Copyright ©
1998, 1999 by Joseph W. Ritrovato
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In the August and September 1998
issues of the MUFON UFO Journal, UFO investigators Bob Pratt and Cynthia Luce
presented valuable information related to the Varginha, Brazil, ET capture
story that began in January 1996. This may have been the
biggest and best-known story of an apparent UFO crash in recent years;
it is, however, unlikely to be the last. UFO skeptics have pointed out
that if aliens were visiting our planet in numbers sufficient to account for
all of the reported UFO sightings and purported alien abductions, then there
should be evidence of a significant number of accidental crashes of alien
vehicles upon the earth. There have been, in point of fact, a good
number of reported crashes of UFOs that go back to at least the 1880s in the
United States. My research also shows that half of the crash reports
come from outside the U.S., going back no further than the 1940s. One
factor that may have stood in the way of proving the occurrence of such
dramatic events is quite possibly the intervention of covert government agencies,
which wish to shield the population from gaining such knowledge.
Every follower of the UFO
phenomena is familiar with the Roswell incident. At first, I considered
this report might have been a staged or "red herring" event that
evolved from the military's need to throw people off the scent of a true
experience occurring elsewhere. But then came the Santili autopsy
film. Included in the information surrounding its release was a report
from the cameraman, which stated the crash event had occurred in May of 1947. If
this had simply been the work of mischievous but expert hoaxers, they would
have given the correct month of the event (July). Since they did not,
it would seem that the autopsy footage was the "red herring" that
was meant to derail those seriously interested in the Roswell event. This,
and the fact that the military has made much ado about nothing (if the
Roswell event really was nothing), now leads me to believe that what
occurred near Roswell in 1947 was a true crash of a non-conventional aircraft,
perhaps extraterrestrial in origin. Since that event many
reported UFO crashes have come to light, but few have had as much
documentation as the Roswell event has accumulated. Most of these have
been labeled as hoaxes with reasons varying from lack of corroboration to
contrary reports related to the purported event. Skeptics often claim
that the accused hoaxer’s motive was to gain attention to themselves or their
area of residence. However, although some witnesses may have a history of
storytelling to gain attention, this in itself doesn't necessarily discredit
the whole episode (although it may create doubts). What one would need
to find is corroborative evidence to the story such as that found after a
Florida Scoutmaster's dramatic close encounter during the summer of 1952 (see
Kevin Randle's Project Blue Book Exposed, page 65). He may have
had a past of taking liberties with the truth to draw attention, but how did
only the roots of the grass at the scene get burned? Unfortunately, this can
work in reverse. Since even a very credible witness to an unbelievable
event would naturally want to find another source to corroborate an
experience, such a witness might still be tempted to accept other reports of
a similar encounter, even if some of the details seemed distorted or
exaggerated. This vulnerability of a witness to an extraordinary event
leaves the door open for both mischievous pranksters, searching for
undeserved attention, or covert government operators, aiming to destroy the
credibility of the hapless witness. Varginha may be the most recent
scene of a genuine UFO crash, but, besides Roswell, what came before? This
article will now look at many different stories of crashed aerial vehicles of
unknown origin that occurred over a period of more than a century. Curiously,
these events appear to be related in one striking manner. During the
course of my studies into UFO waves, I discovered that a significant
number of reported UFO crashes appeared to occur during or near waves or
flaps that related to a cycle determined to have been 3.19 years in length.
Varginha appears to have been just one of these cyclic crashes. Now let
us look at some of the earlier ones (peak cycle dates are given in italics at
the end of each report). On June 6th, 1884, John W. Ellis
was riding herd with three ranch hands 35 miles northwest of Benkelman,
Nebraska, when they all witnessed a blazing cigar shaped object. As it
sped through the sky the witnesses estimated it to be around 55 feet long and
11 feet thick before it crashed into pieces upon the ground. A large
crater resulted, filled with scattered white-hot fragments and molten
masses. So hot was the site of destruction that the ranchers had to
wait until the next day to get close enough to it to see if there was anything
left to salvage. Many of the pieces could be recognized as mechanical
in nature so a meteor could be ruled out. Others came to view the
wreckage, but a rainstorm moved in which proved to be so violent that
visibility was reduced to little more than a foot. When the storm
cleared they went to the edge of the crater and found that almost all of
the remains had dissolved, as if by acid, and what was left had turned
into a gelatinous pool. (6/25/1884) On April 17, 1897, as the great
U.S. mystery airship wave was coming to a close (it had started five months
earlier), another strange vehicle was seen to maneuver clumsily in the air,
subsequently crashing into a windmill of a prominent citizen of Aurora,
Texas. The locals found a dead being among the wreckage and buried him
in the churchyard. A tombstone had once marked the spot until recently
when, due to vandalism, the townsfolk were forced to remove it.
