1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:10,520 A fiery object streaks across six states and reportedly crashed lands near a small town 2 00:00:10,520 --> 00:00:11,520 in Pennsylvania. 3 00:00:11,520 --> 00:00:16,300 There was something down in the woods that was of great importance to our government 4 00:00:16,300 --> 00:00:21,360 military for the military to respond the way it did. 5 00:00:21,360 --> 00:00:25,840 In Spain, an amateur astronomer sees a bizarre glowing object from his rooftop. 6 00:00:26,360 --> 00:00:30,640 It's also picked up on radar in Portugal, sending the media into overdrive. 7 00:00:30,640 --> 00:00:40,000 It was impossible not to notice because everyone was talking about it. 8 00:00:40,000 --> 00:00:45,640 And in Vietnam, a U.S. military camp is plunged into darkness as a mysterious bright light 9 00:00:45,640 --> 00:00:47,200 appears in the sky. 10 00:00:47,200 --> 00:00:52,640 It couldn't have been anything that we could reasonably come up with that could do what 11 00:00:52,640 --> 00:00:54,840 it did. 12 00:00:54,840 --> 00:00:58,280 Does anyone know what these phenomena are? 13 00:00:58,280 --> 00:01:03,000 And do the governments of the world know more than they ever reveal to us? 14 00:01:03,000 --> 00:01:13,040 The answers may lie in the fascinating stories of UFO conspiracies. 15 00:01:13,040 --> 00:01:17,840 It's almost 50 years since the small, rural community became the center of a bizarre and 16 00:01:17,840 --> 00:01:20,600 controversial event. 17 00:01:20,600 --> 00:01:24,760 In the decades since, life has returned to normal here. 18 00:01:24,840 --> 00:01:29,520 But for many of the people in these parts, the events of that night are unfinished business. 19 00:01:34,760 --> 00:01:37,440 Kecksburg, Pennsylvania. 20 00:01:37,440 --> 00:01:40,560 December 9th, 1965. 21 00:01:40,560 --> 00:01:45,720 It's just getting dark when multiple witnesses see a fiery object race across the sky. 22 00:01:46,720 --> 00:01:52,720 Some report that as it flies overhead, it changes course. 23 00:01:52,720 --> 00:02:00,720 Ronnie Strubel is at home in nearby Greensburg when he spots the fireball. 24 00:02:00,720 --> 00:02:07,280 Ronnie's been a fireman for almost 40 years, but it's still the strangest thing he's ever 25 00:02:07,280 --> 00:02:08,280 seen. 26 00:02:09,280 --> 00:02:15,840 At that point in time, I would have thought that it could have been a plane, a pipe or 27 00:02:15,840 --> 00:02:25,840 cub or something like that that could have been on fire and went down. 28 00:02:25,840 --> 00:02:32,280 Whatever the object is, the news spreads that it has come down to the woods near Kecksburg. 29 00:02:33,280 --> 00:02:39,280 Meanwhile, factory worker Bill Weaver is driving near town. 30 00:02:39,280 --> 00:02:46,280 I was 19 years old, and at that age, you're out just riding around. 31 00:02:46,280 --> 00:02:51,280 Reports are coming in that something has come down to the woods northeast of town. 32 00:02:51,280 --> 00:02:56,280 The word got around that something had landed in Kecksburg. 33 00:02:57,280 --> 00:03:03,280 Bill turns his car around and races off to investigate. 34 00:03:11,280 --> 00:03:17,280 Almost 50 years on, this quiet country road still holds vivid memories for him. 35 00:03:17,280 --> 00:03:23,280 When I got here, it was almost dark, and we were looking down into the woods. 36 00:03:24,280 --> 00:03:28,280 And we could see that blue light. 37 00:03:28,280 --> 00:03:32,280 It was like a welder. 38 00:03:32,280 --> 00:03:36,280 We couldn't see from my advantage point exactly what it was. 39 00:03:36,280 --> 00:03:44,280 You could see that something went down through there, that the trees and the shrubbery was tore up. 40 00:03:45,280 --> 00:03:48,280 It's not long before people start gathering at the site. 41 00:03:48,280 --> 00:03:51,280 The news is spreading fast. 42 00:03:54,280 --> 00:04:00,280 Local radio station WHJB is inundated with calls from listeners. 43 00:04:00,280 --> 00:04:04,280 Stan Wall is the DJ on shift that evening. 44 00:04:04,280 --> 00:04:07,280 He still runs a radio station in the area today. 45 00:04:07,280 --> 00:04:13,280 All of a sudden, my phone line started to light up. People were calling in and saying, 46 00:04:13,280 --> 00:04:18,280 are you aware of something peculiar happening in Kecksburg, Pennsylvania tonight? 47 00:04:18,280 --> 00:04:23,280 The station's news reporter, John Murphy, grabs his tape recorder and heads to Kecksburg. 48 00:04:23,280 --> 00:04:27,280 He's not alone. Within hours, the state police and the military are on the scene. 49 00:04:27,280 --> 00:04:31,280 When Ronnie Struble arrives from Greensburg, he finds the roads blocked. 50 00:04:31,280 --> 00:04:43,280 We've seen a cackety type military men walking about as to whether they were army or navy or whatever we couldn't tell. 51 00:04:44,280 --> 00:04:50,280 Stan Gordon has spent the last 40 years researching the case. 52 00:04:50,280 --> 00:04:57,280 Various independent people have gone on public record and stated that soldiers actually stopped them 53 00:04:57,280 --> 00:05:01,280 and aimed their weapons at them to prevent them from going further down to the woods. 54 00:05:02,280 --> 00:05:07,280 Bill and the rest of the locals are moved away and the area is sealed off. 55 00:05:07,280 --> 00:05:12,280 Then the state police and the military come up. They told us that we had to move. 56 00:05:12,280 --> 00:05:19,280 They told me to move my car. And if that I didn't, they would confiscate my car. 57 00:05:26,280 --> 00:05:31,280 It's early evening by the time WHJB reporter John Murphy arrives at the scene. 