UFO Folklore Center

January 2000
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From: Bruce Maccabee <brumac@compuserve.com>
Rebuttal to Recent UFO Sightings Lack Credibility To Scientists

Below is my response to this article by Heather Ratcliffe.

PROSAIC EXPLANATIONS: THE FAILURE OF UFO SKEPTICISM
by
Bruce Maccabee

"In over 30 years of UFO investigation I have not studied a
single sighting for which I could not find a prosaic
explanation." -Paraphrase of a statement by Philip J. Klass

Could some UFOs actually be manifestations of Other
Intelligences (OIs)or Non-Human Intelligences (NHIs) such as
extraterrestrials (ETs), visiting the earth and interacting with
human beings? Or are all reports of such sightings simply
mistakes, hoaxes, or dreams of the hopeful believers? It all
comes down to explanation. If there were no sightings which are
richly detailed, credible, and yet unexplainable, the UFO
subject would be based totally on theoretical expectations, as
is the so-called Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
(SETI). SETI is based on the theory that we could detect
electromagnetic radiation, such as radio waves or light, that is
radiated toward us, intentionally or unintentionally, by
extraterrestrial civilizations.

If all sightings had reasonable explanations, then theoretical
speculations about ET intelligences visiting the earth might be
interesting but of little practical consequence. Ufology, if
there were such a thing in the absence of unexplainable
sightings, would consist of studying witnesses who, evidently,
failed to identify explainable (identifiable) phenomena or who
simply made up "tall stories" about ET visitation. "Ufological
science," if it existed under these circumstances, would consist
of psychology, psychiatry and perhaps sociology.

There are skeptics who believe that this is exactly what ufology
should consist of.

Noted UFO skeptic Philip J. Klass has provided perhaps the most
straightforward statement of the skeptic's position on UFO
sightings in his book UFOs: the Public Deceived (Prometheus
Books, Buffalo, NY, 1983, pg. 297), wherein he writes that the
"Occam's Razor" alternative to unexplained UFO sightings, is
this: "...roughly 98% of sightings are simply misidentifications
of prosaic, if sometimes unfamiliar, objects by honest
persons..(and) ... the balance, roughly 2%, are self-delusions
or hoaxes by persons who like to spin tall tales and become
instant celebrities." In other words, UFO reports are the
results of misidentifications, delusions, and hoaxes, period!
There is not one case for which there is no "prosaic
explanation." As evidence of this Mr. Klass has offered
prosaic explanations for a number of famous sightings. Of
course, Mr. Klass has not attempted to explain each of the
hundreds of thousands of sighting reports which have been made
over the last half century. However, he has proposed
explanations for a representative sample of reports which are
classified as "good" by most ufologists and, on this basis, he
has generalized his statement to apply to the bulk of the UFO
sighting reports.

Mr. Klass' statement is that he has provided "prosaic"
explanations for all the reports he has studied. A reader of
Mr. Klass' analysis would likely assume that each prosaic
explanation is, in fact, the actual explanation for a particular
sighting. At least, that is what the typically logical, but
uneducated (in the deep lore of ufology) and trusting reader
would infer from Klass' statement. It is also what the
generally skeptical scientific community and the news media
would infer from Klass' statement. Unfortunately, his statement
is wrong.

Klass would have the reader believe that he has correctly
explained all the sightings he has investigated. If he were
correct then his argument about misidentifications, hoaxes, and
delusions making up 100% of UFO sightings would be unassailable,
at least for the sightings which he has investigated. (One can
always imagine that some sighting(s) not investigated by Klass
is (are) unexplainable, but that's not the point of this
discussion.) However, in some cases he has offered prosaic
explanations which are demonstrably wrong. In other cases he
has proposed explanations which may not be provably wrong but
which are are, at the very least, unconvincing. (Note that in
the absence of confirmatory information, it may not be possible
to decide whether an explanation is correct, but it is possible
to decide whether or not an explanation is convincing.) Hence
Klass' claim is literally correct: he has offered prosaic
explanations for the sightings he has investigated. But the
logical inference that these are the correct explanations is
wrong: there are sightings which he has investigated but has
not explained. From the scientific point of view, it is not
sufficient to propose explanations that are incorrect.

To say that at least some of Klass' prosaic explanations, even
explanations for well publicized sightings, are wrong is a
strong statement. However, an even stronger statement can be
made: Klass' analysis has demonstrated that at least some of
the cases he has investigated have no prosaic explanations. Why
is this? Because Klass, having analyzed these cases carefully,
has proposed the only potential explanations that remain after
all other explanations have been rejected. That is, there are
no other potential prosaic explanations that make any sense.
Hence, when his proposed explanations are proven wrong there are
no remaining candidate explanations and the sighting becomes
that of a TRue UFO (TRUFO), which might be evidence of
OI/NHI/ET.

The Case of the Damaged Police Car

The first example of a case for which Klass' proposed prosaic
explanation is wrong, or, at best, unconvincing, is the rather
traumatic experience of police officer Val Johnson of Warren,
Minnesota. (See the above reference, page 223). Shortly after
1:30 a.m., August 27, 1980, as he was cruising the countryside
in his police car in an area of low population, he noticed a
bright light that he could see through the trees of a small
wooded area. Thinking it might be a landed airplane carrying
illegal drugs from Canada, he accelerated along a road toward
the area of the light. Suddenly this light moved rapidly toward
his car. He heard a noise of breaking glass and lost
consciousness. When he regained consciousness, he was leaning
forward with his head against the top of the steering wheel.
There was a red mark on his forehead which suggests that he
might have bumped his head on the wheel hard enough to render
him unconscious (he said he was not wearing his seatbelt at the
time). After regaining consciousness he called the police
station. It was 2:19 a.m.. He had been unconscious for about
40 minutes. He reported that something had "attacked" his car.

When another officer arrived on the scene a few minutes after
Johnson's report, he found Johnson's car nearly 90 degrees to
the road (blocking the road) and skid marks nearly 100 ft long.
Johnson was found in a distraught condition, in a state of
shock. He said he recalled seeing the bright light rushing
toward his police car and he recalled hearing breaking glass.
The next thing he recalled was realizing he was sitting with his
head on the steering wheel. He did not recall skidding to a
stop. He complained about pain in his eyes and was taken to a
doctor who could find no eye damage. He did not complain of a
headache.

Of particular importance is damage to the police car. One of
the two glass headlight covers on the driver's side had been
broken; there was a large crack in the windshield on the
driver's side; a plastic cover on the light bar on top of the
car had a hole in it; there was a dent in the top of the hood,
and two of the three spring-mounted antennas were bent 60 or
more degrees, with the bend occurring over a short distance
(i.e., sharp bends). Examination of the antenna surfaces using
a microscope showed that the insect matter ("bug tar") that
coated the antennas was "stretched" at the bend, but there was
no other disturbance of the insect matter. Evidently the
antennas had not been scraped or rubbed when they were bent.
Also, the electric clock in the car and Johnson's mechanical
wristwatch both read fourteen minutes slow, although Johnson was
certain he had set both before he had begun his nightly patrol.

The damage to the car was physical evidence that something
strange had taken place. Careful studies of the damage were made
by the police department and by scientists working with the
Center for UFO Studies. They could find no evidence or reason
to believe that Johnson had damaged his own car. They could
find no prosaic explanation for the sighting. Klass also
investigated the sighting. He spoke to several people who knew
Johnson and asked about his interest in UFOs. According to his
friends he seemed no more interested in UFOs than in numerous
other subjects. They could provide no reason to believe he
would intentionally damage his car to create a UFO incident. He
might "hide your coffee cup," one gentleman told Klass, but "as
far as we know, he's never told any untruths."

Klass concluded his discussion of the Officer Johnson UFO
sighting by offering two alternatives. He wrote:

"The hard physical evidence leaves only two possible
explanations for this case. One is that Johnson's car was
attacked by malicious UFOnauts, who reached out and hit one
headlight with a hammerlike device, then hit the hood and
windshield, then very gently bent the two radio antennas, being
careful not to break them, then reached inside the patrol car to
set back the hands of the watch on Johnson's arm and the clock
on the car's dashboard. These UFOnauts would then have taken off
Johnsons' glasses, aimed an intense ultraviolet light into his
eyes, and replaced his glasses, while being careful not to shine
ultraviolet on his face.

