anybody else? I'd say yes, more so than most. 39 00:06:17,000 --> 00:06:21,000 What makes this a great case is that you have the highest caliber of witnesses imaginable. 40 00:06:22,000 --> 00:06:29,000 You have photographic data, you have optical ranging data, and you have size data from a combination of all that. 41 00:06:30,000 --> 00:06:32,000 There's nothing like it in history. 42 00:06:39,000 --> 00:06:50,000 One of the hallmarks of a best evidence UFO case is one where there are multiple independent witnesses who all observe the same thing. 43 00:06:51,000 --> 00:07:09,000 On December 11th, 1996, in three separate areas along the Klondike Highway in Canada's Yukon Territory, dozens of witnesses observed a massive UFO that has been estimated to have been almost a mile in length. 44 00:07:10,000 --> 00:07:15,000 The Yukon case is emblematic of what a good case should be. 45 00:07:15,000 --> 00:07:29,000 I mean, sure, we'd like to have a piece of the craft. We'd like to have the crew member introduced for dinner, but multiple independent witnesses lasting a long time describing something that's way outside the norm. 46 00:07:30,000 --> 00:07:38,000 There's no way you can make it into a 747, for example, and big, but this was much, much bigger than a 747. 47 00:07:39,000 --> 00:07:52,000 The first sightings occurred at approximately 8.30pm at Fox Lake, where six witnesses reported seeing a huge UFO moving slowly across the frozen lake. 48 00:07:53,000 --> 00:07:58,000 They described a smooth and solid object that did not make any noise. 49 00:07:59,000 --> 00:08:11,000 Less than half an hour later, in the village of Pelly Crossing, a two-hour drive north of Fox Lake, other groups of witnesses observed the same UFO. 50 00:08:12,000 --> 00:08:23,000 Shortly thereafter, in the village of Carmax, four men in a truck and a family of five through their living room window also sighted the UFO. 51 00:08:23,000 --> 00:08:35,000 What did all of these witnesses see that cold December night in 1996? How could a UFO be so large? Stanton Freedman has a theory. 52 00:08:53,000 --> 00:09:02,000 They did a lot of data, careful investigation. Just a top-notch example of could UFO story. 53 00:09:03,000 --> 00:09:13,000 Did dozens of people in Canada's Yukon Territory see an extraterrestrial version of an aircraft carrier in December 1996? 54 00:09:13,000 --> 00:09:26,000 Ten years later, after thorough investigation, all that can really be said was that they saw a flying object that remains unidentified. 55 00:09:27,000 --> 00:09:46,000 Perhaps no UFO case is more worrying than one which appears to compromise national security, and there are few places more secure than a nuclear missile launch site, 56 00:09:47,000 --> 00:09:55,000 like the one near Melmstrom, Montana, at which Captain Robert Salas was stationed one morning in March 1967. 57 00:09:56,000 --> 00:10:13,000 Early in the morning, I get a call from the top-side flight security controller or guard, and he said that a few of the guards had been seeing some strange lights flying around in very strange ways. 58 00:10:13,000 --> 00:10:24,000 Making very rapid movements, stopping, making very sharp turns. So I just kind of discounted it and basically hung up on him. 59 00:10:25,000 --> 00:10:32,000 He calls back about five minutes later. This time he's very agitated. He's yelling into the phone, screaming. 60 00:10:34,000 --> 00:10:40,000 Sir, there's a large red glowing object that's hovering right outside the front gate. 61 00:10:41,000 --> 00:10:48,000 Lieutenant Salas ordered the guards to secure the perimeter, and he went to inform his commander. 62 00:10:49,000 --> 00:10:58,000 At this point, the warning lights in the control center went off, and the missiles shut down one after another. 63 00:10:59,000 --> 00:11:13,000 What made this event even stranger, if that's possible, was the fact that the exact same thing had happened one week earlier at Echo Flight, approximately 25 miles away. 64 00:11:14,000 --> 00:11:24,000 A lengthy investigation was conducted, but no positive cause for the shutdowns was ever found, despite extensive and concentrated effort. 65 00:11:24,000 --> 00:11:30,000 Missile officers are highly trained, engineering and science types for the most part. 66 00:11:31,000 --> 00:11:39,000 And the Air Police, these people go through special security schools. They have secret clearances, that sort of thing. They carry weapons. 67 00:11:40,000 --> 00:11:46,000 They're highly trained people, so I think it's very significant when people of this caliber make sightings. 68 00:11:47,000 --> 00:11:50,000 The tragedy is that we don't know all the details of the reports. They've been kept secret. 