Jan 9, 1967: Malta, MT at 9pm, on family farm. Family alerted by dog, family saw a large rectangular object with glowing red light along the bottom and large amber light on top moving at high speed. The object landed in a field for approximately one hour. Object suddenly disappeared as if it took off at at a high rate of speed. The next day, family went to the field were the object had landed. There were no tracks in the snow and no sign that anything had been there. (Billings Gazette, 1-20-67)
Jan 26, 1967: Havre, MT at 8:15pm. A man saw a yellow sphere with blinking yellow body lights which circled a mountain and flew off (nicap.org)
Feb 9, 1967: Chester, MT, 6:30am, Railroad foreman saw a saucer (disk) with bright body of light hovering over the railroad depot. The depot was engulfed in light, the object departed straight up. (Spokane Spokesman-Review, 2/12/67)
Feb 23, 1967 Glasgow AFB, MT, reported sighting by NICAP (no details listed)
Mar 22, 1967: Newspaper article (UPI), "UFOs Seen In Great Falls Vicinity", The Daily Inter Lake
Tuesday night, 7:45pm - 8:30pm, several persons reported seeing unidentified flying objects over the Great Falls, Vaughn, Fort Benton, and Manchester. White lights, big with a little one on top. The object was moving east to west then north to south.
Mar 23, 1967: Great Falls, MT, 9pm: Sheriffs deputies saw a yellow object with a red glow coming from top to bottom. Object hovered then flew away. Many sightings throughout the state. (Great Falls Leader, 3/24/67)
Mar 24, 1967: Belt, MT, 9pm, Truck driver outside of Belt, MT sees a dome shaped object showing bright lights and landing in a nearby ravine. ( Investigated by Project Blue Book)
What's interesting is that most of these sightings occurred between 8pm and 9pm. The Malta UFO supposedly landed in snow covered field, but on investigation no evidence that the snow had been disturbed or melted.
Four sightings occurred in a fairly straight line in the north/central portion of the state (Glasgow, Malta, Havre and Chester).
Glasgow AFB was a major SAC base which consisted of "super" Bomb Wing consisting of B-52s and KC-135 tankers. Traffic in and out of the based would have been constant with ORI alert launches, training exercises and transient air traffic.
The UFO sightings, March 22 and 23, could have had some psychological impact leading to the Oscar Flight story as told by Robert Salas.
The March 24 Belt sighting was covered by Blue Book. Despite "around the clock" observation by local and military personnel there was no evidence that anything had actually landed. The object was observed to have landed, but nothing was observed to have left the ravine. I hope to put together a blog post on this incident in the future.
I wrote this during a break at work; for security reasons, we can't access personal email links, nor Facebook, Twitter, etc., so I didn't have your email address readily at hand. I decided it was just as easy to leave a comment here, even though the discussion is only peripherally associated.
ReplyDeleteThe referral below was recently published under "My Misinformation" : http://www.sophiessoapbox.com/ The gentleman who operates the site was very open, but insistent about needing some time to study evidence that he was initially unaware of. His caution was actually a relief, because it indicated that he was willing to examine the primary issues. As you know, so many of those promoting UFO issues tend to ignore anything related to "examination," so it can be a little disconcerting at times. On one of my emails, I mentioned your blog. I was happy to see that he was willing to look over the matter with a little more focus than many others have been willing to bring to the table in the past. He seems to be a gracious young man, which is a rare quality at times, and one that I was pleased to encounter.
Thanks for the info! Took a look at the web site and was pleased to see that someone can look at the evidence and draw a logical conclusion...a rare trait these days.
ReplyDeleteHope all is well, been a busy summer for me and the family.
Here's something interesting; you're probably already aware of it. Couple of years ago one of the primary objections to the story Robert Salas was selling about Echo Flight was the fact that his witnesses would have been underground at the point the alleged UFO was floating overhead, and he would have been unable to see it. Well one of the neat little advantages to a malleable claim is that such matters can always be corrected after the fact. At https://ufodigest.com/article/missile-paralyzing-ufos-and-secrecy-part-1 Robert Salas once again corrects errors inherent to his claims. He is now reporting that a member of the security team shook the ladder leading underground, attracted the attention of the "witness" below and called him up, where said witness was able to identify the UFO and call it in. Apparently this "new" information came to Salas via an airman witness who wishes to remain anonymous. In any case, no more criticism from this particular angle, so now Salas can continue his claims without having to worry about this little detail. He finally got around to "correcting" it. Don't you just love modern Ufology? What a buffoon ...
ReplyDeleteWell that's so convenient! But bullshit nonetheless. Salas would have been holed up with the blast door to the capsule shut tight. No way that someone could "shake" the ladder. BTW, the so-called ladder was for emergency use only. The main way down was via an elevator and the FSC guarded the locked entryway to the elevator shaft topside.
ReplyDeleteNo, Salas is still mentally locked away with nothing major happening that night. How many variations of this story now?
Of course the "new" guy wishes to remain anonymous...can't have it any other way.