Or the incident is a hoax. There are simply no other possible
explanations."

Klass' amusing version of the "UFO/ET hypothesis" should not
detract from the importance of his statement that, "There are
simply no other possible explanations." In other words, if it
was not a hoax then there is no prosaic explanation for this
sighting. Perhaps Klass realized that the hoax hypothesis was
unconvincing at best and intentionally tried to make the UFO
alternative seem silly. (One envisions "little green men" or
"grey entities" molesting the police car and officer Johnson,
perhaps laughing gleefully as they hammered his car!)

The police department did not accuse officer Johnson of damaging
the police car. Yet, Klass' book, published about 3 years after
the incident, clearly implies that this event had to be a hoax
since it was clearly not a misidentification or a delusion
(recall that, according to Klass, roughly 98% are
misidentifications and the remainder are hoaxes or delusions).
Several years after the publication of the book I challenged
Klass to send a letter to the police chief of Warren, Minnesota,
along with a copy of his book chapter so that the police chief
would realize that he should charge Johnson with damaging the
car. So far as I know, Klass never did send such a letter and
officer Johnson has never been charged with damaging the police
car.

UFO In The Snake River Canyon

Klass is not the first to offer prosaic explanations. Dr. J.
Allen Hynek, who, in his later years, became a strong proponent
of UFO investigation (founder of the Center for UFO Studies in
1973), began his "UFO career" in 1948 as a strong
skeptic/debunker. His explanations of a number of UFO sightings
helped to set the tone of governmental UFO investgation in the
early years. One of his most unconvincing explanations was that
offered for the sighting by Mr. A. C. Urie and his two sons on
August 13, 1947. They lived in the Snake River Canyon at Twin
Falls, Idaho. According to the FBI investigative report of this
case, at about 1:00 p.m. Mr. Urie "sent his boys to the
(Salmon) river to get some rope from his boat. When he thought
they were overdue he went outside to his tool shed to look for
them. He noticed them about 300 feet away looking in the sky
and he glanced up to see what he called the flying disc." This
strange object was flying at high speed along the canyon which
is about 400 feet deep and 1,200 feet across at that point. It
was about seventy-five feet above the floor of the canyon (and
so more than 300 feet below the edge of the canyon) and moving
up and down as it flew. It seemed to be following the contours
of the hilly ground beneath it. Urie, who said he was at about
the same level as the UFO, so that he had a side view, estimated
it was about twenty feet long, ten feet wide and ten feet high,
with what appeared to be exhaust ports on the sides. It was
almost hat shaped with a flat bottom and a dome on top. Its
pale blue color made Urie think that it would be very difficult
to see against the sky, although he had no trouble seeing it
silhouetted against the opposite wall of the canyon. On each
side there was a tubular shaped fiery glow, like some sort of
exhaust. He said that when it went over trees they didn't sway
back and forth, but rather the treetops twisted around, which
suggests that the air under the object was being swirled into a
vortex. He and his sons had an excellent view of the object for
a few seconds before it disappeared over the trees about a mile
away. He thought it was going 1,000 miles an hour.

Hynek offered the following "prosaic explanation," which became
part of the official Air Force record on the sighting (see the
files of Project Blue Book): an atmospheric eddy. Why this
explanation? The object appeared pale bluish in color, like the
sky, and the trees were moving around as if a swirling wind went
over them. Hynek explained the blue color as a "reflection" of
the blue sky in the hypothetical atmospheric eddy. He offered
no explanation of how this eddy could appear to have the strange
"hat" shape, be traveling at about 1,000 miles per hour, how
there could be a fiery glow at one location on the side of the
"eddy" or why the eddy would appear as a solid rather than
transparent object.

With a little thought he could have realized that no atmospheric
eddy could reflect or bend light (as in a mirage) coming down
from the sky enough to redirect it toward the witnesses. An
eddy is a density inhomogeneity in the atmosphere which, in
principle, might bend light by a very small fraction of a
degree. However, for Hynek's explanation to work, the light
would have to be bent five degrees or more, far beyond anything
the atmosphere could do. Hynek's explanation is another failed
prosaic explanation. Even Hynek realized this and repudiated
his explanation years later (see The Hynek UFO Report, Dell Pub.
co, NY, 1977).

The "First" Sighting

The June 24, 1947 sighting by private pilot Kenneth Arnold was
not really the first recorded UFO sighting. However, it was
the first sighting to be publicly reported and it attracted
worldwide interest. It also attracted more than its share of
explanations. One of the scientists with an excessive urge to
explain was Dr. Howard Menzel. In his first book, Flying
Saucers (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass, 1953),
Menzel offered a blanket explanation for sightings that
occurred within the first five years of modern UFO sightings
(1947-1952): misidentified atmospheric phenomena including the
effects of the atmosphere on sunlight, unusual clouds caused by
particular wind patterns, and mirage effects (light ray bending
in the atmosphere). He suggested several different atmospheric
and cloud effects to account for the Kenneth Arnold's sighting.
In later books (The World of Flying Saucers, Menzel and Boyd,
Doubleday and Company, Garden City, NY, 1963; The UFO Enigma,
The Definitive Explanation of the UFO Phenomenon, Menzel and
Taves, Doubleday and Company, Garden City, NY, 1977) he offered
other atmosphere-related explanations and one non-atmospheric
explanation (water drops on the windshield of the airplane).

Mr. Arnold, a businessman and private pilot with over 4,000
hours of flying experience, had reported seeing nine
semicircular, thin (compared to the length), shiny objects in a
line flying southward past the western flank of Mt. Rainier and
"swerved in and out" of a chain of mountain peaks south of
Rainier. The objects were therefore about twenty miles east of
him (he was about twenty miles west and ten miles south of Mt.
Rainier and flying east at the time). He timed their flight
from Rainier, southward, to Mt. Adams, a distance of about
fifty miles. They crossed this distance in 102 seconds. Hence,
the direct interpretation of Arnold's sighting is that these
objects were traveling at about 1,700 mph. (This was about
four months before Yaeger exceeded the speed of sound in a test
aircraft, in October, 1947). In reporting the speed
calculation, Arnold arbitrarily reduced the speed considerably
to account for possible errors in his measurements. He
publicly stated that the objects were traveling at about 1,200
mph. Arnold reported that he first saw the objects as they
flashed or reflected the bright afternoon sunlight when they
were north of Mt. Rainier and last saw them (by their flashes)
as they passed Mt. Adams. The total sighting duration was two
and a half to three minutes.

Dr. Hynek was the first scientist to try to explain Arnold's
sighting.   Hynek used some details of the observation and an
assumption about Arnold's visual acuity to calculate an
approximate size of the objects. He obtained a large size (two
thousand feet long, one hundred feet thick).   He could not
accept this size as reasonable so he decided to ignore Arnold's
claim that the objects went in and out of the mountain peaks
south of Mt. Rainier. By ignoring this statement (essentially
implying Arnold had made a mistake in the observation) Hynek
was able to assume that the objects were much closer. Hynek
decided that Arnold saw large airplanes and he then estimated
that the distance was only about six miles.   This shorter
distance reduced the calculated speed to about 400 mph. Since
this speed was within the capability of military aircraft
Hynek identified the objects as "aircraft," thereby also
ignoring Arnold's description of the objects.   Recent analysis
of the Arnold sighting shows that Hynek made an incorrect
assumption about Arnold's visual acuity.   Had he made the
correct assumption he would have obtained a much smaller size
(under one hundred ft long and ten or so feet thick) and then,
perhaps, would not have rejected Arnold's distance estimate, in
which case he would have had to accept the speed estimate. Had
he accepted the speed estimate the history of theUFO subject
might have been different.

Hynek's work was done secretly for the Air Force in 1948 under
"Project Sign"(1948). (This was the first of three projects
for UFO sighting analysis. The other two were Project Grudge
[1949-1952] and Project Blue Book [1952-1969] ). About four
years later Dr. Menzel tackled Arnold's sighting. In his first
book, Flying Saucers, Menzel summarized the sighting and then
criticized the Air Force for accepting Hynek's explanation and
went on to propose a much more "obvious" solution. Menzel
wrote, "(Arnold) clocked the speed at about 1,200 miles an
hour, although this figure seems inconsistent with the length
of time that he estimated them to be in view. From his
previous statement they could scarcely have traveled more than
25 miles during the three minutes that he watched. This gives
about 500 miles an hour, which is still a figure large enough
to be startling." Note that Menzel did not tell the reader
that Arnold had timed the flight of the objects between two
points. Instead, Menzel invented a travel distance of
twenty-five miles, and implied that this distance was covered
in three minutes (180 seconds). Hence he was able to assign a
much lower, although "startling," speed of 500 mph.