69 00:11:51,000 --> 00:12:03,000 I was there for another two years at Nelstrom. This incident was never brought up again in any of our briefings, and we were told not to talk to anybody about it. 70 00:12:04,000 --> 00:12:18,000 Over the years, it became more and more clear to me that what occurred was something that can't be explained as originating from Earth. 71 00:12:19,000 --> 00:12:26,000 I'm quite impressed with the Nelstrom case, not only because of the people involved, and there were quite a few people involved. 72 00:12:27,000 --> 00:12:41,000 It wasn't just a flyover by a flying saucer, or what went by. But the impact on the equipment that was there, I mean, it's kind of scary when you think of missiles being affected by a foreign power, if you will. 73 00:12:41,000 --> 00:12:51,000 And remember, it's one of a number of cases around sack bases. There was a whole wave of sightings. 74 00:12:52,000 --> 00:13:01,000 Indeed, over the past 60 years, there have been dozens of sightings in and around sensitive nuclear facilities. 75 00:13:02,000 --> 00:13:07,000 At least one person who was there is certain that there was a purpose. 76 00:13:07,000 --> 00:13:18,000 I'm convinced that we were visited by some extraterrestrial object, and that there was not only visited, but there was a definite message. 77 00:13:19,000 --> 00:13:24,000 And the message was, get rid of your nuclear weapons. 78 00:13:25,000 --> 00:13:43,000 One of the most extraordinary UFO encounters of the 20th century occurred in the tiny fishing community of Shag Harbor on the southern tip of Nova Scotia. 79 00:13:44,000 --> 00:13:54,000 On the evening of October 4, 1967, several residents of the village noticed a rather strange grouping of four orange lights. 80 00:13:55,000 --> 00:14:06,000 A number of witnesses watched these lights flash in sequence for several minutes, and then suddenly and rapidly dive in a sharp 45 degree angle toward the water surface. 81 00:14:07,000 --> 00:14:17,000 On hitting the water surface, the lights did not immediately disappear, but seemed to float on the surface, approximately one half mile from the shore. 82 00:14:19,000 --> 00:14:25,000 Several reports to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police prompted three officers to investigate. 83 00:14:26,000 --> 00:14:32,000 The reports indicate that they observed what the witnesses had, orange lights floating on the water. 84 00:14:33,000 --> 00:14:42,000 The officers, along with dozens of witnesses who had gathered on the shore, watched as the orange lights slowly changed to yellow, 85 00:14:42,000 --> 00:14:50,000 and the dome-shaped object appeared to move slowly across the surface of the water, leaving a yellowish foam in its wake. 86 00:14:51,000 --> 00:14:55,000 After about five minutes, the objects emerged beneath the water. 87 00:14:56,000 --> 00:14:59,000 The military was called in to investigate. 88 00:15:00,000 --> 00:15:10,000 Years later, UFO researchers Don Ledger and Chris Stiles uncovered the fact that the object that dove into the water's off Shag Harbor had been tracked. 89 00:15:12,000 --> 00:15:19,000 It had actually traveled underwater for a distance of about 25 miles to a place called Government Point, 90 00:15:19,000 --> 00:15:25,000 where the United States maintained a technically advanced military base for tracking submarines. 91 00:15:26,000 --> 00:15:31,000 At this point, the United States Navy also became involved in the investigation. 92 00:15:32,000 --> 00:15:38,000 As the Navy waited, the detection equipment picked up another object entering the area underwater. 93 00:15:39,000 --> 00:15:42,000 It joined the first object on the ocean floor. 94 00:15:45,000 --> 00:15:54,000 For nearly a week, the Navy vessels held their position over the UFOs, until the UFOs began to move towards the Gulf of Maine. 95 00:15:55,000 --> 00:16:05,000 The objects distanced themselves from the ships that pursued them, and then broke to the surface and shot skyward, where they vanished within seconds. 96 00:16:06,000 --> 00:16:18,000 What's different about the Shag Harbor incident, or the UFO incident, is that the witnesses, the lay people, claimed they saw an airplane crashing into the harbor. 97 00:16:18,000 --> 00:16:24,000 They thought it was an airplane, and it was the military who classified it as a UFO. 98 00:16:24,000 --> 00:16:30,000 Usually, it's the other way around people. The lay people called in and said they saw a UFO, and the military will say, 99 00:16:30,000 --> 00:16:40,000 well, it's just misinterpretation of a prosaic object, and the sky could be an airplane, or a planet, or a star, or something like that, or a satellite. 100 00:16:40,000 --> 00:16:44,000 So this was different. It was completely switched around from the usual concept. 101 00:16:45,000 --> 00:16:50,000 The Shag Harbor incident occurred over water, and then underwater. 102 00:16:51,000 --> 00:16:58,000 As the old saying goes, the oceans of the world hide a lot of history, and a lot of mystery. 