58 00:05:32,280 --> 00:05:36,280 Like any good journalist, Murphy wants a closer look. 59 00:05:40,280 --> 00:05:47,280 Although he died in 1969, he described the events of that night to his colleague Stan Wall. 60 00:05:47,280 --> 00:05:55,280 He viewed it, but it was from a distance. And he said it was something that was a cone shaped for him. 61 00:05:56,280 --> 00:06:01,280 Some later accounts claim that Murphy gets close enough to take a series of photographs. 62 00:06:02,280 --> 00:06:06,280 But allegedly, he is stopped by officials. 63 00:06:06,280 --> 00:06:14,280 John did mention that some of the equipment that he had that he used that night were no longer in his possession. 64 00:06:14,280 --> 00:06:18,280 He said that they were taken away from him. 65 00:06:18,280 --> 00:06:26,280 Murphy then starts to interview witnesses and calls into his radio station to go live with the story. 66 00:06:28,280 --> 00:06:31,280 He said, Stan, you will not believe this. 67 00:06:31,280 --> 00:06:35,280 There is something happening out here tonight that is beyond question. 68 00:06:35,280 --> 00:06:40,280 He said something landed here in Kecksburg, Pennsylvania. 69 00:06:41,280 --> 00:06:49,280 Curiosity is further heightened when a truck reportedly leaves the area several hours later, carrying a large covered object on the back. 70 00:06:49,280 --> 00:06:57,280 What happened was they came in and took the object away, and the object was covered up with a tarp. 71 00:06:57,280 --> 00:07:00,280 And no one actually saw what was under that tarp. 72 00:07:01,280 --> 00:07:09,280 Yet, upon completion of their search, state police and military officials tell residents they have found absolutely nothing. 73 00:07:10,280 --> 00:07:18,280 As early as the next day, the official explanation comes out in the media that people had been mistaken, 74 00:07:18,280 --> 00:07:23,280 that nothing had been found. In other words, that there was indeed a search, but nothing was found. 75 00:07:23,280 --> 00:07:28,280 You just can't take the multitude of these people and say, well, nothing happened. 76 00:07:28,280 --> 00:07:31,280 It was just a fragment of your imagination. 77 00:07:32,280 --> 00:07:38,280 Bill, Ronnie and many of the other eyewitnesses suspect a government cover-up. 78 00:07:38,280 --> 00:07:43,280 Stan Gordon has spent decades trying to discover exactly what happened that night. 79 00:07:43,280 --> 00:07:51,280 There was something down in the woods that apparently was of great importance to our government military for the military to respond the way it did. 80 00:07:51,280 --> 00:07:54,280 But what was it? 81 00:07:54,280 --> 00:08:04,280 December 9th, 1965. People witness a bright object streak across the early evening skies of Pennsylvania. 82 00:08:08,280 --> 00:08:14,280 The Federal Aviation Administration received 23,000 copies of the paper. 83 00:08:14,280 --> 00:08:21,280 The Federal Aviation Administration received 23 reports from pilots about the fireball. 84 00:08:21,280 --> 00:08:26,280 A mystery object is reported to crash land near the small town of Kecksburg. 85 00:08:35,280 --> 00:08:38,280 Locals are kept out of the site. 86 00:08:38,280 --> 00:08:43,280 While the military and state police conduct a search. 87 00:08:53,280 --> 00:09:01,280 Officially, of course, the next day the report came out that nothing was found and in fact it was just a bright meteor in the sky that people had been mistaken. 88 00:09:02,280 --> 00:09:08,280 Witnesses Bill Weaver and Ronnie Strubel believe that what they saw that night was no meteor. 89 00:09:08,280 --> 00:09:13,280 Astronomer James McGay-Hey has spent his career watching the skies. 90 00:09:13,280 --> 00:09:27,280 Now it is a fact that on a daily basis all kinds of space debris, that is rocks, dust, crystals hit the Earth's atmosphere. Millions of these things a day. 91 00:09:28,280 --> 00:09:42,280 In the case of Kecksburg, you have a situation where people saw bright light in the sky and then many people in the towns of Kecksburg thought this had landed nearby and went out to look for it. 92 00:09:42,280 --> 00:09:46,280 But you have a classic case of a fireball meteor. 93 00:09:47,280 --> 00:09:58,280 Like the Chelyabinsk Meteor of 2013, the fireball in Pennsylvania was well documented by the scientific community and was spotted by multiple witnesses. 94 00:09:58,280 --> 00:10:04,280 When you have something very bright, very impressive, it always appears to be closer. 95 00:10:04,280 --> 00:10:12,280 The reality is that most of the time it's probably hundreds of miles away. It's not nearby. 96 00:10:12,280 --> 00:10:15,280 But Stan Gordon is not convinced. 97 00:10:15,280 --> 00:10:22,280 Now many of the people I've interviewed said that whatever this object was, it was moving relatively slowly. 98 00:10:22,280 --> 00:10:30,280 Indications are that it may change the direction along its path and when it came down into the woods, it did not come down at a higher rate of speed. 99 00:10:30,280 --> 00:10:32,280 But this came down almost like it was controlled. 100 00:10:32,280 --> 00:10:40,280 As far as it being a meteor theory, I don't think that's possible because of the way the pattern is now known that it came down. 101 00:10:40,280 --> 00:10:43,280 It was a zigzag pattern and meteors do not do that. 102 00:10:43,280 --> 00:10:49,280 Astronomer and science writer Professor Nigel Hennbest is familiar with how meteors behave. 103 00:10:49,280 --> 00:10:51,280 A meteor can't change directions. 104 00:10:51,280 --> 00:10:57,280 So when we have reports here that it seemed to go in a different direction, then that can't actually have happened. 