Menzel went on to "solve" the mystery of Arnold's sighting:
"Although what Arnold saw has remained a mystery until this day
(1953), I simply cannot understand why the simplest and most
obvious explanation of all has been overlooked... the
association of the saucers with the hogback (of the mountain
range south of Mt. Rainier)... serves to fix their distance and
approximate size and roughly confirms Arnold's estimate of the
speed." (Note that Menzel, unlike Hynek, accepted Arnold's
distance estimate). Menzel then went on to suggest that Arnold
saw "billowing blasts of snow, ballooning up from the tops of
the ridges" caused by highly turbulent air along the mountain
range. According to Menzel, "These rapidly shifting, tilting
clouds of snow would reflect the sun like a mirror...and the
rocking surfaces would make the chain sweep along something
like a wave, with only a momentary reflection from crest to
crest."

This first explanation by a scientist with the reputation of
Dr. Menzel may seem slightly convincing, but only until one
realizes that (a) blowing clouds of snow cannot reflect light
rays from the sun (60 deg elevation angle) into a horizontal
direction toward Arnold's airplane and thereby create the very
bright flashes that Arnold reported in the same way that a
polished metal surface or mirror would, (b) there are no 1,200
mph or even 500 mph winds on the surface of the earth to
transport clouds of snow (fortunately!), (c) there are no winds
that would carry clouds of snow all the way from Mt. Rainier to
Mt. Adams (Arnold saw the objects pass Mt. Adams before they
were lost to his view), (d) Arnold flew eastward along a path
that took him south of Mt. Rainier minutes later and surely his
plane would have been strongly buffeted (and perhaps
destroyed!) by such high winds, but he reported, instead, very
calm conditions, (e) an atmospheric oscillation wave can't bend
or reflect light over an angle of nearly 60 degrees, which
would be necessary to make it appear as if the sun had been
reflected by objects nearly at Arnold's altitude, and (f) an
atmospheric oscillation wave with a "phase velocity" of 1,200
mph is unlikely, but in any case, when traveling southward its
crests would be oriented east-west, so if it reflected any
sunlight at all (highly unlikely), the reflection would be in
the north-south direction and not westward toward Arnold's
plane. Furthermore, even if such amazing atmospheric phenomena
had occurred, it is difficult to imagine how Arnold could have
failed to realize that he was just seeing light reflected from
snow blowing from the top of Mt. Rainier, especially since,
only minutes later, he flew along a path that took him about
twelve miles south of Mt. Rainier as he continued his trip east
to Yakima, Washington.

In case the first explanation wasn't sufficiently convincing,
Menzel offered "another possibility": he suggested that
perhaps there was a thin layer of fog, haze or dust just above
or just below Arnold's altitude which was caused to move
violently by air circulation and which reflected the sunlight.
Menzel claimed that such layers can "reflect the sun in almost
mirror fashion." Menzel offered no substantiation for this
claim. Perhaps he was thinking in terms of a "forward
reflection" from an atmospheric layer when the Sun is so low on
the horizon (and nearly along the line of sight to the
reflection) that the light rays make a "grazing angle" with the
layer. If so, then that explanation as applied to the Arnold
sighting makes no sense, since the Sun was at an elevation of
60 degrees and southwest of Arnold, who was looking east.
Furthermore, layers form under stable conditions and violent
air circulation would tend to break them up so there would be
no "reflections" of sunlight. Again, one wonders how Arnold
could have failed to notice that he was just seeing strange
effects of the atmosphere.

Ten years after his first book, Dr. Menzel offered his third,
fourth and fifth explanations in his second book, (The World of
Flying Saucers): mountain top mirages, "orographic clouds" and
"wave clouds in motion." To support the third explanation, he
presented a photograph of mountain top mirages taken by a
photographer many years earlier, and proposed by the
photographer as the explanation for Arnold's sighting. (This
is the "official" Air Force explanation. It appears in the
files of Projects Sign/Grudge/Blue Book along with Hynek's
explanation. These files are available to be reviewed on
microfilm at the National Archives.) The mirages appear as
vague images above the tops of the mountains. (Actually the
mirage is an inverted image of the top of the mountain.) These
mirages can be seen under proper atmospheric conditions
(requiring a stable atmosphere) when the line of sight from the
observer to the mountain top is tilted by less than one half a
degree above or below horizontal. Unintentionally (or
intentionally?) Menzel failed to report in his book the
following information in Arnold's report: as the objects
traveled southward, he saw them silhouetted against the side of
Mt. Rainier which is 14,400 feet high, much higher than the
altitude of the saucers. Since mountain top mirages occur
above the mountain peaks, these objects were far below any
mirage of Mt. Rainier. Of course, mountain top mirages stay
above the tops of the mountains, so the mirage theory cannot
explain the lateral high speed movement of the objects reported
by Arnold. Nor can a mirage explain the bright flashes of
light from the objects.

Menzel's fourth explanation was that Arnold saw orographic
clouds, which can assume circular shapes and often form in the
lees (i.e., downwind of) mountain peaks. The clouds would, of
course, be large but, as Menzel notes in his book, they "appear
to stand more or less motionless." The lack of motion, as well
as the lack of bright reflections, rules them out, so why did
he even mention them? Also, Arnold would have realized they
were just clouds as he flew past Mt. Rainier only minutes
later.

Menzel's fifth explanation, wave clouds, is comparable to his
first suggestion of "billowing blasts" of snow, except that
this time he proposed clouds of water vapor instead of snow.
In his second book, this explanation was supported by a
photograph of such a cloud taken by a newspaper photographer.
However, this explanation, too, fails to account for the very
bright reflections reported by Arnold, for distinct
semi-circular shapes, and for the high lateral speed. Again,
Arnold surely would have recognized a cloud as he flew past Mt.
Rainier.

In his third and last UFO book, The UFO Enigma, The Definitive
Explantion of UFO Phenpomenon, written in the early 1970's,
(just before Menzel died), he again discussed Arnold's sighting
and offered his sixth (and last) explanation: Arnold saw water
drops on the window of his aircraft.

To support this explanation, Menzel appealed to his own
sighting of "UFOs" that turned out to be water drops that had
condensed on the outside of the window of an aircraft in which
he was flying. They moved slowly backwards from the front of
the window. They were so close to his eyes as he looked out
the window that they were out of focus and he thought they were
distant objects moving at a great speed until, after a few
seconds, he refocused his eyes and discovered what they were.
In comparing his "sighting" with Arnold's, Menzel writes: "I
cannot, of course, say definitely that what Arnold saw were
merely raindrops on the window of this plane. He would
doubtless insist that there was no rain at the altitude at
which he was flying. But many queer things happen at different
levels in the earth's atmosphere."

Although no one would argue with Menzel's claim that "queer
things" happen at different levels of the atmosphere, this fact
is irrelevant. Had Menzel bothered to carefully read Arnold's
letter to the Air Force, he would have seen Arnold's statement
that he turned his plane sideways and viewed the objects
through an open window to be sure that he was getting no
reflections from window glass. (Fortunately, Menzel did not
propose water drops on Arnold's eyes!)

The "bottom line" is that neither Hynek nor Menzel proposed
reasonable explanations for Arnold's sighting, but that didn't
stop the Air Force from accepting one of the explanations
(mirage).

In 1947, shortly after Arnold's sighting and during the massive
wave of sightings that occurred between late June and the
middle of July, numerous explanations for the sightings of
Arnold and other withnesses were proposed. The first
explanation was that proposed by Arnold himself, namely that
saucers were some new secret aircraft of the United States Army
Air Force (the Air Force was still part of the Army).
However, very quickly (within days) after Arnold's sighting the
U.S. government publicly denied having any secret aircraft that
could account for saucer sightings. This denial was also
privately made to J. Edgar Hoover, the Director of the Federal
Bureau of Investigation (FBI) by General George Schulgen of the
Army Air Force. (The denial is in the FBI's file on flying
discs, the "real X file.") On the other hand, the Air Force
began to be worried over the possibility that the Soviet Union
had developed flying saucers to threaten the United States, but
this worry was not conveyed to the public.

