(ORDO NEWS) — Among the many questions raised by the emergence of one or more UFO investigation departments at the Pentagon is whether observed UFOs (UFOs) pose a potential threat to air safety or even a threat to national security.
This raises the question of the possibility that these observable phenomena may interact directly, hostilely with terrestrial aircraft, military assets, or other personnel.
Images of alien invasions from numerous classic Hollywood films immediately come to mind, but a number of incidents reported both in official government documents and in ufological literature make one wonder how much we actually know about potential hostile interactions with anomalous devices.
When “The Debrief” reviewed the crash of Kentucky Air National Guard pilot Captain Thomas F. Mantell in 1948, we learned that many investigators wondered if the unidentified flying object he was sent to observe could have caused the crash of his P- 51 Mustang and its death.
The Air Force ultimately concluded that he died of hypoxia, leading to the final nosedive and destruction of his aircraft after it ran out of fuel. Another disaster that occurred in Oregon in 1964 also suggested possible extraterrestrial involvement, but the government, after a lengthy investigation, considered it a common occurrence.
However, the records of both government and civilian investigations are very deep, and there are many cases where it is at least strongly suggested that either accidental contact or direct, aggressive interaction between human pilots and anomalous aircraft has resulted in near misses or even destructive interaction.
If these recordings are to be believed, they may provide clues to the questions the US federal government is trying to answer with the bizarrely named AOIMSG office. And such interaction is not limited to intrusions on military nuclear facilities and naval exercise sites.
For years, reports have circulated among UFO researchers, including some files released by the British Ministry of Defense, alleging that the Soviet military had catastrophic encounters with unidentified aerial phenomena during the Cold War.
In some cases, when the Russians allegedly tried to open fire on unidentified aircraft, they lost both fighters and pilots. This was told by journalist Tom Rogan during an interview on Fox News in 2019.
During this interview, Rogan said that UFOs “appear to be friendly, except when the rather ill-conceived Russian crews try to engage them.” In an article he published on the subject, he included a link to the UK Government Archives page, which contained several pages of the MoD investigation.
The documents include a description of how Russia and China cooperated in such investigations, and “several planes were destroyed and at least four pilots died ‘chasing UFOs’.”
Perhaps more familiar to UFO researchers in the US is the case of World War II veteran fighter pilot and North Dakota Air National Guard member George Gorman. Gorman reportedly engaged in an almost half-hour fight with an anomalous glowing orb near Fargo.
On October 1, 1948, Gormone was performing several additional night flights over the local air base when he noticed a sphere that he said was six to eight inches in diameter and flashed a bright white light.
The pilot decided to start a pursuit at which point the light of the balloon changed to a steady one and he began making erratic aerial maneuvers, including sharp turns.
He then changed course and flew straight for Gorman’s P-51 Mustang. Fearing a collision, he made an evasive maneuver. It happened twice before the pilot finally returned to the landing site. The government showed sufficient interest in this meeting to include it in its Blue Book files.
Can this really be considered a “dog fight” between an American fighter jet and a UFO? Of course, there was a safety hazard and some unforeseen maneuvers here, so perhaps this is so. However, at the same time, it was Gorman who deviated from his original route to pursue the orb, which up until then had seemed to be just minding its own business.
And even when she turned and rushed at him, there was no contact. There were also no reports of any actions that could be regarded as the firing of a weapon. We leave this final judgment to the reader.
Cuban aircraft in 1967
In any list of the most infamous collisions between a military pilot and an obscure aircraft in the sky, we must include the event that has come to be known as the 1967 Cuban Aircraft.
The National Committee for the Investigation of Aviation Phenomena (NICAP) has excellent archival material on this incident, and numerous government documents obtained through the FOIA process suggest that this is not only a genuine report, but that the federal government did not want to hear about it said in the early days of UFO investigations.
This has become a major problem for one Citizens Against UFO Secrecy (CAUS) investigator, who authorities said was asking too many questions.
The short version of the story begins with an anonymous Air Force security specialist who gave the report to Stanton Friedman after a lecture given by Friedman in 1978.
In 1967, the witness served with the 6947th Security Squadron in the Florida Keys, part of a Hispanic intelligence unit that monitored Cuban Air Force communications and cross-channel radar transmitters during the busy days following the Cuban Missile Crisis.
In March of that year, the unit intercepted Cuban radio communications reporting a “boogie” (unidentified aerial target) entering Cuban airspace from the northeast.
Two MIG-21 fighters were sent to intercept the bull. Upon arrival, the pilots reported seeing “a bright metallic sphere with no visible signs or appendages” at 33,000 feet moving at about 660 miles per hour.
After an unsuccessful attempt to establish radio contact with the object, the Cuban air defense headquarters ordered the flight director to arm the missiles and destroy the target. The flight director replied by radio that he had spotted the target and was ready to defeat. Those were the last words the flight director ever heard.
A few seconds later, a shout was heard from his wingman on the second MIG, who said that the commander’s plane had exploded.
He later corrected this description and said that the plane “disintegrated” in the air, and its wreckage fell into the ocean. The UFO then accelerated to “incredible speed”, climbed to an altitude of about 98,000 feet and continued southwest towards South America.
Investigation and consequences
Whether the anomalous object was destroyed by the Cuban plane after its weapons aimed at it, or it was just a strange coincidence, the encounter clearly ended fatally badly for the pilot.
The 6947th Security Squadron sent an event report to NSA headquarters. Within a few hours, they were ordered to send all tapes, recordings and relevant data regarding this event to the NSA and indicate that the Cuban aircraft was lost due to “equipment failure”.
Friedman relayed this information to a reporter, who then relayed it to CAUS research director Robert Todd. For six months in 1978, Todd submitted requests for information to various military and intelligence agencies, to no avail. But in July of that year, two FBI agents came to his house.
They spoke to him in private and asked questions about his previous contacts with foreign governments. They also read sections of American espionage laws to him, suggesting that a conviction under those sections could lead to life imprisonment or even the death penalty. It has also been strongly suggested that Todd’s phone was tapped.
At this point, no further action appeared to be taken, but the message sent to Todd was perfectly clear. Subsequent requests from CAUS to the Air Force about the status of any relevant FBI investigation received responses stating that they could neither confirm nor deny the existence of any such documents.
But if they existed, they would be classified and in any case inaccessible. This incident remains one of the most intriguing potentially destructive interactions between UFOs and ground-based military aircraft in history.
There are other examples in the archives, although the ones listed above are perhaps the most famous. One seemingly common element in these reports seems important to readers when trying to answer the question posed at the beginning of this article.
Even if we are willing to accept all of these reports as accurate accounts of historical incidents, we have yet to read of any where a UFO was the original aggressor.
The only instances where the anomalous craft has engaged in confrontation or destructive action have been after the human pilot has initiated interaction in a potentially aggressive manner.
Random flight safety issues aside, it is reasonable to conclude that most UFOs reported by the military were basically “mind their own business” until the human pilots did something to provoke a backlash.
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