Radioactivity, Skeptics, and “But there is no proof”

I have previously responded to the caterwaul  of complaints that there is no scientific proof of the existence of UFOs by discussing the small matter of radar and its thousands of trackings. There are other items of proof. One is the evidence of electromagnetism and its impact on our machines driven entirely or in part by electricity. The other is its harmful impact on the bodies of humans who, accidentally or purposely, get too close. We start with the impact on machines. Once again we must be restricted to a mere few of the better and simpler of the literally thousands of examples.

Our first example occurred August 11. 1944. Ronald Claridge, wireless operator and holder of the Distinguished Flying Cross, was a crew member aboard an RAF Lancaster bomber returning to its base in England from a raid in France. When his radar screen went blank he thought it was due to electrical failure. Before he could report the problem to the plane commander, the commander shouted “What the hell is that?”

Claridge moved to the astrodome and saw a sight he never forgot.  On the starboard side a string of lights “stretched ahead and behind us for what seemed miles.” After a few seconds he could see that the lights were part of a saucer-like object. By comparison, the Lancaster was but “a dot on a sheet of foolscap paper” he later reported. The entire crew soon saw it shoot away, “just a flash of light and the vast size was gone in less than a second, without any noise or turbulence.” The radar then, again, functioned properly.

On August 28, 1945, less than three weeks after the Japanese surrender, a C-46 transport plane, bound for Tokyo, carrying 12 intelligence specialists, approached Iwo Jima at 10,000 feet. The crew spotted three tear-like objects, brilliant white that closed in and flew a course parallel with the plane. As they did, one of the two engines faltered and sputtered oil, and as the plane lost altitude, the navigation needles “went wild.” As the crew prepared to ditch, the object turned away, and the engine instantly returned to normal.

On October 29, 1969,  a Chilean navy transport ship, the Aguila was 350 miles off Valparaiso heading northeast at 20 knots. Its radar reported an airborne contact approaching at an incredulous 12, 780 mph .  At 12 miles distance, the single contact was now reported as six. Finally visual contact revealed one massive object, which was larger than the naval vessel itself, and five much smaller ones . When the large craft was about 300 yards away the vessel’s power cut out, and stayed out as the craft passed overhead. When it was  about 200 yards past the vessel, power returned.

Over a two year period, a number incidents bedeviled some of the United States’ most vital defensive military bases, namely, ICBM missile sites. First was the Minot AFB in North Dakota. During the night of August 24-25, 1966, UFOs were witnessed by many persons at threes widely separated sites and tracked on radar.   Radio transmissions 60 feet underground were interrupted by static as a UFO approached and hovered above the site for 15 minutes. It then climbed to 100,000 feet, at which time the static stopped. A North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) strike team soon reported that the UFO landed about 15 miles from the site. When the team was about 10 miles from it, radio contact was again disrupted.

On March 17,  the visitors turned their attention to another Intercontinental Missile site, namely the Malmstrom AFB near Great Falls, Montana.  Early that morning, maintenance  and security personnel reported having seen several disc shaped, glowing UFOs. Many of these worker were quite disturbed, one being so much so that he never returned to missile security duty.

At 8:30 AM. an alarm sounded indicating that one the missiles had become inoperable. Deputy Crew Commander Walt Figel was assured that no work had been performed that morning, but the security guard also informed him that a UFO had hovered directly over the missile site. Then each of the other 9 missiles mysteriously went off alert. Investigation quickly revealed the cause to be a Guidance and Control System fault, something that would be caused only by loss of both main and backup power. However there had been no interruption of power. Security Alert Teams reported that all personnel at the sites involved claimed to have seen UFOs  hovering. The crews finally brought all missiles back into ready condition, but they had been out of commission for 24 hours.

A very similar set of circumstances occurred at a base near Roy Montana before daylight of the same day.

On October 24, 1968, the UFOs returned for another visit to Minot. An instructor-copilot in a B-52 bomber, Bradford Runyon, Jr. at the time, approaching his base, was requested to check on something and was given a heading to fly. The ‘something’ turned out to be an object approaching from the bomber’s right rear at 3000 mph. It slowed and stayed with the aircraft on its left tail, following which the plane lost radio contact with the base and Runyon decided to land. About 10 miles from the base the object settled on the ground and radio contact returned. Runyon, obeying instructions to overfly the object, again lost radio contact. Investigation showed the object to be about five times the size of a K-135 tanker, one of the largest planes flying.

What was the purpose of the UFO crews in all of this? That was probably made clear when a 20 ton lid on one of the missile silos was found mysteriously lifted,activating inter-active alarms. Someone wanted to see that missile and obviously had the means to do so.

A garage owner in Exeter, New Hampshire, a Mr. Hesselton,was a confirmed skeptic despite the wave of sightings in his town in 1965. One day in that year, his skepticism was shaken when he saw a UFO overhead. Why was he looking overhead? Because his power saw quit working. The skepticism could not have been too deeply rooted. Another skeptic was  Julio Fernandez. This Spanish businessman left his home near Guadalajara one morning in 1978 to go hunting. He got out of his car and was shocked to see a couple of humanoids coming toward him on the road, some creatures  obviously not of this world. Said Julio to investigators: “It was like Karl Marx beholding God.” Where he alighted from his car was not the place he had intended. He got out because his car engine and audio cassette player had both quit working. It seems as though being a skeptic is no protection. 

On July 3, 1965, a huge flying disk was tracked on radar, sighted visually and photographed at an Argentine scientific station on Deception Island in Antarctica. It maneuvered and hovered over the base causing strong electromagnetic interference with radios and instruments used to measure the earth’s magnetic field. Scientists and officials at Lisbon, Portugal reported similar sightings that year and similar interference. 

The story goes on ad infinitum: Richard Dolan, in his “UFOs and the National Security State,” writes (p 204) that in November 1957 a UFO wave hit the United States, concentrating mainly in the South and Southwest, especially, Texas. An interesting feature of the sightings, he writes, “was the widespread reports of electromagnetic effects on automobiles. For two weeks in particular, newspapers reported many UFO cases that affected car ignitions, radios, and lights.” Not to mention the many similar incidents in Belgium, France, England, Russia, and a host of other nations. 

What is the chance that they are all coincidences? There is only one reasonable answer: There is no chance at all. There are simply too many of them. 

Not all scientists react with so little curiosity about such evidence as do the large majority of them, or show so little interest in the type of the obvious electromagnetism involved in UFO propulsion systems. Paul Hill, in his “Unconventional Flying objects,” is one such maverick. As he points out ( p 75),energy goes from one site to another only by sending a particle or a wave from the first to the second site. 

The electromagnetic effect on engines and gadgets can be serious. Much more so is the effect on the human body, something to consider in a later essay.