Howard Blakeslee, the Associated Press Science Editor, wrote an
article that suggested "quirks of eyesight" could explain the
saucer mystery. He pointed out that anything looks round if it
is too far away to see details. "This law covers small things
seen nearby and large ones at great distances." He described
his own sightings of "flying saucers" which were bright
reflections from distant aircraft. "Planes at great distances
tend to look round when light is reflected from their sides,"
he wrote. He rejected the daytime meteor hypothesis (see
below) and the hypothesis that upper altitude ice crystals
formed "little round clouds." According to Blakeslee, "Nothing
published in science or atomic studies gives the slightest clue
to flying saucers unless the objects are aircraft."

Although I cannot now cite the reference, it is this author's
recollection that someone claimed that flying saucers were
actually "motes in the eye" which are small particles such as
blood cells which float in the fluid within each person's
eyeball. Motes are only visible when they move to an area
between the lens and the fovea; when they move out of this area
they "disappear." These particles, when viewed against a
bright sky, can appear to be dark objects far away and thus may
be mistaken for large objects at a great distance. Of course,
they move whenever the eye does and this can impart "unearthly
speeds" to the apparently distant, large objects. (Note: one
can be temporarily fooled by motes, but a simple test is to
turn the eye and stare in another direction. If the "object"
moves with the eye, then it was a mote.)

Dan Nelson, an attorney in Oklahoma City, published his
explanation in the "Daily Oklahoman" newspaper, July 29, 1947.
On July 30 the FBI contacted him to learn more about his
solution to the mystery. (Yes, the FBI did investigate
sightings in 1947, so, in a small sense the "X" files are
real!) According to Nelson all sightings from inside vehicles,
including airplanes, that had windows were reflections of
sunlight from shiny objects onto the windows. The light
reflected from these shiny objects was then re-reflected toward
the eye of the observer who was looking through a window and
could thus see the reflection silhouetted against the
background as if there were a shiny object "out there", far
outside the vehicle. Naturally reflections such as this could
do unnatural things such as pace a vehicle or suddenly
accelerate, make fast turns and even suddenly disappear.
According to Nelson, the vibration of a car, for example, would
give the objects "an appearance of rotating" and "reflections
(in the windows) caused them to appear flat or saucer shaped."
Moreover, "...any number of objects might be seen according to
the direction that the car is traveling and the number of
bright objects being reflected onto the window. He further
stated that these objects might be seen in an ordinary window
in a house according to the lighting conditions..." Mr. Nelson
told the FBI that he had not actually talked to saucer
witnesses but "he believed that these reflections plus the
excitement and hysteria caused by other reports has been the
basis for most flying saucer reports." (Classic armchair
theorist!!) Obviously Nelson's explanation could not apply to
Arnold's sighting, but Nelson didn't know that since Arnold's
full report was not published until many years later.

Recently some skeptics have proposed that Arnold saw a flight
of geese or pelicans heading southward at high altitude (about
9,000 feet). These birds were proposed because they are large
and can fly quite rapidly, perhaps up to fifty miles per hour.
Of course they would have been quite close to Arnold for him to
see them (an eighty foot long object at twenty miles has the
same apparent [angular] size as a four foot long object at one
mile).   Of course, these birds would not cause bright
mirror-like reflections of the Sun but, as skeptics often do,
they tried to convince people that Arnold incorrectly reported
the bright "flashing" of these objects (perhaps assuming that
Arnold got it wrong or simply lied about it). They also
overlooked the implications of Arnold's claim that he turned
his plane and rolled down his window to look at the objects
with no intervening glass. Since he was sitting on the left
side of the plane it is logical to assume, although Arnold did
not explicitly say so, that he turned the plane to the right
and rolled down the left hand window to look eastward toward
the objects. At this time he would have been flying
southward, roughly parallel to the flight path of the objects
for a short time.   Arnold did not report his air speed.
However, because of the type of aircraft he was flying his
speed would definitely have been above a stall speed of about
eighty mph and probably above 100 mph.   In any case he would
have realized immediately that he was gaining on these objects.
He would have realized that they were relatively slow compared
to his speed and certainly he wouldn't have estimated the speed
at anything like 1,700 miles per hour, or even 100 miles per
hour. In other words, had they been birds, even if
unrecognized by Arnold, he would have had no reason to think
that he was seeing radically new aircraft with extreme flight
capabilities, so his whole report would have to be a
fabrication.

In June, 1997, just in time for the Fiftieth Anniversary of
Arnold's sighting, San Francisco Examiner science writer Keay
Davidson published another explanation: meteors. The details
of the explanation are given in a small monthly publication by
Philip Klass which he calls the Skeptics UFO Newsletter
(SKUFON; issue #46 of July 1997). (One wonders why it took
fifty years for this explanation to be proposed. Could it be
that previous skeptics considered this to be just too
"outrageous?") Mr. Klass has been writing articles and books
purporting to explain UFO sightings over the last thirty years,
yet he has not previously "explained" the Arnold sighting. (His
first book, UFOs Identified, was published in 1968.)

According to Mr. Klass, writing in SKUFON, the new explanation
was published by Mr. Davidson after some research that was
"sparked by a conversation" with Mr. Klass. The exact nature
of this conversation was not reported, but one may imagine
Klass suggested that Davidson ought to check on the possibility
that Arnold saw meteors. According to Klass, after some
research Davidson discovered that "the number of meteor falls
reaches a peak around 3:00 p.m." in June in the northern
hemisphere. Arnold's sighting occurred at 3:00 p.m., June 24,
1947. Thus, according to Klass' article, the large number of
meteors detected in June lends support to the meteor
hypothesis. (The astute reader will note the careful,
"lawyerly" use of words: "lends support to" which is not the
same as "proves" or "is evidence for.")

Klass' SKUFON article mentions Arnold's statement that the
objects seemed bright and shiny as if reflecting the Sun. By
way of comparison and explanation, Klass cites a 6:00 p.m.,
June, 5, 1969 pilot sighting, which he claims turned out to be
several meteors, in order to point out that meteors, when seen
in the daytime, can look as if they are shiny metal. These
pilots saw the bright objects seeming to come toward them
(i.e., they were looking along the trajectory of the objects)
and thought they were looking at shiny metallic objects. The
pilots thought the objects were close, when in fact they were
over a hundred miles away.

Klass also points out that pilots can make errors (as if we
didn't know that!). The implication is that if the 1969 pilots
could mistake daytime meteors for UFOs, then perhaps Arnold did
also. However, the Arnold sighting was quite different from
the 1969 sighting.

Arnold reported seeing repeated bright flashes at varying time
intervals from nine objects traveling one after another, along
a roughly horizontal trajectory. Their altitude was about
6,000 feet (since they traveled at the level of the mountain
peaks south of Mt. Rainier). He realized that the flashes
occurred as the objects tilted steeply to the left and right as
they flew along a southward path. Arnold concluded that the
flashes were a result of reflections of light from the Sun
which was high in the sky to the west (behind him). The
objects flew southward past Mt. Rainier and, when they weren't
tilted, he saw them as thin dark lines silhouetted against the
snow on the sides of Mt. Rainier. When they were tilted but
not aligned with the Sun, so as to make a bright flash, he saw
them as semi-circular at the front with convex, somewhat
pointed rear ends (one object seemed to have a double concave
crescent shape at the rear).