(3/29/1897) Five decades later, and less
than a year after the classic Roswell case, another crash was reported to
have occurred in Aztec, New Mexico, on or near March 25, 1948. Similar to the
Roswell crash, the military was quick to make its appearance on the scene
(just following its discovery by civilians) and the evidence was removed.
Reportedly, there were many more bodies recovered than at Roswell and the
vehicle was nearly intact. This event is often written off as a hoax
due to inconsistencies in the evidence but this conclusion may be
premature. Further research, in my opinion, is warranted. (4/11/1948)
Almost four decades before the
Varginha incident another UFO crash report came out of Brazil. Some
local men were fishing one day along the shore of Ubatuba, Brazil, when they
witnessed a flying disk, which performed erratic maneuvers before it
exploded into pieces just off the coast. The startled onlookers
searched for remains of the craft and found scraps of metal in shallow water.
One of these witnesses felt so strongly that others should know of what
happened that he sent his story with some of the fragments to a reporter he
admired. On September 13, 1957, a well-known Rio de Janeiro society
columnist for the newspaper O Globo received a package, which included metal
fragments and an anonymous report. When UFO researchers read of this
event in the newspaper they obtained the pieces of wreckage and had it
analyzed. What they learned was that the metal was composed of almost
pure magnesium so well refined that, if it were even possible to produce it at
the time, it would have been very expensive to manufacture and could have
been created by only a few possible countries outside of Brazil. One
might ask, why didn't other witnesses come forward to report this
sighting? The answer might be explained in regards to the date of the
occurrence. The most likely date was September 7th, Brazil's
Independence Day. Everybody would have been off of work and
celebrating in the city unless, of course, you were a fisherman who wanted to
take advantage of an almost deserted beach.
(11/5/1957) On April 13, 1964, several
adults in Walthamstow, England, witnessed a nine foot cigar-shaped and
silver-colored UFO crash into the river Lea, which tore down telephone lines
and scarred the edge of the concrete towpath as it went. Just five
days earlier, Cape Kennedy radar detected four UFOs following an unmanned
Gemini capsule during one of its orbits around the earth.
Also, beginning in this month and lasting through July, there was a rash
of high strangeness reports of UFOs. About half of the U.S. reports
were from New Mexico, New York, and California, and nearly one third occurred
in Montana, Georgia, Oregon, Ohio, and Illinois. The events involved
many trace landing reports and witness interactions with UFO occupants,
including repeated abductions of a child near Missoula, Montana in April.
There was an interesting concentration of reports in New Mexico for one
week that began with the famous Socorro landing of April 24th. There
was also an interesting series of reports coming from Hong Kong where,
beginning sometime in February, UFOs were seen to mimic conventional aircraft
making a landing at the Kai Tak airport at least once a week for months. (3/23/1964)
In March and October of 1967, there
were peaks in activity occurring in Russia, Britain and Canada. On
October 4, 1967, a UFO was seen a short distance from a bridge at Shag
Harbor, Nova Scotia. It was hovering just over the water and gyrating
in an erratic manner. It then tilted to one side and fell into the
water. Lights could still be seen after it submerged but soon
afterwards they blinked out. The witnesses, searching for a logical
explanation, thought some sort of conventional aircraft must have
crashed so they reported it to the authorities. The coast guard
and navy searched the waters, but no report of a recovered craft ever came to
light. This event has been investigated for several years by researcher
Chris Styles as a UFO crash and there continues to be an ongoing search
for any possible remains. (6/1/1967) Although fitting in with the UFO cycle
discussed in this article, what I wish to present next does not involve any
reports of UFO crashes. The following events are, however, just as
dramatic since they relate to military readiness in connection with unknown
aerial objects. Most of the details for the first of these incidents was
gleaned from an internet website for the Computer UFO Network (CUFON; one of
the more reliable net resources). During the early morning hours of
Thursday, March 16, 1967, Robert Salas, deputy crew commander of a Minuteman
missile silo near Malmstrom, Air Force Base, Montana, witnessed the disabling
of the missile he was monitoring. Five minutes earlier Salas had
received a call from a security guard at the site who had just witnessed a
UFO. The red, glowing saucer was even closer, hovering just outside the
front gate, when his, and other missiles nearby, began shutting
down. A total of ten missiles at two launch-sites went from
"Alert" to "No-Go" status within ten seconds and
remained down for a full three hours (coming back on line as mysteriously as
they had gone off). The UFO was confirmed on radar and fighter jets scrambled
in an attempt to intercept the unknown craft, but no details of the chase are
presently known. Also in March 1967 twoMig-21 jets were five kilometers
behind a UFO they were intercepting within Cuban airspace when one of the
pilots locked his weapons onto the target and was promptly killed as his
aircraft disintegrated. Immediately afterwards the UFO
accelerated, climbed to 30,000 feet altitude, and headed for South
America. (6/1/1967) On January 10, 1961 (date
approximate), Cape Kennedy's tracking radar locked onto a huge UFO that was
pacing a Polaris missile as it traveled over the South Atlantic during a
military test flight. Shortly after this, based on retired Army
Command Sergeant Major Robert O. Dean's interview printed in the April
1994 Omni magazine (and other interviews from the internet and radio),
NATO and Russia went on military alert on or about February 2, 1961,when a
fleet of 50 UFOs flew across Europe from the direction of Russia at a height
of 100,000 feet. Nine minutes later they disappeared from radar.