103 00:17:00,000 --> 00:17:12,000 The difference with Shag Harbor, Nova Scotia, is that in 1967, the waters there may well have held a mystery that was literally out of this world. 104 00:17:13,000 --> 00:17:20,000 It's a history that the Canadian and American governments still keep secret, 40 years later. 105 00:17:31,000 --> 00:17:40,000 Kelly Johnson was the world's leading aircraft designer of his time, and at the time of his sighting, he was in the process of designing the U-2 spy plane 106 00:17:40,000 --> 00:17:50,000 for the Central Intelligence Agency. Johnson was on the ground with his wife in Agora, California, when, unbeknownst to him, 107 00:17:50,000 --> 00:18:01,000 a crew of his top flight test engineers and his chief aerodynamicists were aboard a Lockheed WV-2 aircraft flying over Long Beach, 108 00:18:01,000 --> 00:18:07,000 and they saw the same object at the same time from a different angle. 109 00:18:08,000 --> 00:18:14,000 These different angles allowed researchers to triangulate the location of the object with precision. 110 00:18:15,000 --> 00:18:23,000 The aircraft was flying to the northwest. Kelly Johnson and his wife were looking due west. 111 00:18:24,000 --> 00:18:33,000 For six to seven minutes, these two groups of observers saw a 200-foot-long, black, flying wing-shaped object 112 00:18:33,000 --> 00:18:39,000 hovering motionless over Santa Barbara Channel off the south coast of California. 113 00:18:43,000 --> 00:18:54,000 This object was at an altitude of roughly 15,000 feet. The aircraft flew directly towards it to see if they could get closer and get a better view. 114 00:18:55,000 --> 00:19:07,000 Meanwhile, Johnson started to observe the object with his binoculars, and he was able to see the object take off at high speed out over the Pacific, 115 00:19:07,000 --> 00:19:21,000 while his crew also observed the same thing from their different location. The object accelerated at about 130 Gs to 90 miles altitude until it disappeared. 116 00:19:22,000 --> 00:19:27,000 In his official report, Kelly Johnson stated, quote, 117 00:19:27,000 --> 00:19:37,000 I am now more firmly convinced than ever that such devices exist, and I have some highly technical converts in this belief. 118 00:19:37,000 --> 00:19:46,000 But there's one guy who ought to know what was flying around the country at that time. It would be Kelly Johnson, 119 00:19:46,000 --> 00:19:51,000 and he was certainly in a position to evaluate what he was seeing. 120 00:19:51,000 --> 00:19:58,000 And when he talks to somebody else, another one of his trusted people, and they saw the same thing. 121 00:19:58,000 --> 00:20:05,000 I don't see how anybody can throw that out. We're not talking about a two-second observation at three in the morning by the town drunk. 122 00:20:05,000 --> 00:20:12,000 We're talking about Kelly Johnson at the top of the aerospace design business. 123 00:20:13,000 --> 00:20:23,000 The United States Air Force concluded that Johnson and his crew had seen a lenticular cloud, despite the nature of the sighting, 124 00:20:23,000 --> 00:20:33,000 the quality of the witnesses, and the fact that the witnesses themselves specifically considered and ruled out that explanation. 125 00:20:34,000 --> 00:20:47,000 You would think that the government would perhaps reconsider its employment of a man who could not tell a lenticular cloud from a structured aircraft, 126 00:20:47,000 --> 00:20:55,000 but Kelly Johnson continued designing the most advanced and secret aircraft in the world for decades to come, 127 00:20:56,000 --> 00:21:03,000 none of which could move like the one he saw on December 16, 1953. 128 00:21:08,000 --> 00:21:16,000 In the search for top UFO cases, skeptics will often ask why there aren't better UFO photos available. 129 00:21:16,000 --> 00:21:25,000 In fact, there are UFO photos out there that have withstood expert analysis, the best of which come from McMinnville, Oregon, 130 00:21:25,000 --> 00:21:30,000 taken on May 11, 1950 by farmer Paul Trent. 131 00:21:32,000 --> 00:21:39,000 By analyzing the two photos it was possible to determine where Mr. Trent stood when he took the two photos, 132 00:21:40,000 --> 00:21:48,000 so if you imagine looking down from above, you can plot where he was standing and where the sighting lines went out. 133 00:21:48,000 --> 00:21:56,000 They said that this object moved to the left, moved southward as they were looking towards the west, it moved slightly between pictures. 134 00:21:56,000 --> 00:22:01,000 In fact, he was standing in one location for the first photo, looking to say this way, 135 00:22:02,000 --> 00:22:09,000 and then he moved a little bit to the north as this object was traveling along, he didn't want to get blocked by the nearby garage, 136 00:22:09,000 --> 00:22:15,000 so he moved a little bit to his right, and then he looked and took a photo that was in this way and the sighting lines crossed. 