By way of contrast, meteors which are traveling fast enough to
glow (or, actually, to cause the air around them to glow) do
not dim to the point of being "not bright" and then brighten
again, repeatedly. This is because, as Klass correctly points
out, what causes the light is the high velocity of the meteor
passing through atmosphere. The meteor is traveling so fast
that it "instantaneously" heats the air as it passes through.
(Note:   Klass gives a meteor speed as 10,000 mph or 2.8
mi/sec. However, this is lower than that of any body entering
the earth's atmosphere from space.   Free fall to the earth
from a great distance would produce a speed of about 7.4
mi/sec at the earth's surface in the absence of atmosphere.
Orbital speed, which is lower than meteoric speed, but still
large enough to cause a plasma in the upper atmosphere, is
about 5 mi/sec.)   This heating is a very rapid process caused
by the meteor compressing the air ahead of it and raising the
temperature (kinetic energy of the air molecules) to the point
where the air becomes ionized (a plasma).   In returning to the
un-ionized state (free electrons reuniting with the
atoms/molecules) the atoms/molecules give off light, which
appears to envelop the meteor (one does not see the meteor
itself, but rather the envelope of heated air).   The natural
tendency of a meteor is to slow down as it meets with
resistance, while forcing itself at high speed through the
atmosphere. If it slows to a speed low enough so that it no
longer creates a plasma, it will become dark (not giving off
light) and will not again appear bright, since there is no way
for it to regain its lost speed.   At the high altitudes of
meteors (50 miles and higher), the atmosphere is quite thin and
easily heated to the plasma state by the speed of the meteor.
Furthermore, the air resistance is quite low, so the meteor can
travel a great distance before being slowed to "sub-plasma"
speed. However, as the altitude decreases, the atmospheric
density, increases and it takes ever more energy from the
meteor to maintain a glowing plasma.   It is doubtful that any
meteor would be still glowing at an altitude of 6,000 feet, but
if it were, it would be quite large and eventually would be
slowed to the point of hitting the earth.    The suggestion
that one, or several, meteors could travel many miles
horizontally at a speed high enough to glow while at an
altitude of 6,000 ft is not supported by any known physics of
meteors.

Klass points out that Arnold estimated he saw the objects for
two and a half to three minutes.   This includes about half to
three quarters of a minute before they passed Mt. Rainier and
another nearly two minutes after they passed Rainier.   This
would be "extra long" for a meteor. Most meteors most burn out
(at high altitude) in a second or so, although large meteors,
called fireballs, can be seen from one location on the earth
for many seconds up to a minute.   Since meteor durations are
limited to a minute or less, Klass argues that Arnold's time
estimate was probably wrong. He points out that "witnesses
are notoriously unreliable in estimating the time duration of
unexpected events" and cites the March 3, 1968 reentry of the
Zond Soviet space rocket as an example in which witness errors
resulted in sighting duration estimates as low as fifteen
seconds and as high as five minutes.

There is an important difference between Klass' example of
witness error and the Arnold sighting: Arnold used a clock!

Klass acknowledges that Arnold used his dashboard clock to time
the passage of the objects between Mt. Rainier and Mt. Adams,
but Klass does not mention the time duration reported by
Arnold. Instead, he writes as follows: "SUN questions
whether Arnold...who was focusing his attention on the unusual
obejcts while also occupied flying his aircraft... would have
taken his eyes off the objects to carefully observe his cockpit
clock." In other words, Klass questions the accuracy of the
witness' claims about his own actions. If the actions seem
illogical to Klass, then the actions are suspect and, of
course, any data resulting from the actions are suspect.
(Note: if Arnold had not looked at his clock but simply
reported an estimated time the skeptics would probably raise
the question, why didn't he look at his clock?)

So, why did Arnold do such an "illogical" thing as look at his
dashboard clock as the objects were disappearing? Even though
Klass used Arnold's letter to the Air Force as a reference, he
does not tell his readers that Arnold wrote that he
intentionally measured the speed: "I had two definite points I
could clock them by" (he was referring to Mt. Rainier about
twenty miles east-northeast of him and Mt. Adams about forty
miles south-southeast of him).   He reported that he could see
that the objects were flying southward so he looked at his
dashboard clock as the first object passed the south flank of
Mt. Rainier. He then watched the objects as they continued
southward. During this time the objects passed over a ridge
that is about five miles long. According to Arnold "the first
one was passing the south crest of the ridge" as the last one
"was entering the northern crest."   Hence, they covered a
total distance of about five miles.   By the time they were
passing Mt. Adams they were so far away he could only see their
flashes.   At this point there was no reason to continue
watching carefully because they were fading out in the
distance.   Therefore he wasn't missing anything by taking his
eyes off the objects to look at the clock.   The second hand on
his clock showed that 102 seconds had passed.   (Note: he was
able to pay attention to the objects even though flying the
plane because, as he reported, the atmosphere was calm and
clear and there were no aircraft in his vicinity; the closest
aircraft was roughly fifteen miles north and heading away from
him.)

The calculated speed based on Arnold's measured time between
Rainier and Adams is by itself sufficient to reject the meteor
explanation (is this why Klass did not report the calculated
speed?). The objects traveled about fifty miles in 102
seconds, corresponding to a speed of about 1,700 mph, far below
any meteoric speed and certainly not enough to make the
atmosphere glow.

By way of comparison, if one were to hypothesize a meteor in a
level trajectory traveling at essentially orbital speed but at
an altitude of 6,000 ft, it would have required only roughly
ten seconds to travel from Mt. Rainier to Mt. Adams. Even at
Klass' underestimated speed of 10,000 mph the flight time
between the peaks would be only about seventeen seconds. One
would hope that Arnold, using his dashboard clock, could tell
the difference between 102 seconds and ten (or seventeen)
seconds.

Aside from the difficulty in imagining that Arnold could
mistake ten seconds for 102 seconds, the mere suggestion that a
meteor, or nine such meteors, could travel at a meteoric speed
at an altitude of 6,000 feet while glowing brightly is far
outside the accepted meteor phenomenology. Meteors cool as
they penetrate the lower atmosphere, or rather the speed
decreases to the point that they are no longer ionizing the
dense air. Hence the basic concept that Arnold saw bright
meteors traveling past Mt. Rainier must be rejected.

Consider now the number of explanations that have been offered
for the Arnold sighting: secret US aircraft (Arnold and other
witnesses), secret Soviet aircraft (US Air Force
Intelligence), quirks of eyesight (Blakeslee), motes in the
eye, reflections in glass (Nelson), mirage (Hynek), blasts of
snow (Menzel), haze reflection (Menzel), mirage (Menzel),
orographic clouds (Menzel), wave clouds in motion (Menzel),
water drops on the windshield (Menzel), birds/geese/pelicans
(recent skeptics), and meteors (Klass/Davidson). With this
dozen or so available explanations, surely the Arnold sighting
has been explained.

NOT!

The complete Arnold sighting and an in-depth discussion of the
failed prosaic explanations are available from this author via
email (brumac@compuserve.com).

From studying the approach of the skeptics to explaining just
the Arnold sighting, one learns Maccabee's First Rule of
Debunking: any published explanation is better than none. The
Second Rule is, if the first explanation seems unconvincing or
just plain doesn't work, publish another. The Corollary to the
Second Rule is (you guessed it!) if that doesn't work try yet
another.

The procedure of proposing explanations is part of the
scientific approach to explaining UFO sightings. However,
simply proposing explanations is not sufficient. It is the
"first half" of the method. The other "half" of the method is
to test each proposed explanation against the information from
the sighting and to decide whether or not it is, at least,
convincing (you may not be able to determine whether or not an
explanation is correct, but it is possible to determine whether
or not it is convincing). Unfortunately Menzel, Klass and
other skeptics generally have not carried out this second half
of the scientific method. Menzel simply proposed explanations,
one after another, as if it were logical to believe that the
more prosaic explanations one could offer for a sighting, the
more likely it is that the sighting could be (or has been)
explained by one of the explanations. This, of course, makes
little sense. Each sighting has one and only one explanation.
Thus the analyst should pick the best or most convincing
explanation out of a collection of potential explanations (by
using the complete scientific method on each sighting and
rejecting the unconvincing ones) and then publish that
explanation and only that explanation. As a "rule of thumb" to
help the reader decide whether or not a sighting has been
explained, I would suggest that the larger the number of
proposed, unconvincing explanations, the less likely it is that
the sighting has been explained.

The Fantastic Flight of JAL1628

Klass followed the scientific procedure when he published his
analysis of the Val Johnson case discussed above. Klass clearly
stated that the only prosaic explanation was a hoax by officer
Johnson, all others having been rejected by the testimony and
the hard evidence. He then left it up to the reader to decide
whether or not he had made a convincing case for it being a
hoax. However, he did not follow the scientific method in his
attempt to justify the meteor hypothesis for the Arnold
sighting, nor in his analysis of the following sighting that
occurred in 1986.