105 00:10:57,280 --> 00:11:04,280 But on the other hand, there is a psychological effect that if you move your head while you're watching a meteor, the meteor can seem to change direction. 106 00:11:04,280 --> 00:11:05,280 And I've certainly seen that myself. 107 00:11:05,280 --> 00:11:09,280 If I have a bright shooting star, it catches the corner of my eye. 108 00:11:09,280 --> 00:11:15,280 And I turn my head around, swivele around, take a look, the meteor seemed to change its direction because my head is turning. 109 00:11:15,280 --> 00:11:21,280 But when some people report seeing on the ground that night, looks nothing like a chunk of space rock. 110 00:11:21,280 --> 00:11:28,280 Several witnesses independently give similar descriptions of the object, which they say landed in the woods. 111 00:11:28,280 --> 00:11:37,280 A number of local people went down into the woods and came across this large, metallic, acorn-shaped object, semi-buried in the ground. 112 00:11:38,280 --> 00:11:41,280 The object they saw appeared to be one solid piece of metal. 113 00:11:41,280 --> 00:11:44,280 There was no rivets, no weld marks, no seams. 114 00:11:44,280 --> 00:11:50,280 On the back of the object was this raised-up area, something like a rim or a ringed area. 115 00:11:50,280 --> 00:11:53,280 One witness actually calls it a bumper area. 116 00:11:53,280 --> 00:11:59,280 That was maybe about 8 to 10 inches wide and raised up on that surface with these unusual markings. 117 00:12:00,280 --> 00:12:08,280 And in fact, one witness, after seeing this, spent years in libraries trying to find what type of language might be similar. 118 00:12:08,280 --> 00:12:12,280 And he said the closest thing he could find was ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. 119 00:12:12,280 --> 00:12:17,280 A life-size model of the object today stands outside Kecksburg Fire Station. 120 00:12:17,280 --> 00:12:23,280 The model and the incident divide the town, with many people still reluctant to talk about it. 121 00:12:23,280 --> 00:12:27,280 People wanted to hush this up. It was like you were a communist. 122 00:12:27,280 --> 00:12:35,280 If you were talking about this, you were against your government, you know, if you even spoke about it. 123 00:12:35,280 --> 00:12:39,280 So most of these people said, hey, we're just going to keep our mouth shut, we're not going to get involved. 124 00:12:42,280 --> 00:12:49,280 One person determined to uncover the truth is local reporter John Murphy, one of the first people at the scene. 125 00:12:50,280 --> 00:12:54,280 Stan Wall worked with Murphy at WHJB Radio. 126 00:12:55,280 --> 00:13:00,280 John was going to do a documentary on what really went on in Kecksburg. 127 00:13:00,280 --> 00:13:07,280 And he was going to air the program, I think it was an hour program, that John had planned to put on the air. 128 00:13:07,280 --> 00:13:14,280 A few days before the show is broadcast, two men in suits turn up at the radio station demanding to see Murphy. 129 00:13:14,280 --> 00:13:19,280 Witnesses claim that these men identify themselves as government employees. 130 00:13:20,280 --> 00:13:28,280 They went into the newsroom. The newsroom was separate from the main studios in which I was broadcasting from. 131 00:13:28,280 --> 00:13:34,280 And the doors closed and John was in there with the military. 132 00:13:34,280 --> 00:13:51,280 John came in to me about maybe an hour or two after they left. He said, we have to pull this, we are not going to air the program. 133 00:13:51,280 --> 00:13:59,280 I asked him why and he said, let's just leave it at that, we're not going to do it. And don't ask me any more questions. 134 00:13:59,280 --> 00:14:06,280 Despite the visit from the two men, Murphy insists he was not pressured to change his program in any way. 135 00:14:07,280 --> 00:14:17,280 John was visibly shook up. I think he was scared really at that time, very scared to go divulge more into the story. 136 00:14:19,280 --> 00:14:24,280 Nobody knows what was said in that room. What did they have to hide? 137 00:14:24,280 --> 00:14:34,280 December 1965. A fiery object reportedly crashed lands near Kecksburg, Pennsylvania. 138 00:14:34,280 --> 00:14:41,280 Locals witness a large military presence and some claim to see a metallic object in the woods. 139 00:14:41,280 --> 00:14:47,280 In the mid 1980s, a Project Blue Book report on the Kecksburg event comes to light. 140 00:14:48,280 --> 00:14:54,280 The U.S. Air Force set up Project Blue Book in 1947 to investigate UFO sightings. 141 00:14:54,280 --> 00:15:02,280 By the time the project closes in 1969, they have over 700 reports classified as unidentified. 142 00:15:04,280 --> 00:15:14,280 During my search for documents on the Kecksburg case, the only official government document on the Kecksburg incident which is shown up was part of the Air Force Project Blue Book files. 143 00:15:14,280 --> 00:15:23,280 But there was one handwritten memo that really stood out and was very interesting and it indicated that a three-man team has been dispatched to investigate and pick up an object. 144 00:15:24,280 --> 00:15:27,280 But witnesses on the scene report a different story. 145 00:15:27,280 --> 00:15:31,280 There was a lot more military than just three Air Force personnel. 146 00:15:31,280 --> 00:15:39,280 Many, many people tell us about a rather large military presence of what appeared to be army, personnel and equipment. 147 00:15:40,280 --> 00:15:47,280 This apparent incompleteness of official accounts has led researchers to ask a simple but arresting question. 