137 00:22:15,000 --> 00:22:22,000 Now the overhead wires can be positioned where they were, and the sighting lines did not cross under the wires, 138 00:22:22,000 --> 00:22:26,000 so if it was a model it wasn't hanging straight down under the wire. 139 00:22:27,000 --> 00:22:36,000 The two photographs taken by Paul Trent provided a stereoscopic pair of pictures that gave researchers the data necessary 140 00:22:36,000 --> 00:22:42,000 to determine and measure distances to objects within a short range of the camera. 141 00:22:42,000 --> 00:22:48,000 His altitude or the altitude of the camera also dropped by about a foot, 142 00:22:48,000 --> 00:22:55,000 so not only do you have a horizontal triangulation method, but you have a vertical triangulation method. 143 00:22:55,000 --> 00:23:05,000 Now when you combine those two methods of distance determination, you can determine the distance to every short range object in those photos, 144 00:23:05,000 --> 00:23:09,000 and the UFO model, if that's what it was, does not fit. 145 00:23:09,000 --> 00:23:17,000 It is not at the close range of those overhead wires that are about 15 feet away from the camera. 146 00:23:17,000 --> 00:23:21,000 They don't fit the locations and distance of the garage or the house, 147 00:23:21,000 --> 00:23:27,000 or the trees that were several hundred feet away in the background. 148 00:23:27,000 --> 00:23:35,000 There's no indication that they actually, this was a hoax, that the indications are totally that they actually saw some object 149 00:23:35,000 --> 00:23:38,000 flying past their farm and took two photographs of it. 150 00:23:38,000 --> 00:23:48,000 In the 1960s, the U.S. Air Force contracted an outside scientific study of UFOs to be conducted by the University of Colorado. 151 00:23:48,000 --> 00:23:55,000 The astronomer William Hartman concluded that this is one of the few cases in which all of the geometric, 152 00:23:55,000 --> 00:24:02,000 photometric, and photogrammetric aspects agreed that there was an object, extraordinary object, 153 00:24:02,000 --> 00:24:08,000 tens of meters in size and metallic in appearance about a mile away, 154 00:24:08,000 --> 00:24:15,000 which would seem to be consistent with an alien visitation, even though that's pretty hard to believe. 155 00:24:15,000 --> 00:24:26,000 Hard to believe, perhaps, but in the McMinnville case, it's hard to escape the conclusion that a picture really is worth a thousand words. 156 00:24:33,000 --> 00:24:45,000 One of the best documented and most famous encounters by military personnel with a UFO occurred between December 26 and December 28, 1980, 157 00:24:45,000 --> 00:24:54,000 in Rendlesham Forest, in the United Kingdom, near two airbases, RAF Bentwaters and RAF Woodbridge, 158 00:24:54,000 --> 00:24:59,000 which were at the time leased to the United States Air Force. 159 00:25:00,000 --> 00:25:11,000 At approximately 3 a.m. on the 26, a U.S. Air Force security patrol observed strange lights above the forest. 160 00:25:11,000 --> 00:25:17,000 A three-man security unit was dispatched from Bentwaters to investigate. 161 00:25:18,000 --> 00:25:26,000 All three men closed in on an object that resembled an aircraft on fire. 162 00:25:27,000 --> 00:25:36,000 The senior NCO, Sergeant Jim Peniston, claimed that he got close enough to see a structured object. 163 00:25:36,000 --> 00:25:45,000 There was then a silent explosion of light, and the object disappeared in a blur towards the coast. 164 00:25:45,000 --> 00:25:51,000 The following evening, strange lights were again seen in the forest. 165 00:25:51,000 --> 00:25:59,000 The deputy base commander, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt, took a squad out to investigate. 166 00:25:59,000 --> 00:26:04,000 What he saw that night continues to defy explanation. 167 00:26:04,000 --> 00:26:08,000 It appeared to be like an eye. That's the best way I can describe it. 168 00:26:08,000 --> 00:26:16,000 It had a dark center and appeared to be dripping something molten, so it was something pouring from it, like steel from a crucible. 169 00:26:16,000 --> 00:26:23,000 The object came even closer. It moved through the trees, going horizontal, up and down a little bit as it went. 170 00:26:23,000 --> 00:26:29,000 We were really in awe at this time, so we tried to get closer. We moved toward the object itself. 171 00:26:29,000 --> 00:26:36,000 The object receded out into the field. We watched it there in the field for a few minutes, and then it very silently exploded 172 00:26:36,000 --> 00:26:43,000 and broke into, I believe it was five white small spheres, and they just disappeared. 