Japan Airlines Captain Kenju Terauchi had been mildly interested
in UFOs for years, but didn't get to see one close-up until
November 16, 1986. He and two other crew members were flying a
747 Jumbo jet (designated JAL1628) that was transporting a load
of wine from Paris to Tokyo (and they didn't have one drop to
drink...nor one drink to drop!), when suddenly, while over
northeastern Alaska, they were confronted with a startling
event: the appearance of two objects or "crafts" right in front
of their aircraft. These objects suddenly appeared and
maintained a fixed distance, estimated at 1,000 feet, ahead of
their aircraft for about ten minutes (they were flying at 35,000
feet at about 600 mph). The captain reported that he felt the
sudden occurrence of heat on his face. Each object had two
parallel vertical rows of yellowish lights that appeared like
exhausts emitting flames. Each object rocked from side to side,
and the rocking of the two objects was synchronized. Initially
the objects were one above the other, but after several minutes
they suddenly moved to a side-by-side orientation. They were
not recognized as any known aircraft by the crew, which reported
the event to the Anchorage, Alaska, Air Route Traffic Control
Center (ARTCC). The ARTCC tracked the airplane on radar and
tried to detect the objects but was unable to do so. About ten
minutes after their initial appearance, these "crafts" suddenly
disappeared from ahead of the airplane. Within seconds of the
disappearance, the captain noticed a strange light, like a long
narrow fluorescent glow, at the left side of the airplane, quite
a distance away. He turned on his airplane weather radar and
noticed a large radar return about eight miles away in the
direction of the faint glow. As the plane flew southward, this
light drifted behind the aircraft. Suddenly, a lot more of it
became visible (by self- glow or by silhouette) and the captain
referred to it as a "gigantic spaceship." This caused the
captain to request a decrease in altitude to get away from it.
At the same time the ARTCC requested that the plane make a
circle to see what was behind it. Nothing was seen, but a radar
target was detected momentarily behind the aircraft.
Subsequently the aircraft was flying southward toward Anchorage
when the captain last saw the "gigantic spaceship" far to his
left and behind him, that is, roughly north of the aircraft.

The most complete report of this sighting ever published, along
with analysis and a discussion of the proposed explanations, is
presented in the article entitled "The Fantastic Flight of
JAL1628," which appears in the May-June, 1987, issue of the
International UFO Reporter (IUR), which is published by the
Center for UFO Studies (www.cufos.org). An email version
(without nice illustrations) is available from the author. The
above information above is a very shortened version of the
sighting but it contains enough information allow a proper
evaluation of the "prosaic explanations" proposed and publicized
by the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of
the Paranormal (CSICOP). The sighting occurred in November,
1986. The Federal Aviation Administration announced in early
January 1987 that it was going to investigate the sighting
because of all the press interest. (This is anomalous by itself
since, so far as I know, the FAA had never investigated any
sighting before.) Less than a month later, and more than a
month before the FAA announced the results of its investigation,
CSICOP announced that the sighting had been explained ("UFO
Mystery Solved," press release by CSICOP on January 22, 1987,
Buffalo, NY).

The press release stated that, "according to a leading UFO
investigator" (Philip J. Klass) "at least one extraterrestrial
object was involved - the planet Jupiter, and possibly another -
Mars." The press release asserted that at the time of the
sighting Jupiter was "extremely bright" at a -2.6 magnitude and
would have been about ten degrees above the horizon on the left
side of the aircraft where the pilot first reported seeing the
UFO. Mars would have been slightly lower and about twenty
degrees to the right of Jupiter. According to the press
release, "Although the very bright Jupiter and less bright Mars
had to be visible to JAL Capt. Kenjyu Terauchi, the pilot never
once reported seeing either - only a UFO that he described as
being a 'white and yellow' light in his initial radio report to
the Federal Aviation Administration controllers at Anchorage."

The press release could have mentioned, but did not, that
Terauchi did report seeing numerous stars in the sky, city
lights, and a glow of sunset in the west.

The CSICOP explanation was based mostly on Klass' interpretation
of an early version of the transcript of the audio tape made at
the Anchorage ARTCC. The radar tracking data were not made
available until over a month later, so Klass had no information
on the precise locations and flight directions of the plane at
the times of the various sighting events. Therefore, he
couldn't prove that Jupiter and Mars were in the locations or
sighting directions (relative to the airplane) that he stated in
the press release. On the other hand, there were rather
explicit descriptions and drawings by the captain which had been
widely publicized and which certainly were available to Klass
but apparently he ignored them.

Klass made a major error in not waiting for the release of the
complete information package by the FAA, because, if he had
waited, he would have found that the publicized versions of the
sighting were quite close to the descriptions of the "crafts"
that were given by the crew during interviews. These
descriptions rule out Jupiter and Mars as possible causes of the
sighting. Without the FAA data package he did not know that
initial drawings were made only about two hours after the event.
Nor did he know that the other crew members, in separate
interviews, supported the captain's report of the objects that
appeared in front of the plane. Nor did he know that at the
beginning of the sighting the two crafts were almost directly
ahead of the plane and not in the direction of Jupiter and Mars.
Nor did he know about the sudden rearrangement of the relative
positions of the objects from one above the other to one beside
the other, a maneuver that Jupiter and Mars would have
difficulty carrying out during the time of the sighting (!).
Nor did he know that at the end of the sighting, while the plane
was flying southward, nearly toward Jupiter and Mars, that the
pilot reported the "gigantic spacecraft" was behind and to the
left, in a direction nearly opposite to the direction to the
planets.

The CSICOP press release discussed and rejected the FAA and Air
Force radar detections. Curiously, however, it completely
ignored the claim by the pilot that the airplane radar did
detect a radar-reflective object at seven to eight miles in the
direction of the UFO. Perhaps Klass rejected this claim, but
if he had waited for the data package from the FAA, he would
have learned that the other two members of the crew confirmed
the pilot's statement about the radar detection.

Thus, the Jupiter-Mars explanation is contradicted by the
sighting directions to the UFO at various times, by the
descriptions of the crew members, and by the airplane radar
detection. (Another "prosaic explanation" bites the dust!)
Unfortunately, the "gullible" press did not know that at the
time. The explanation was widely publicized. It made the
captain look like an idiot, but as far as the press was
concerned, that's OK. Only idiots report UFOs. Having done
their duty the news media promptly forget about the sighting.

In retrospect it appears that the CSICOP press release which was
marked "FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE" should have been marked "FOR
PREMATURE RELEASE."

The FAA finally did make a public report on the sighting on
March 5, 1988 ("FAA Releases Documents on Reported UFO Sighting
Last November," by Paul Steucke, Office of Public Affairs,
Alaskan Region, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), U.S.
Department of Transportation, March 5, 1987, Anchorage, AK).
This report concentrated on the controversy over the radar
detections or non-detections by the ARTCC. It did not discuss
the airplane radar detection nor did it discuss the visual
sightings. It basically said that the ground radar did not
support the claim of a sighting. This was not, of course, the
same as saying there was no sighting, but the national press
presented the FAA investigation results as if they proved there
was no sighting.

The most important result of the FAA investigation was a data
package which the FAA made available. This included radar data
listing the exact airplane locations, headings and speed, the
complete transcript of the ARTCC audio tape of the event and all
the transcipts of the interviews with the crew members and air
traffic controllers. With this data package anyone could have
analyzed the sighting and concluded that Mars and Jupiter were
not the solution.

Apparently that is exactly what Klass did after my detailed
article was published by the Center for UFO Studies, because
several months later CSICOP published another explanation
(recall Maccabee's First Rule of Debunking mentioned above).
This time it was moonlight on clouds! (Klass, P.J., "FAA Data
Sheds New Light on JAL Pilot's UFO Report," The Skeptical
Inquirer, Summer, 1987, Buffalo, NY)). Since the moon was low
in the eastern sky Klass argued that the "crafts" were explained
as reflections of moonlight from the clouds and "turbulent ice
crystals." According to Klass, the turbulent ice crystals
"could have generated flame-colored lights" (he didn't explain
how) and "this would also explain why the undulating lights
would periodically and suddenly disappear and then reappear as
cloud conditions ahead changed. When the aircraft finally
outflew the ice clouds and the initial 'UFO' disappeared for
good (the Captain) would search the sky for it, spot Jupiter
further to the left and conclude it was the initial UFO." Klass
attributed the airplane radar sighting to "an echo from thin
clouds of ice crystals."