148 00:15:47,280 --> 00:15:50,280 Are the authorities hiding something? 149 00:15:50,280 --> 00:15:52,280 Did something fall from space? 150 00:15:52,280 --> 00:15:56,280 And does that mean its origin was extraterrestrial? 151 00:15:56,280 --> 00:16:01,280 Earth orbit is absolutely choppers with human material. 152 00:16:01,280 --> 00:16:08,280 So it's a little bit surprising perhaps to think that there might be human artifacts that re-enter the atmosphere. 153 00:16:09,280 --> 00:16:12,280 Dr. Alice Gorman studies man-made objects in space. 154 00:16:12,280 --> 00:16:15,280 She's one of the world's first space archeologists. 155 00:16:15,280 --> 00:16:19,280 There are millions of tiny fragments, literally millions. 156 00:16:19,280 --> 00:16:30,280 We have a huge range, an uncountable number of little bits of stuff ranging up to satellites that are tens of thousands of kilograms the size of houses and buses up there. 157 00:16:31,280 --> 00:16:41,280 In December 1965, NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, tracks Cosmos 96, a damaged Soviet spacecraft. 158 00:16:41,280 --> 00:16:46,280 The Cosmos 96 was a spacecraft that originally been designed to go to Mars. 159 00:16:46,280 --> 00:16:57,280 But they decided they would divert it for a Venus flyby mission, meaning that they would launch it towards Venus and it would fly by and make observations and then fly off into the rest of interplanetary space. 160 00:16:58,280 --> 00:17:03,280 But when they launched it, the actual platform started to break up and it started to re-enter the atmosphere. 161 00:17:06,280 --> 00:17:14,280 It plummets back to Earth, landing somewhere in North America on December 9th 1965, the same day as the Kecksburg event. 162 00:17:14,280 --> 00:17:20,280 Could the Cosmos 96 spacecraft be what the witnesses saw in Pennsylvania? 163 00:17:20,280 --> 00:17:28,280 For me, one of the things that's really fascinating about this case is the description that the people in Kecksburg gave of it as being acorn-shaped. 164 00:17:28,280 --> 00:17:35,280 Now you can go onto the web and you take a look at the early series of Venus probes that the Russians launched and they are acorn-shaped. 165 00:17:35,280 --> 00:17:40,280 I'm very intrigued about these reports of hieroglyphic lettering going around the base. 166 00:17:40,280 --> 00:17:44,280 Obviously, it's a natural object, you're not going to have any kind of lettering on it. 167 00:17:44,280 --> 00:17:52,280 But if they were maybe Russian Cyrillic script, then somebody in America not knowing the language, those perhaps could look like hieroglyphs. 168 00:17:54,280 --> 00:17:59,280 In 1965, Cold War tensions between the US and the Soviet Union were high. 169 00:17:59,280 --> 00:18:07,280 If the US did retrieve a piece of Russian space technology, it would have been a priceless piece of intelligence. 170 00:18:08,280 --> 00:18:14,280 Could it be that the Air Force intentionally released misleading information to cover up their find? 171 00:18:14,280 --> 00:18:18,280 I think the government would use any excuse to cover this up. 172 00:18:18,280 --> 00:18:26,280 For whatever their reason, I don't know exactly what their reasoning is behind the cover-up, but they're making up stories. 173 00:18:27,280 --> 00:18:30,280 But there's a snag in the Cosmos explanation. 174 00:18:30,280 --> 00:18:36,280 So there was the obvious presumption that maybe what they'd seen was the Cosmos 96 re-entering. 175 00:18:36,280 --> 00:18:43,280 However, all of the available data on its re-entry suggests that it actually had come back down about 13 hours earlier. 176 00:18:44,280 --> 00:18:51,280 The data also appears to show that the Soviet spacecraft broke up in the atmosphere over Canada, hundreds of miles from Kecksburg. 177 00:18:53,280 --> 00:19:01,280 With a question mark hanging over the Cosmos 96 theory, what happened in Kecksburg in 1965 remains unexplained. 178 00:19:01,280 --> 00:19:08,280 For almost 50 years, witnesses and investigators are frustrated by a lack of solid information from official sources. 179 00:19:10,280 --> 00:19:19,280 My feeling after interviewing many people and looking at this for many years is that, one, we're either dealing with some type of very secretive man-made space probe 180 00:19:19,280 --> 00:19:25,280 that has some type of re-entry control capability, or we're dealing with something that's extra-terrestrial. 181 00:19:26,280 --> 00:19:34,280 To date, NASA and the military insist that all that was seen by the people of Kecksburg that night was a passing meteor. 182 00:19:36,280 --> 00:19:46,280 I think it's something that's going to go on for many years until somebody's willing to give us information to back up what happened here in Kecksburg. 183 00:19:47,280 --> 00:19:50,280 Do I believe that something happened? Yes. 184 00:19:51,280 --> 00:19:58,280 I think that the people in the area are owed an explanation as to what happened that they were not crazy that night. 185 00:19:59,280 --> 00:20:06,280 To the people that say that nothing happened, I'll say to them either they weren't there or they're just plain out lying. 186 00:20:06,280 --> 00:20:26,280 A major capital city, home to three million people, and in 2004 the setting for a remarkable incident. 187 00:20:30,280 --> 00:20:31,280 Madrid, Spain. 188 00:20:36,280 --> 00:20:47,280 On the night of June 1st, amateur astronomer and science student, Jesus Merchan Ribera, is on the roof of his apartment building enjoying the fine weather and the clear night skies. 189 00:20:48,280 --> 00:20:55,280 I was preparing my equipment to do some photographs of a comet, but then a neat comet. 