173 00:26:43,000 --> 00:26:47,000 While we're standing there in awe, one of the party members looks up and says, 174 00:26:47,000 --> 00:26:54,000 Look in the sky. We looked up, and there to the north were several objects, three objects that were elliptical, 175 00:26:54,000 --> 00:27:00,000 and they had multicolors. They were moving at high speed and sharp angular movements, 176 00:27:00,000 --> 00:27:06,000 as though they were doing a grid search or something. I really can't say what for sure, but they were moving about quite rapidly. 177 00:27:06,000 --> 00:27:09,000 We noticed to the south there were several objects there. 178 00:27:09,000 --> 00:27:16,000 One particular one approached us at very, very high speed, probably three to four thousand feet high, maybe a little more. 179 00:27:16,000 --> 00:27:21,000 Stopped almost directly overhead and sent a beam down to our feet. 180 00:27:21,000 --> 00:27:28,000 The interesting thing about the beam was the beam didn't radiate out. It was a steady beam, about 10, 12 inches in diameter. 181 00:27:28,000 --> 00:27:35,000 Not like a flashlight beam that spreads out as it goes. So obviously it wasn't a normal light beam, something more like a laser. 182 00:27:35,000 --> 00:27:41,000 We stood there in awe, quite concerned, but you know, it was a signalling us, warning us, trying to injure us. 183 00:27:41,000 --> 00:27:48,000 We really weren't sure what it was trying to do, but we were really concerned at that point, and just as suddenly as it appeared, it disappeared. 184 00:27:48,000 --> 00:27:56,000 Rengelschirm is Britain's best known UFO incident. Arguably it's one of the world's most important UFO cases. 185 00:27:56,000 --> 00:28:02,000 What makes it so important is that everything that makes a UFO case good happened here, all at once. 186 00:28:02,000 --> 00:28:08,000 Firstly, you had an incident which happened over a series of different nights, so it's not just a one-off. 187 00:28:08,000 --> 00:28:14,000 Secondly, the witnesses, most of them were military, so you've got trained observers. 188 00:28:14,000 --> 00:28:20,000 Thirdly, you've got trace evidence, and this is absolutely critical. The UFO landed. 189 00:28:20,000 --> 00:28:27,000 Markings were found in the forest floor, where this thing had come down on a tripod-like device. 190 00:28:27,000 --> 00:28:42,000 And critically, when the base personnel checked this area with a Geiger counter, the radiation readings were assessed by the Defence Intelligence staff at the Ministry of Defence as being significantly higher than background. 191 00:28:42,000 --> 00:28:55,000 It's just a very solid case in terms of all kinds of physical evidence, highly trained, reputable witnesses, everything you would want, except once again it's been muddied up. 192 00:28:55,000 --> 00:29:04,000 And once again, somebody in the government is lying about it and distorting the picture and hiding the truth. 193 00:29:04,000 --> 00:29:21,000 In the quarter-century since the Rendelschirm case occurred, Charles Halt, who retired from the U.S. Air Force as a colonel, has come to the same conclusion that there is much more to this case than meets the eye. 194 00:29:21,000 --> 00:29:28,000 Several years later, I started running into people that were involved that I didn't realize were on the edge or had picked up bits and pieces from here. 195 00:29:28,000 --> 00:29:42,000 For instance, one of the radar operators in the tire at Eastern Radar, who had Air Defense responsibility for that sector, told me that they actually picked up objects on the screen that night and had them on tape, but somebody took the tape. 196 00:29:42,000 --> 00:29:50,000 Then a couple of the young troops came forward and said, you know, after the incident, three people that were involved that were not in approach to craft were taken into a room 197 00:29:50,000 --> 00:29:56,000 and pumped full of drugs and hypnotized and debriefed, so to speak. 198 00:29:56,000 --> 00:30:06,000 And then I found out a mysterious C-141 landed soon thereafter with an unusual crew and all sorts of things. The aftermath is quite interesting. 199 00:30:06,000 --> 00:30:14,000 It's very obvious there was a great deal more interest than was ever publicly or openly admitted to anybody, including the senior officers on the base. 200 00:30:14,000 --> 00:30:28,000 To this day, no one knows for sure what happened in Rendlesham Forest between December 26th and December 28th, 1980, but one thing seems certain. 201 00:30:28,000 --> 00:30:49,000 Whatever these Air Force personnel saw on those nights was something more mysterious and perhaps otherworldly than the government would like us and even them to believe. 202 00:30:49,000 --> 00:31:05,000 At about 12.30 a.m. on September 19th, 1976, the Imperial Iranian Air Force Command Post at Tehran received several telephone reports from citizens of strange lights in the sky. 203 00:31:05,000 --> 00:31:19,000 The command post contacted General Nader Yusefie, Assistant Deputy Commander of Operations. General Yusefie took a look for himself and saw a very bright object larger than a star. 204 00:31:19,000 --> 00:31:27,000 At that point, he decided to scramble one F-4 Phantom jet from Cherokee Air Force Base in Hamadan. 