UFO Near Luke AFB?

UFOs, Unidentified Flying Objects, Flying Saucers, or whatever your expression for them, and whether you believe in them or not, have been "seen" on too many occasions to be totally dismissed. The following report is taken from "Project Blue Book", written by "EJR" previous chief of the Air Force's study of UFO sightings.

The incident took place at Luke AFB, Arizona, the Air Force's advanced fighter-bomber school that is named after the famous "balloon buster" of World War I, Lieu¬tenant Frank Luke, Jr. It was a sighting that produced some very inter¬esting photographs.

The sky was clear except for a few high cirrus clouds, late morning of March 3, 1953, when the pilot took off from Luke Air Base in an F-84 jet, to add some more hours to his flight log. He had been flying F-51s in Korea and had recently started to check out in the jets. After take off, clearing the traffic pattern, he climbed toward Blythe Radio, situated about 130 miles west of Luke.

He'd climbed for several minutes and had just picked up the coded letters BLH that identified Blythe Radio when he looked up through the corner glass in the front part of his canopy—traveling left to right at two o'clock from his current position, the pilot noticed what initially appeared to be an airplane, leaving a long, thin vapor trail. He glanced down at his altimeter and saw that he was at 23,000 feet. The object that was leaving the vapor trail must really be high, he remembered thinking, because he couldn't see any airplane at the head of it.

He altered his course a few degrees to the right so that he could follow the trail and increased his rate of climb. Before long he could tell that he was gaining on the object, or whatever was leaving the vapor trail, because he was under the central part of it. But he still couldn't see any object. He felt this was strange, as vapor trails do not just occur; something has to leave them.

His altimeter had ticked off another 12,000 feet and he was now at 35,000. Still climbing, the F-84 began to mush; it was as high as it would go. The pilot dropped down 1,000 feet and continued on—now he was below the front of the trail, but still no airplane. This bothered him too.

Nothing in 1953 flew over 55,000 feet except a few experimental airplanes like the D-558 or those of the "X" series, and they don't stray far from Edwards AFB in California.

He couldn't be more than 15,000 feet from the front of the trail, and you can recognize any kind of an airplane 15,000 feet away in the clear air of the sub stratosphere.

He looked again and again. He rocked the F-84 back and forth thinking maybe he had a flaw in the plexiglass of the canopy that was blinking out the airplane, but still no airplane. Whatever the object, it was darned high, or darned small. The object was traveling at approximately 300 miles an hour, as it was necessary to reduce engine power and "S" to stay under it.

He was beginning to get low on fuel about this time so he hauled up the nose of the jet, took about 30 feet of gun camera film, and started down. When he landed and told his story, the film was quickly processed and rushed to the projection room. It showed a weird, thin, forked vapor trail—but no airplane.

Lieutenant Olsson and Airman Futch (veterans of the UFO campaign of 1952) worked the report over thor¬oughly. The photo lab confirmed that the trail was definitely a vapor trail, not a freak cloud formation. But Air Force Flight Service said, "No other airplanes in the area," and so did Air Defense Command, because minutes after the F-84 pilot broke off contact, the "object" had passed into an ADIZ—Air Defense Identification Zone—and radar had shown nothing.

There was one last possibility: an astronomer said that the photos looked exactly like a meteor's smoke trail. But there was one hitch: the pilot was convinced that the speed of the object at the head of the vapor trail was approximately 300 miles per hour. He didn't know exactly how much ground he'd covered, but when he first picked up Blythe Radio he was on Green 5 airway, about 30 miles west of his base, and when he'd given up the chase he'd taken another radio bearing, and he was now almost up to Needles Radio, 70 miles north of Blythe. He could see a lake, Lake Mojave, in the distance.

Could a high-altitude jet-stream wind have been blowing the smoke cloud? Futch checked this—no. The usual westerly winds were above 20,000 feet, with the jet stream on the north.

Several months later I talked to a captain who had been at Luke when this sighting occurred. He knew the F-84 pilot and he'd heard him tell his story in great detail. I won't say that he was a confirmed believer, but he was interested. "I never thought much about these reports before," he said, "but I know this guy well. He's not nuts. What do you think he saw?"

I don't know what he saw. Maybe he didn't travel as far as he thought he did. If he didn't, then I'd guess that he saw a meteor's smoke trail. But if he did know that he'd covered some 80 miles during the chase, I'd say that he saw a UFO—a real one. I cannot believe that pilots don't know what they're doing.

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This is one example of a sighting from "Project Blue Book," an authoritative and fascinating e.book, packed with UFO sightings. "Project Blue Book" in reality is more than e.book, it is the first ever report in which a military or civilian person has documented all of the facts about this fascinating subject. Check it out at www.project-blue-book.com

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