190 00:20:56,280 --> 00:21:05,280 It's while setting up to photograph the comet that Jesus sees what he initially assumes to be an ordinary aircraft moving from north to west. 191 00:21:06,280 --> 00:21:16,280 I looked at it just the same way as any other plane, but then it started to expel dust and to create a dust cloud in the sky. 192 00:21:16,280 --> 00:21:20,280 It was very large and like yellow. 193 00:21:21,280 --> 00:21:30,280 And then the object became to rotate, to turn over itself and to go upwards like in an erratic trajectory. 194 00:21:31,280 --> 00:21:35,280 And I started to get worried because I thought it was a plane crash. 195 00:21:36,280 --> 00:21:41,280 I was very scared because I think those people were about to die and I was witnessing that. 196 00:21:41,280 --> 00:21:44,280 And then the object appears to explode. 197 00:21:46,280 --> 00:21:54,280 That time I had my camera ready and I took the picture, the only picture that I managed to take. 198 00:21:55,280 --> 00:21:57,280 This is the image that he took that night. 199 00:21:58,280 --> 00:22:08,280 When the whole event was over, I found a friend of mine to have him check the news to see if a plane crash has happened. 200 00:22:08,280 --> 00:22:12,280 But we didn't find anything about that or about anything. It was like it never existed. 201 00:22:13,280 --> 00:22:17,280 But as it turns out, Jesus was not the only person to see the object that night. 202 00:22:18,280 --> 00:22:24,280 Over 360 miles away in Beja, Portugal, George Fernandez is out hunting. 203 00:22:25,280 --> 00:22:30,280 Around 11pm I finished hunting and headed back towards the truck. 204 00:22:30,280 --> 00:22:36,280 On my way back there, I looked towards the mountains and I saw smoke from something falling very fast. 205 00:22:37,280 --> 00:22:38,280 I got scared. 206 00:22:39,280 --> 00:22:43,280 I thought it was a plane that was about to crash. I watched it for a few seconds. 207 00:22:44,280 --> 00:22:48,280 Suddenly it stopped in the air and I saw a plane crash. 208 00:22:49,280 --> 00:22:52,280 I thought it was a plane that was about to crash. 209 00:22:53,280 --> 00:22:54,280 I watched it for a few seconds. 210 00:22:55,280 --> 00:22:59,280 Suddenly it stopped in the air and I saw a plane crash. 211 00:23:00,280 --> 00:23:07,280 It just hovered there. Still, a strong light came on as if there was an explosion inside the smoke. 212 00:23:08,280 --> 00:23:09,280 There was always smoke around it. 213 00:23:16,280 --> 00:23:24,280 Nearby, in the town of Algestrel, graphic designer Pedro Pinheiro also claims to see a bizarre phenomenon in the sky that night. 214 00:23:25,280 --> 00:23:32,280 I saw a triangular shape and in one of the corners there was a more intense light. 215 00:23:33,280 --> 00:23:39,280 It was a bluish-white colour and it was moving slowly at a constant speed. 216 00:23:43,280 --> 00:23:45,280 Pinheiro is astonished by what he's seeing. 217 00:23:46,280 --> 00:23:49,280 I got a bit scared. I'd never seen anything like that. 218 00:23:50,280 --> 00:23:57,280 So I called my brother and his girlfriend and they came running out and we just watched it in silence. 219 00:23:58,280 --> 00:23:59,280 Totally speechless. 220 00:24:01,280 --> 00:24:08,280 Being a graphic designer but not having a camera to hand, Pinheiro comes up with a novel way of documenting the incident. 221 00:24:11,280 --> 00:24:16,280 This is an illustration I made the next day and it shows what I saw in the first few moments. 222 00:24:16,280 --> 00:24:20,280 The very first time I looked up at it in the sky. 223 00:24:25,280 --> 00:24:29,280 It's not just ordinary citizens who say they witness the strange bright object. 224 00:24:30,280 --> 00:24:35,280 The sighting is also confirmed by radar, leading to an official study by the Portuguese Air Force. 225 00:24:37,280 --> 00:24:41,280 Francisco Morao Correa is a Portuguese UFO investigator. 226 00:24:41,280 --> 00:24:46,280 At least two different air bases in Portugal, Montigio and Beja captured the object on radar. 227 00:24:47,280 --> 00:24:53,280 And later also the civilian tower, air tower in Porto also captured the object. 228 00:24:54,280 --> 00:24:57,280 This official evidence sends the media into overdrive. 229 00:24:58,280 --> 00:25:01,280 Intense, white, surrounded by smoke, without sound. 230 00:25:02,280 --> 00:25:08,280 The 2004 sighting was widely spoken across all the media in Portugal. 231 00:25:08,280 --> 00:25:17,280 TV, newspapers, radios, because it was such a big event seen from the north to south. 232 00:25:19,280 --> 00:25:27,280 And as more photographs and accounts of the strange phenomenon surface, there is little doubt that something unusual passed through the skies that night. 233 00:25:28,280 --> 00:25:37,280 Some people were panicking. They called the Civilian Protection Agency, they called police departments, they called the fire departments. 234 00:25:38,280 --> 00:25:40,280 They called the police department because they wanted answers. 235 00:25:41,280 --> 00:25:43,280 Just what was it that people were seeing? 236 00:25:48,280 --> 00:25:58,280 Jesus Merchan Rubira, an amateur astronomer, sees a strange object over Madrid in 2004, which is witnessed by others across Spain and Portugal. 237 00:25:59,280 --> 00:26:01,280 He sees it when he's attempting to photograph a comet. 238 00:26:02,280 --> 00:26:08,280 But could it be that the object he saw was in fact the comet he was looking for? He just didn't recognize it. 239 00:26:10,280 --> 00:26:21,280 It wasn't possible at all that this object was in the comet I was looking for because the comet was in the other point of the sky, because the comet was very, very far away. 240 00:26:22,280 --> 00:26:24,280 So I was sure it wasn't the comet. 