205 00:31:27,000 --> 00:31:51,000 Everybody was worried about incursions by the Soviets flying aircraft over non-Soviet territories, so they had considered the possibility that this might be some incursion by the Soviets, but when they saw this multiple flashing light stuff going on, it made no sense to imagine that it would be the Soviets trying to covertly fly over Iran for whatever reason. 206 00:31:51,000 --> 00:32:01,000 You don't scramble if you're not worried, and once you've established it's not a Soviet airplane or something like that, why do you keep chasing? 207 00:32:01,000 --> 00:32:18,000 At 01.30 hours, the F-4 took off and proceeded to a point 40 nautical miles north of Tehran. It was noted that the object was of such brilliance that it could be seen up to 70 miles away. 208 00:32:18,000 --> 00:32:34,000 When the F-4 came to within about 25 nautical miles of the object, the jet suddenly lost all instrumentation and communications. The pilot broke off the intercept and turned away. 209 00:32:34,000 --> 00:32:48,000 When the F-4 had turned back towards its airbase, the aircraft regained instrumentation and communication. At 01.40 hours, a second F-4 was scrambled. 210 00:32:48,000 --> 00:33:03,000 Closing on the object at 150 nautical miles per hour and at a range of 25 nautical miles, the object began to move, keeping a steady distance of 25 nautical miles from the F-4. 211 00:33:03,000 --> 00:33:14,000 The pilot described the object as being flashing colors. It had some size to it, but he couldn't really see a size or shape because it was so bright, but it was flashing multiple colors at a high rate of speed. 212 00:33:14,000 --> 00:33:23,000 They all blurred together, he said. Certainly something unlike what we would expect to be in the skies anywhere to say nothing of over Tehran. 213 00:33:24,000 --> 00:33:38,000 While the object in the F-4 continued on a southerly path, a smaller, second object detached itself from the first and advanced on the F-4 at a high rate of speed. 214 00:33:38,000 --> 00:33:51,000 The pilot, believing he was under attack, tried to launch a sidewinder missile, but he suddenly lost all instrumentation, including weapons control and all communication. 215 00:33:51,000 --> 00:34:05,000 The F-4 pilot then took evasive action. The object fell in behind him at about four nautical miles distance for a short time, then turned and rejoined the primary object. 216 00:34:05,000 --> 00:34:19,000 The main object then flew away at several times the speed of sound. Once again, as soon as the F-4 had turned away, instrumentation and communications were regained. 217 00:34:20,000 --> 00:34:38,000 The fact that anybody can cause sophisticated military aircraft to lose important systems at their whim because the systems came back on, two different airplanes after all, that's scary. 218 00:34:39,000 --> 00:34:47,000 Because Iran was a close ally of the United States at that time, the Americans were called in and they helped in the investigation. 219 00:34:49,000 --> 00:35:06,000 The Defense Intelligence Agency report that was filed because of that investigation went to the Central Intelligence Agency, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Department of State, the White House. It was clearly considered important. 220 00:35:06,000 --> 00:35:15,000 The DIA report concluded the value of this information was high, timely, and of major significance. 221 00:35:16,000 --> 00:35:25,000 Quote, this case is a classic, which meets all the criteria necessary for a valid study of the UFO phenomenon. 222 00:35:26,000 --> 00:35:48,000 The best evidence UFO case of all time occurred on the 17th of July, 1957, when a United States Air Force spy plane had a close encounter with an unidentified flying object. 223 00:35:49,000 --> 00:36:15,000 The six-man crew of an RB-47 aircraft, which was equipped with state-of-the-art electronic countermeasures equipment, including three electronic intelligence stations, manned by highly trained Air Force personnel, known as ravens or crows, were literally tailgated by an object that continues to defy explanation to this day. 224 00:36:16,000 --> 00:36:25,000 This plane was flying out of Forbes Air Force Base, Kansas, and the crew was on a training mission to shake down the airplane and test out its components. 225 00:36:26,000 --> 00:36:51,000 This crew detected and recorded on wire recorders and tape recorders the electronic signals, radar-like in nature, that came from the same direction and location as the UFO, that followed them and then overtook them as they flew over Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, and Oklahoma for over two hours that night. 