Klass's explanation verges on scientific garbage. Although the
crew reported there were thin clouds far below the plane there
is no reason to suppose that moonlight reflected off ice
crystals in these clouds would generate "flame colored lights."
Klass' explanation certainly could not account for the heat
which Terauchi felt on his face. Nor would it explain the
peculiar parallel arrays of flames or yellowish lights
associated with two independently flying objects that appeared
ahead of and above the plane, continuously for many minutes.
Nor would it explain the sudden rearranging of these arrays of
lights.   According to Klass, the reflection from crystals could
explain the colors of the lights. However, the reflected light
would be basically the color of the moonlight.   A variation in
color would occur only if the moonlight were "broken" into its
spectrum by refraction of light in the crystals (similar to what
happens with rain and a rainbow). But the spectrum of white
light contains more than just the yellow, amber and green which
were reported.   Blue and red should also have been noted if
the air crew were looking at what would essentially be a
"rainbow."

The lights ahead of the aircraft were described as bright. The
copilot compared them to headlights of oncoming aircraft. A
reflection of the moon from thin clouds would cover large areas
of cloud and would be dim, diffuse, or "patchy," but not
point-like.

Klass' explanation for the airplane radar target is total
conjecture on his part since the clouds were reported by the
crew to be thin. Would there be any return at all from such
clouds? One might ask, if there were so many clouds, why didn't
the radar pick up numerous "blobby" returns on the right side
and ahead of the aircraft as well as on the left where the
"gigantic spaceship" appeared to be. And, of course, Klass'
explanation does not account for the appearance of a "gigantic
spaceship."

The bottom line is that Klass proposed two prosaic explanations
for this sighting but neither explanation was correct. Each one
failed for physical reasons when compared with the information
in the sighting report. The fact that he was able to propose
seemingly reasonable prosaic explanations was valuable from the
standpoint of publicity for the skeptical viewpoint and
debunking sightings, but it was useless from the point of view
of scientific analysis of UFO sightings. This sighting, along
with those of officer Johnson, Kenneth Arnold, and A.C. Urie
remain unexplained and, in my opinion, will remain unexplained.

The Case of the Flashing Triangle

It is rare when the physics of the physical evidence in a
sighting absolutely proves a prosaic explanation to be wrong.
If there is physical evidence associated with a UFO sighting,
its value or pertinence is generally disputed by the skeptics,
who find some justification for ignoring the physical evidence
and thereby removing an impediment to accepting the proposed
explanation. However, in the case I am about to discuss the
physical evidence stands on its own and MUST be explained if the
sighting is to be rejected as evidence for the ET or OI/NHI
hypothesis.

During the early morning of December 31, 1978 there was a series
of sightings off the east coast of the South Island of New
Zealand. These sightings made news around the world. While
flying on a freighter aircraft loaded with newspapers a TV news
crew saw and filmed strange lights which, in the opinion of the
experienced air crew (pilot, copilot) were extraordinary. The
complete story has been published in the article entitled,
"Analysis and discussion of the Images of a Cluster of
Periodically Flashing Lights Filmed Of the Coast of New
Zealand," which is published in the Journal of Scientific
Exploration, Vol 1 #2, 1981, pg. 149 (www.jse.com). An email
version is available from the author. The published article
presents the in-depth analysis of all the images in this section
of the movie film. It is sufficient for this discussion to
describe only those few images which are of particular interest
here.

The TV news cameraman used a large Bolex electric camera with a
telephoto lens. He held this camera on his shoulder because
there was no room on the flight deck for a tripod. The flight
deck has windows at the front and sides positioned so that the
fields of view of the pilot and copilot, added together, is
somewhat more than 200 degrees from left to right (the pilot
sits on left side of the cockpit, the copilot on the right).
The cameraman sat in a seat between and slightly behind the
pilot and copilot and therefore had a field of view of less than
180 degrees. This is important to understand, because from his
position he could not film the right wing of the aircraft
without placing his camera lens directly in front of the copilot
or sitting in the copilot's seat.

At 2:51 a.m., near the end of the flight of the Argosy freighter
aircraft from Christchurch to Blenheim, the Wellington Air Route
Traffic Control Center (WARTCC) announced to the crew that there
was a large radar target north-northwest and about 20 miles
ahead of them. They were about 20 miles east of the coast,
approaching Cape Campbell, at the northeastern "corner" of the
South Island, at the time of the radar report. The air crew
and the news crew recall seeing a light appear ahead of the
plane and the news reporter on board recorded a statement about
seeing a flashing light "like an aircraft beacon" that suddenly
dropped downward and started "rolling and turning." He also
said that he could see "orange and red among the lights." This
all appeared to be happening in the sky above the land or ocean
near the northeastern area of the South Island.

Although it is impossible to prove from direct evidence that the
cameraman filmed this same light (because there was no
synchronization between the filming and the audio tape), it can
be proven that this section of his film was taken in the same
time frame. Moreover, the film does, indeed, show a flashing
light which cannot be identified with any known light in the
area. Its flash rate is about once per second.

The movie camera created a series of pictures, called "frames,"
which recorded the images of the light, one after another, at a
rate of about ten frames (ten pictures) per second. (The
cameraman intentionally slowed the frame rate from the normal 24
frames per second in order to be sure that he got good exposures
of the images.) Looking frame-by-frame through the 279 frames
of the flashing light one finds that there are about ten frames
per cycle of the flash (nearly thirty cycles are on the film).
During each cycle the images start large and white or very pale
yellow (overexposed) and they shrink in size and brightness to
dim combinations of red and yellowish-orange and then increase
in brightness and size back to large and white. It is of
importance, for comparison with the proposed prosaic
explanation, to note that the overexposed images have NO trace
of red associated with them.

Philip Klass devoted three chapters of the above cited book
(UFOs, The Public Deceived) to the famous New Zealand sightings.
He proposed numerous prosaic, though, in my opinion, wrong,
explanations for the lights seen and filmed and for the radar
targets which were reported during the flight of the aircraft,
first southward from Wellington to Christchurch and then
northward from Christchurch to Blenheim. In Chapter 27 he
discussed the section of film which is of interest here. Klass
described the flashing light in the film as follows: "a light
that fluctuates rapidly from dim red-orange to a bright white,
then back to red-orange, then back to bright white at
approximately the flash rate of the red-orange anti-collision
beacons installed atop and beneath the the Argosy's fuselage."

Here Klass refers to red, not red-orange, rotating beacons on
the top and bottom of the aircraft. These beacons project
narrow beams of light that rotate around and appear as red
flashes to a distant observer. These beacons were captured on
film by the cameraman before the flight began. He set up his
camera on a tripod while the plane was still at the airport and
filmed the plane as the engines were warmed up in order to "run
in" his camera. The images of these beacons show that when the
light is pointed at the camera and is, therefore, brightest, the
image is overexposed and consists of a yellow central circle
surrounded by a wide, red annular region, i.e., a red ring
around a yellow center.

Noticing that the flash rates of the upper beacon and the light
on the film were, for all practical purposes, equal, Klass
proposed that the flashing light on the film was actually the
upper beacon. How could this have been done since there was no
way the cameraman could directly film the beacon from inside the
aircraft? Klass writes: "(the cameraman) would not have been
able to film the topside beacon directly. But its intense
illumination could have been reflected off one of the aircraft's
rotating propellor blades when the beacon rotation rate and the
propellor speed were roughly 'synchronized.' Such
synchronization would have occurred when (the captain) began to
throttle back for his descent (into Blenheim), possibly
increasing the propellor pitch angle. A short time later, when
he throttled back further, the requisite synchronization would
have been lost and the (UFO image) would mysteriously
disappear."

The images on the film vary considerably in shape and size from
frame to frame. Klass offered the following explanation of the
image shape changes: "If (this section of film shows) a
reflection of the beacon from the curved surface of the
propellor blades, whose rotation rate was not perfectly
synchronized with the rotating topside beacon, it readily
explains the remarkable changes in shape, size and appearance of
the (UFO) images that occur in a fraction of a second."