241 00:26:25,280 --> 00:26:31,280 With his interest in astronomy, it's hard to imagine that Jesus wouldn't recognize the comet he was looking for. 242 00:26:32,280 --> 00:26:34,280 So what else could the strange lights have been? 243 00:26:36,280 --> 00:26:40,280 Astronomer and science writer Professor Nigel Hennbest has noticed a vital clue. 244 00:26:41,280 --> 00:26:48,280 This object was also picked up on radar, which gives us an indication that it was launched from low down in the Earth's atmosphere, not something coming from extraterrestrial space. 245 00:26:49,280 --> 00:26:54,280 And based on the images and descriptions of the event, another theory emerges. 246 00:26:55,280 --> 00:27:02,280 There are other things that can cause a trail of light in the sky, in this case definitely going upwards, and that will be a missile being launched, a rocket or a missile. 247 00:27:03,280 --> 00:27:08,280 You see the bright ball of light from the rocket's exhaust and then a trail of the exhaust gases going out behind it. 248 00:27:09,280 --> 00:27:13,280 So could the object in the sky over Spain and Portugal really be a missile? 249 00:27:13,280 --> 00:27:16,280 Hard evidence has come to light that supports this theory. 250 00:27:17,280 --> 00:27:28,280 On the night of June the French actually launched a missile from a submarine off the coast of Brittany at M45C to ground missile. 251 00:27:31,280 --> 00:27:36,280 This communique from the French Navy confirms there was a missile test flight that night. 252 00:27:37,280 --> 00:27:46,280 They launched a missile targeted towards French Guiana in South America, so that missile launched from Brittany would have actually gone over both Spain and Portugal en route. 253 00:27:47,280 --> 00:27:50,280 But I think this case is pretty well sewn up, it was that particular missile. 254 00:27:55,280 --> 00:28:03,280 But despite the evidence for the French naval test, some of the people involved with the case refused to believe that what they saw was a missile. 255 00:28:07,280 --> 00:28:14,280 I don't think that even a missile is able to stop suddenly and then change direction and start going up. I don't think it's possible. 256 00:28:19,280 --> 00:28:28,280 From what I have seen of missiles on the news or in films, I don't think what I saw that night corresponds in any way to a missile. 257 00:28:29,280 --> 00:28:45,280 I did not see it. I cannot say based only on the several witness accounts. It's strange that it would be a missile. 258 00:28:46,280 --> 00:28:51,280 So in the face of what appears to be compelling evidence, why are some witnesses unconvinced? 259 00:28:52,280 --> 00:28:56,280 Could it be that what some people thought they saw was different to what actually happened? 260 00:28:58,280 --> 00:29:02,280 Dr. Boulotto is a neuroscientist who studies how we perceive the world around us. 261 00:29:04,280 --> 00:29:08,280 When we open our eyes, we never see the world that's really there. We can't. We're forever separate from that world. 262 00:29:09,280 --> 00:29:17,280 We only ever receive information from that world onto our senses, so onto our eyes, into our ears, onto our skin. That's the only information we get. 263 00:29:18,280 --> 00:29:25,280 So your brain can only ever use its history of experience to make sense of that information, to literally make sense. 264 00:29:25,280 --> 00:29:30,280 That then shapes our assumptions. So in a sense, we see what we believe. We see what our assumptions are. 265 00:29:31,280 --> 00:29:36,280 Which means some people might be more likely to think they've seen a UFO than others. 266 00:29:37,280 --> 00:29:41,280 So you can be self-priming. You can prime yourself to see something. We all know this to be true. 267 00:29:42,280 --> 00:29:47,280 So if suddenly you want to buy a car and you're interested in buying one particular car, you'll notice that car everywhere. 268 00:29:47,280 --> 00:29:54,280 Suddenly, your brain over biases the probability of those cars existing in the world, even though, of course, nothing's changed. 269 00:29:55,280 --> 00:29:56,280 It's just because you're noticing them all. 270 00:30:01,280 --> 00:30:07,280 Many times when I'm out in the fields, I wish that I could see a UFO. And it happened on that night. 271 00:30:09,280 --> 00:30:16,280 The point is that they're not crazy. Their brain is simply making a meaning based on what makes most sense. 272 00:30:17,280 --> 00:30:24,280 So they're giving it an interpretation that makes sense. What makes sense for them is specific to them. 273 00:30:25,280 --> 00:30:29,280 So it's not surprising some people believe that what they saw that night was not a missile. 274 00:30:30,280 --> 00:30:35,280 In the end, what a witness sees comes down to what they want to believe. 275 00:30:39,280 --> 00:30:45,280 The simplest explanation is usually the correct one. So for me, the case is closed. 276 00:30:45,280 --> 00:30:52,280 With this missile test, I am comfortable with this hypothesis. 277 00:30:55,280 --> 00:30:57,280 But not all cases are so easily explained. 278 00:31:00,280 --> 00:31:02,280 I think it came from the west and just stopped. 279 00:31:03,280 --> 00:31:11,280 And went up a ways, came down a ways, zigged back and forth a ways, and then it just went, I would say, at a 45 degree angle. 280 00:31:12,280 --> 00:31:14,280 Just gone that fast. 281 00:31:16,280 --> 00:31:21,280 Today, this corner of Southeast Asia is a tourist mecca. 