226 00:36:52,000 --> 00:37:06,000 The crew involved in the UFO incident was one of the top crews in the wing. They were instructors and evaluators in the Standardization Division and were highly respected. They had the most experience and the best training. 227 00:37:07,000 --> 00:37:22,000 The aircraft commander, in fact, Lou Chase, he made a landing after takeoff while the outboard engines froze up and broke off and broke the wing off there, and he brought the aircraft back in at a test of his skill as a pilot. 228 00:37:23,000 --> 00:37:36,000 And they back in, the three crows back there were the most experienced, and they trained all the new crows coming into the wing. Provenzano and McCleur trained me when I came in, as a matter of fact. 229 00:37:37,000 --> 00:37:47,000 Eventually, these guys were not on the same crew because they had so much experience and knowledge that they were put on separate crews and became three instructors and evaluators within the wing. 230 00:37:48,000 --> 00:37:56,000 As the RB-47 moved over Texas, a brightly lighted object appeared and began to follow the aircraft. 231 00:37:57,000 --> 00:38:07,000 Major Chase contacted Radar Station Utah at Duncanville, Texas, which confirmed that their radar had also detected the UFO. 232 00:38:08,000 --> 00:38:25,000 You have a very experienced crew of a very sophisticated airplane. Having something very strange happen. They see it, they pick it up on their electronics, the whole crew is involved, Radar is involved, it lasted for a long time. What more can you ask for? 233 00:38:26,000 --> 00:38:40,000 The UFO continued to play tag with the RB-47, which had left its scheduled flight path to pursue the object, until the aircraft began to run low on fuel and turned to head home. 234 00:38:41,000 --> 00:38:48,000 The UFO followed the aircraft until the signal finally faded as the crew approached Oklahoma City. 235 00:38:49,000 --> 00:38:58,000 In his report on the incident, the Director of Intelligence of the 55th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing stated that he had, quote, 236 00:38:59,000 --> 00:39:15,000 no doubt the electronic signals coincided exactly with visual observations by aircraft commander numerous times, thus indicating positively the object being the signal source, end quote. 237 00:39:16,000 --> 00:39:30,000 The Air Force, via Project Blue Book, without any real investigation, concluded that the sightings in Northern Texas were an ordinary jetliner. 238 00:39:30,000 --> 00:39:45,000 In doing so, they failed to explain the ongoing nature of the incident over several skates, the appearance and disappearance of the object, both visually and on radar and electronic countermeasures equipment, 239 00:39:46,000 --> 00:39:58,000 and how exactly the Utah Raider Station failed to distinguish between an airliner that was 600 miles away from the RB-47 and a UFO. 240 00:40:00,000 --> 00:40:10,000 Researcher Brad Sparks explains why the RB-47 case is the best ever, contrary to what the United States Air Force said. 241 00:40:10,000 --> 00:40:23,000 Why is it so important? Because it's the only time in history that radio or radar signals have been detected and recorded from a UFO, 242 00:40:24,000 --> 00:40:33,000 not just are using radars to bounce signals off a UFO, or actually detecting something that the UFO seems to be sending out. 243 00:40:34,000 --> 00:40:46,000 This indication of intelligence makes the Blue Book explanation even more absurd, as does the fact that this was not the only time an RB-47 encountered a UFO. 244 00:40:47,000 --> 00:40:51,000 Colonel Bruce Bailey recounts his own similar incident. 245 00:40:51,000 --> 00:41:00,000 We were flying a common cause mission, this was during the Cuban Missile Crisis, where we flew a mission every day to go down and take a good close look at Cuba, 246 00:41:01,000 --> 00:41:07,000 and to identify any sight that should fire on the U-2 or any other US vessel or aircraft. 247 00:41:08,000 --> 00:41:14,000 And on this mission, we would fly down to New Orleans and hit a tanker right over the Gulf of Mexico out of New Orleans, 248 00:41:15,000 --> 00:41:18,000 get filled up with fuel and then head on to Cuba. 249 00:41:18,000 --> 00:41:28,000 Well, on this mission, shortly after completing our air refueling, we had some aircraft or something come up, bright light and intercept us, 250 00:41:29,000 --> 00:41:32,000 and ground control was tracking it, they could copy it too. 251 00:41:33,000 --> 00:41:41,000 And it wasn't with us that long, probably a total of ten minutes, but that was broken in the middle with a gap of about two minutes when it went away. 252 00:41:41,000 --> 00:41:49,000 The difference in our experiences than the other crew was our equipment in the back end. All we got was noise, it just wiped us out. 253 00:41:50,000 --> 00:41:52,000 We didn't get any intelligence signals at all. 254 00:41:53,000 --> 00:42:01,000 When asked what it was that they encountered over the Gulf of Mexico, Colonel Bailey, a decorated Air Force veteran, 255 00:42:02,000 --> 00:42:08,000 can only offer the same conclusion reached by Major Chase and his crew five years earlier. 