The actual explanation for the shape change is straightforward
and has nothing to do with a hypothetical temporary
synchonization of the beacon and the propellor rotation. Since
the cameraman supported the camera on his shoulder in a moving,
vibrating airplane most of the images were smeared by camera
motion. However, some images were either not smeared or were
smeared very slightly. This is because the camera pointing
direction vibrated about some average position. Each time the
image moved away from the center of the film the cameraman would
twist the camera to recenter the image. The image would reach a
maximum distance from center and then the image motion would
momentarily cease before the direction reversed and the image
moved back toward the center. Therefore, the frames obtained
during moments of direction reversal, the "stationary frames,"
contain images that were not smeared or smeared very little.
The brightest white images in these stationary frames are
circular or nearly circular. The white and red-orange images
that occur between stationary frames were stretched by the
camera motion into "hot dog" shapes (elongated). The stationary
frames which contain the dimmest, smallest images show a very
unique arrangement of lights: a triangle consisting of an orange
"dot" image just above two side-by-side red "dot" images.

Klass points out in his book that I rejected his hypothesis that
the UFO image could have been a result of filming the reflection
off the propellor of the beacon. Unfortunately, however, he did
not describe my objections to his hypothesis even though he
should have known what they were because of our extensive
discussions of this sighting in numerous letters long before he
wrote his book.

My first objection is not based on physics but on the fact that
the cameraman, from his middle seat, could not have filmed in
the direction of the propellor without putting his camera in
front of the copilot or sitting in the copilot's seat, and
neither the cameraman nor the copilot recall either such event.

The second objection is based on fundamental physics
(optics/photography) and is, in fact, devastating to Klass'
"prosaic explanation." (As mentioned above, I made him aware of
this objection but he did not include it in his book.)

The clues have already been given and the astute reader may have
already deduced the second objection. It is most evident in the
comparison of the bright, overexposed UFO images with the
bright, overexposed beacon images. As I stated above, the
cameraman filmed the red flashing upper (and lower) beacon
before the plane took off. The film shows that when the beacon
was pointed toward the camera the images were relatively large
and consisted of a yellow central circular area surrounded by a
wide red annular region. The yellow center is caused by
overexposure to the extent that the film cannot produce the
correct color (it produces pale yellow rather than red because
more film color layers than just the red-producing layer have
been exposed by the extreme intensity of the light). The red
annular region is a result of light scattering sideways in the
film. As the light scatters sideways from the extremely bright
central region of the image, the intensity decreases to a level
at which the film can produce the correct color, in this case,
red. (Example: had the light been green there would be a pale
center with a very green annulus around it.)

This is completely different from the brightest images on the
UFO film, however. A careful examination of the overexposed
images shows that the centers are white or very pale yellow and
there is NO red annular region. That means that these images
were absolutely NOT made by filming a red light, whether
directly, as by having the camera film directly toward the
beacon, or indirectly, such as by reflecting the beacon light
off the rotating propellor blades. (There is another
optical/photographic reason for rejecting the
"propellor-reflected-light" hypothesis: a reflection off
propellor blades would be extremely weak because the blades do
not "fill up" the space. After all, propellor blades "disappear"
and you can "see through them" when they are rotating rapidly.
Any reflection under such circumstances would be extremely weak
and diffuse and very unlikely to cause any overexposed images.)

Hence Klass' explanation is rejected for perfectly good physical
reasons. (Note: a TRue UFO might be able to violate physics as
we know it, but known objects such as beacons, cameras, and film
cannot violate physics as we know it. The previous argument
against the beacon hypothesis is based on well-known optical
physics.)

The logical, skeptical response to the absolute rejection of
this explanation would be, of course, to propose another
explanation. Since the airplane was flying many miles off the
east coast of the South Island of New Zealand, and since there
were beacons along the shore, the first logical suggestion would
be that the film shows one of these beacons. The cameraman said
he was certain that he had not filmed a beacon. He said that
whenever he saw a light which he couldn't identify he asked the
pilot or copilot to identify it. The air crew was, of course,
familiar with the beacons in the area and told the cameraman
which lights were beacons. The statement by the cameraman is
supported by a comparison of the film images with known beacons.
Careful analysis of the film indicates that the source of the
images was a triangular arrangement of lights consisting of a
pale yellowish-orange light that pulsated at about 1 Hz, which
was above two pulsating side-by-side red lights. The intensity
of the upper light ranged from effectively zero (no image) to
such a large value that it overexposed the film. The red lights
also pulsated at 1 Hz, but in the opposite phase: when the
upper light was at zero brightness the red lights were maximum,
and vice versa. The red lights never got bright enough to
overexpose the film. Using information supplied by the New
Zealand government a search was made of all the beacons within
about 50 miles of the aircraft. None of the beacons had a
triangular arrangement of lights. Moreover, all the beacons
were found to be too weak, too far away, to have the wrong
flash period, or the wrong color. There is no beacon that could
account for the film.

Yet another logical suggestion would be another aircraft.
However, there were no other aircraft flying in that area of New
Zealand at the time, according to the air traffic controller who
was monitoring the Argosy flight to Blenhiem.

The possibility that the film showed light from a boat was
considered. There are no flashing lights such as this on boats
(which have steady lights that do not change color). The only
boats with lights bright enough to make overexposed images at
long distances are squid fishing boats. They use very bright
incandescent lights to lure squid to the surface at night for
netting. The Japanese squid fleet was in New Zealand waters at
the time, but their lights are steady and only white.

Yet another suggested explanation is that there was an emergency
vehicle or police car with its lights flashing on the land
closest to the airplane. Aside from the fact that emergency
vehicles do not carry lighting of the type that would create
images such as this, the pilot checked with the authorities and
was told that there were no emergency or law-enforcement
vehicles traveling the New Zealand highways and byways near the
location of the plane at the time.

Another suggestion was that a light inside the aircraft was
filmed. However, this suggestion was rejected because there
were no flashing lights inside the aircraft and, furthermore,
the captain had turned off all the cockpit lights, leaving only
steady, dim red meter lights on the control panels.

As a last resort one might propose a distant bright planet on
the horizon, fluctuating in brightness and color as a result of
random atmospheric refractions. However, such fluctuations
would not be perfectly steady and furthermore, Venus, the only
astronomical light source bright enough to produce images
remotely like these, was not visible at the time.

Now you know the reason that Klass proposed the upper beacon
explanation: he was aware, from our considerable correspondence
on this sighting, that all the other explanations had failed.
The only remaining light that had a remote chance of explaining
the sighting was the upper beacon, because of the near
equivalence of the flash rate. Then Klass had to propose an
auxiliary hypothesis to explain how the beacon could be filmed
from inside the aircraft by reflection off the propellor. This
was very clever, but unconvincing to the experienced optical
physicist. But the final rejection of his hypothesis is based
on the images of overexposed red lights as described above.

Without any other known sources of light to create the film
images, this has to be considered unexplained and I know of no
reason to believe that it will be eventually explained.   It is
a TRue UFO. If we assume that the lights which made these
images were part of the object detected by radar at 2:51 a.m.,
at a distance of about 20 miles ahead of the airplane, then
quantitative estimates can be made of the intensity and spacings
of the lights (see the above cited reference for details of the
calculations).   From the spacing of the "dots" in the
triangular images (orange "dot" above to side-by-side red
"dots") one can calculate that the red lights were about 50 feet
apart and the yellow-orange light was about 90 ft above the red
lights. (Note: the calculated spacing is proportional to the
distance assumed. If the lights were closer the spacing was
less.)   At its peak brightness the intensity of the upper light
was considerably over a million candlepower. It was as if a
powerful, pulsating spotlight had been pointed toward the
witnesses on the airplane.

Conclusion

The few sightings discussed here are important because they
illustrate the problem faced by skeptics who would argue that,
because there are prosaic explanations for all sightings, there
is no evidence for ET/NHI/OI contact. The problem faced by the
skeptics is that there are sightings for which the generally
accepted (by skeptics!) prosaic explanations are wrong or at
least unconvincing. The failure of UFO skepticism, from the
scientific point of view, has been to allow such explanations to
be accepted by the scientific community. If UFOs were "ordinary
science," the proposed explanations would have been rigorously
analyzed, and probably rejected, rather than simply accepted.
Scientific ufology needs skeptics, but skeptics who are capable
of recognizing when a sighting simply cannot be explained by any
prosaic explanation.

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