282 00:31:22,280 --> 00:31:27,280 Sunseekers and backpackers flock to the miles of sandy beaches and luxurious resorts. 283 00:31:28,280 --> 00:31:32,280 But 50 years ago, the visitors were here for a very different reason. 284 00:31:35,280 --> 00:31:39,280 Not trained in what was then South Vietnam. 285 00:31:39,280 --> 00:31:43,280 Nha Trang, in what was then South Vietnam. 286 00:31:48,280 --> 00:31:53,280 Late June 1966, and America is deeply involved in the Vietnam War. 287 00:31:57,280 --> 00:32:03,280 By the end of the year, around 400,000 U.S. military personnel will be on the ground. 288 00:32:03,280 --> 00:32:08,280 The Air Force and Army bases at Nha Trang are vital footholds for U.S. operations. 289 00:32:09,280 --> 00:32:14,280 One of the American soldiers there at the time was Wayne Dao Rimpel, now a retired sergeant. 290 00:32:14,280 --> 00:32:20,280 I was in Vietnam from 1966 to 1967. I spent a year and a half there. 291 00:32:20,280 --> 00:32:26,280 The unit I was with was a supply company, and I was a truck driver in that supply company. 292 00:32:26,280 --> 00:32:34,280 And we drove from there to Cameran Bay to pick up supplies, and we delivered supplies up and down the coast. 293 00:32:34,280 --> 00:32:44,280 Dao Rimpel vividly remembers a remarkable event that occurred one evening as he joined a group of off-duty soldiers enjoying some R&R. 294 00:32:46,280 --> 00:32:52,280 It was 8.00, 8.30 at night, and it was a screen set up to show movies when we could get them. 295 00:32:52,280 --> 00:32:58,280 They were showing a movie, and I pulled the truck in and parked it right behind the last row of seats there. 296 00:32:58,280 --> 00:33:00,280 It was kind of like a drive-in. 297 00:33:01,280 --> 00:33:05,280 But the movie is about to get an unscheduled intermission. 298 00:33:08,280 --> 00:33:15,280 And that's when the generators went out, and of course we didn't realize anything else had gone out right away. 299 00:33:15,280 --> 00:33:24,280 It's not just their movie projector that stopped. Across the base, the generators are silent, and the backups aren't kicking in. 300 00:33:24,280 --> 00:33:29,280 Just everything within earshot, everything was dead quiet. There was nothing running. 301 00:33:31,280 --> 00:33:40,280 We just got up, started wandering around, and we realized some other stuff had stopped running, and there was a guy coming into camp with a Jeep, 302 00:33:40,280 --> 00:33:47,280 and his Jeep stopped at the middle of the road, and that's when we got wondering what the heck is going on. 303 00:33:49,280 --> 00:33:54,280 And the power outage isn't confined to the base. It's down as far as the eye can see. 304 00:33:55,280 --> 00:34:01,280 We realized everything else was out too. We could walk around the end of a couple of the tents, 305 00:34:01,280 --> 00:34:06,280 and look up on the mountain and see that there was no lights up there operating. 306 00:34:06,280 --> 00:34:09,280 So we figured something weird is going on. 307 00:34:11,280 --> 00:34:15,280 In the middle of the blackout, Dowrymple's tail gets even stranger. 308 00:34:18,280 --> 00:34:22,280 And it was just a minute or two after that when this bright light appeared in the sky. 309 00:34:25,280 --> 00:34:32,280 I think it came from the west, and just came right straight over, kind of about halfway between the mountaintop and where we were, 310 00:34:32,280 --> 00:34:40,280 and just stopped, and went up a ways, come down a ways, and did that a couple of times, and zigged back and forth a ways, 311 00:34:40,280 --> 00:34:45,280 and kind of looked like a white sun, if you can picture a white sun. 312 00:34:45,280 --> 00:34:57,280 It just lit up the whole area just like daytime from basically pitch black, and it just went, I would say, at a 45-degree angle. 313 00:34:57,280 --> 00:35:03,280 Just gone that fast, and things powered back up again. 314 00:35:06,280 --> 00:35:11,280 Could the blackout and this mysterious, silent, fast-moving light be linked? 315 00:35:12,280 --> 00:35:17,280 Nick Pope, formerly of the UK's Ministry of Defence, has studied the case. 316 00:35:17,280 --> 00:35:26,280 What was extraordinary about these nartrang sightings was the effect that the UFO seemed to have on equipment. 317 00:35:26,280 --> 00:35:35,280 It was as if all power sources at the military base were somehow adversely affected by this UFO. 318 00:35:36,280 --> 00:35:43,280 One vital record of this incident is written by Dalrymple himself. 319 00:35:43,280 --> 00:35:51,280 I had written home to my mother, and had told her, I don't know, a day or two later when I'd written home, 320 00:35:51,280 --> 00:35:57,280 you know, you're always looking for something to say besides what's going on, and I had told her about it. 321 00:35:58,280 --> 00:36:09,280 In this letter he documents the UFO sighting and actually sets out what he and probably hundreds of other people at the base saw. 322 00:36:09,280 --> 00:36:20,280 One of the other critical pieces of evidence comes from the National Archive and consists of a confirmation from the original base records 323 00:36:20,280 --> 00:36:26,280 that there were indeed blackouts that affected the base at this exact time. 324 00:36:27,280 --> 00:36:34,280 Dalrymple's letter suggests that he and his friends aren't the only ones rattled by the events that night. 325 00:36:34,280 --> 00:36:43,280 Sergeant Dalrymple describes how a plain load of senior officials flew in shortly afterwards to investigate. 326 00:36:44,280 --> 00:37:00,280 To me this is standard procedure. An investigation, not maybe into the UFO sighting, but certainly into the loss of power will have been ordered immediately. 