256 00:42:08,000 --> 00:42:15,000 Unidentified flying objects, what would explain it, I guess, because the crew up front could see it. 257 00:42:16,000 --> 00:42:18,000 We had no windows in the crow compartment, we couldn't see anything. 258 00:42:19,000 --> 00:42:26,000 But they could see it and what they saw jived with what ground control was reporting, and the navigator could also track it on his radar. 259 00:42:27,000 --> 00:42:33,000 And it all tied together, there was something there and it had a capability far greater than anything we could do. 260 00:42:34,000 --> 00:42:41,000 In the incident that you're talking about as well as the incident with my crew, the follow-on was pretty much the same. 261 00:42:42,000 --> 00:42:52,000 You had a very thorough debriefing and in that debriefing you were assured that you didn't see anything, you didn't hear anything, you didn't do anything, and that you would not say anything about it. 262 00:42:53,000 --> 00:43:00,000 I've heard of other crews and such running into a similar treatment after they reported a UFO. 263 00:43:01,000 --> 00:43:09,000 And it got to the point that sometimes you would see something that would actually be a UFO, meaning it's unidentified, but you wouldn't say anything about it, 264 00:43:10,000 --> 00:43:15,000 because if you started harping and talking about a UFO incident, that was a good way to end the military career. 265 00:43:16,000 --> 00:43:29,000 Apparently, as far as the United States Air Force was concerned, when its top crews who were charged with protecting the security of the nation in the midst of the Cold War, 266 00:43:30,000 --> 00:43:40,000 and who often came face to face with the enemy, saw something like this, they were really just mistaking it for a civilian airliner. 267 00:43:41,000 --> 00:43:58,000 If that was true, any sensible Air Force should have grounded those crews immediately, but instead they kept on flying, so long as they stayed quiet about what they really saw in the skies above us. 268 00:43:58,000 --> 00:44:09,000 When one examines the best evidence UFO cases of all time, it becomes clear that the UFO phenomenon is worldwide in scope. 269 00:44:10,000 --> 00:44:22,000 The 10 best cases you have just seen come from Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Iran. 270 00:44:23,000 --> 00:44:36,000 But if this had been a top 20 list, you would also have seen cases from Brazil, Australia, Japan, New Guinea, France, and New Zealand. 271 00:44:38,000 --> 00:44:43,000 This body of evidence compels us to ask the following questions. 272 00:44:44,000 --> 00:44:47,000 What should be done about the UFO phenomenon? 273 00:44:48,000 --> 00:44:50,000 And what does it all mean? 274 00:44:51,000 --> 00:44:59,000 For an answer, we turn to author and researcher Mac Tonys, who hails from Independence, Missouri. 275 00:45:00,000 --> 00:45:05,000 The conclusion that Tonys has reached is simple, but profound. 276 00:45:06,000 --> 00:45:15,000 We don't know what UFOs are, but the scientific community should be trying harder than it is to find out. 277 00:45:16,000 --> 00:45:24,000 Whatever UFOs might ultimately prove to be, and we might never find out, it seems to me that they are definitely with scientific consideration. 278 00:45:25,000 --> 00:45:33,000 If for no other reason than they affect how we think and how we perceive our universe, they apparently have been recurring throughout time. 279 00:45:34,000 --> 00:45:40,000 And they have infringed upon our belief systems to the point where we now think of the alien as something very specific. 280 00:45:40,000 --> 00:45:50,000 And if for no other reason than understanding how our mind reacts to the presence of a possible other in our midst, I think it's imperative that we understand UFOs and what they are. 281 00:45:51,000 --> 00:45:57,000 If on the other hand they are physical objects, or para-physical objects, which might be the case, and I don't think we have the proper vocabulary for that yet, frankly. 282 00:45:58,000 --> 00:46:06,000 I think that it's doubly important that we understand what these things are, because if they're real, if they're craft of some sort, if they're disinformation devices, 283 00:46:06,000 --> 00:46:17,000 then it seems to me that what they are doing is influencing the way we think, influencing our mythologies and our collective way of knowing ourselves. 284 00:46:18,000 --> 00:46:25,000 And I think that's a pretty sacred thing to be messing with, and it would certainly be who of us to understand what we're dealing with. 285 00:46:36,000 --> 00:46:38,000 Thank you. 286 00:47:06,000 --> 00:47:13,000 .