327 00:37:00,280 --> 00:37:09,280 We talked about what it could have been and what it couldn't have been, and it couldn't have been anything that we could reasonably come up with that could do what it did. 328 00:37:10,280 --> 00:37:18,280 But it would appear that there was no investigation at the time into the connection between the blackout and the light that Dalrymple saw. 329 00:37:18,280 --> 00:37:27,280 We don't have a case file in the way that, for example, Project Blue Book documents a lot of the domestic US UFO sightings. 330 00:37:27,280 --> 00:37:38,280 The reason for this is, of course, there was a war going on. Investigating UFOs in the middle of a war when people are shooting at you is not high on the US military's priority list. 331 00:37:40,280 --> 00:37:48,280 Almost 50 years on, specialists have revisited Wayne Dalrymple's eye witness account in the hope of finally explaining the incident. 332 00:37:48,280 --> 00:37:57,280 Among them is Carolyn Crawford, Professor of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge, who has focused her attention on the strange light in the sky. 333 00:37:57,280 --> 00:38:07,280 There are many things that happen in the night sky that can look odd or unusual to people who are not familiar with what is up there. 334 00:38:07,280 --> 00:38:13,280 But Professor Crawford has found some key elements of Dalrymple's testimony difficult to explain. 335 00:38:13,280 --> 00:38:23,280 As soon as you hear that an object has been seen moving rapidly through the sky, you can immediately discount the idea that it could be due to one of the bright planets. 336 00:38:23,280 --> 00:38:27,280 They don't create any rapid motion, and so they can't possibly be the cause. 337 00:38:27,280 --> 00:38:36,280 There are, of course, transitory appearances of things that happen in the sky, and for example, a bit of space rock burning up in our atmosphere as a meteor is a prime example. 338 00:38:36,280 --> 00:38:46,280 But of course, as soon as you hear that an object is changing position in that motion, perhaps zigzagging, that does not fit what we understand from meteors. 339 00:38:47,280 --> 00:38:53,280 If not an astronomical object, could the light in the blackout have been caused by some kind of aircraft? 340 00:38:54,280 --> 00:38:59,280 David Higgins is a commercial helicopter pilot and an aviation safety expert. 341 00:38:59,280 --> 00:39:05,280 He has studied the nautrain case and wonders whether one of America's war planes could explain the strange light. 342 00:39:06,280 --> 00:39:16,280 The McDonnell Douglas Phantom was certainly an aircraft used during the Vietnam War, and that has two jet engines, both with wreaking to our afterburners. 343 00:39:17,280 --> 00:39:26,280 Now, an afterburner is a system where fuel is actually injected aft of a rear turbine jet engine to produce thrust, 344 00:39:26,280 --> 00:39:33,280 and this thrust is either used for takeoff, to achieve supersonic flight, or indeed for aerial combat. 345 00:39:33,280 --> 00:39:38,280 But the glow from a distant afterburner doesn't seem to tally with Dowrymple's report. 346 00:39:39,280 --> 00:39:47,280 The afterburner theories kind of on hold at that point, because the witnesses also say that the light was very bright and intense. 347 00:39:49,280 --> 00:39:56,280 The description of how bright the light was suggests a different piece of military hardware. Flares. 348 00:39:57,280 --> 00:40:04,280 The fact that eye witnesses on the ground say that it almost turned like daylight, the fact that the whole area was lit, 349 00:40:04,280 --> 00:40:11,280 points initially to the fact that it is some sort of illumination flare to actually illuminate an area of land beneath it. 350 00:40:12,280 --> 00:40:16,280 But even the flare theory is not a perfect match for the light in the sky. 351 00:40:17,280 --> 00:40:24,280 There were several witness reports saying that these objects were actually moving very, very quickly and zigzagging, 352 00:40:24,280 --> 00:40:29,280 and that obviously doesn't fall in line how we recognize a flare would behave. 353 00:40:30,280 --> 00:40:40,280 No one solution seems to fit, and no one can explain the blackout on the base, unless the light and the blackout are unrelated. 354 00:40:41,280 --> 00:40:45,280 It's very easy to link things together that are just purely coincidence. 355 00:40:46,280 --> 00:40:54,280 We may never know if the two phenomena were linked, but if so, it would certainly have posed some serious questions for the American military. 356 00:40:55,280 --> 00:40:59,280 I think what will have been in people's minds will have been two things. 357 00:40:59,280 --> 00:41:08,280 Firstly, is this just some sort of bizarre equipment malfunction, in which case you need to identify it and rectify it immediately. 358 00:41:09,280 --> 00:41:14,280 But a far more concern is the possibility that this was perhaps some sort of weapon. 359 00:41:15,280 --> 00:41:21,280 No weapon capable of the disruption described in Dalrymple's account has ever been documented. 360 00:41:22,280 --> 00:41:26,280 To this day, the not-trying sightings remain unexplained. 361 00:41:27,280 --> 00:41:34,280 For Wayne Dalrymple, he's had to accept that what he saw that night may always remain a mystery. 362 00:41:35,280 --> 00:41:39,280 I've never heard of whether any more incidences like that happen in Vietnam or not. 363 00:41:41,280 --> 00:41:44,280 I never heard of another one in Vietnam, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen. 364 00:41:45,280 --> 00:41:52,280 It was just another day in the fun zone.