This incident, which Dean stated nearly caused a nuclear confrontation
between NATO's forces and the USSR, could also be the very same event that
caused Jacques Vallee to become involved in the UFO phenomena. While
working on the staff of the French Space Committee in 1961 Vallee witnessed the
destruction of the tracking tapes of unknown objects. (1/13/1961)
As reported in Leonard
Stringfield's UFO Crash/Retrievals, Status Report VII, on December 8, 1941,
50 aircraft were detected on radar 100 miles east of San Francisco.
Soon after they broke into two formations, one moving towards the Bay Area
and the other heading southwest. San Francisco was placed on alert at
that time as well as two other times early the next morning. Not long
after this, on February 25, 1942, the UFO related Los Angeles air raid
occurred (see Above Top Secret by Timothy Good, pages15-17). (11/24/1941) Returning to the crash reports,
on October 2, 1973, in Derry, New Hampshire, at about eight at night, at
least a few people witnessed two small, whitish-yellow glowing orbs, about
two feet round, performing maneuvers. The two objects then descended
towards Rainbow Lake and, once above it, one of them fell straight down and
splashed into the water. The other soared upwards and vanished.
The local fire department searched the lake by boat for two hours but found
nothing. They chose not to drag the lake bottom, no doubt, because
of the witnesses' descriptions (which didn't tally with it being a
manned aircraft). (10/17/1973) Three years and three months
later, another unidentified small aerial object crashed into water, again in
New Hampshire. On January 10th, 1977, a heavy black object, said to be
approximately one foot square, crashed through about one foot of ice on a
pond in Wakefield, New Hampshire. It was retrieved and later the police
reported that nothing had crashed through the ice. The cause is still a
mystery. This event was labeled a non-UFO event by Kevin Randle in his
recent book on UFO crashes. However, Mr. Randle does not elaborate
on why, specifically, he reached this conclusion. Perhaps the small size
and cube shape of this unknown object suggested something more likely
terrestrial, but, at the same time, small or box shaped UFOs are
not unheard of. (12/25/1976) On November 25, 1979, there was
an apparent UFO crash in Grays Harbor, Washington. At least one of the
several witnesses reported that the object seen falling into the harbor was
cigar shaped with brightly glowing windows. Another witness said he saw
a blinding flash after he saw it fall below the timberline towards the
harbor. This last witness also reported that the object had a long,
blue colored tail. Although there were reports of a retrieval of some
object by the military, there was also the explanation that the lights seen
by witnesses were merely the lights of a logging helicopter. Kevin Randle
labeled this case inconclusive or having insufficient data to reach a
conclusion. (3/4/1980) At around 1 a.m. on July11,
1986, an unusual looking aircraft was seen crashing into California's Sequoia
National Park (15 miles northeast of Bakersfield). The person who
witnessed this event described it as a UFO. The military came in and
closed off the area. They said it was a military aircraft and released
a name of the dead pilot. The type of the military vehicle was never
revealed. Such sources as Aviation Week believed it to have been a
Stealth Fighter aircraft, but that was only a best guess. Could this have
been a test of a captured alien craft? Just two months before there had
been a flap of UFO activity in the western U.S. and in Brazil. Six
armed Brazilian military jets actually chased these unknown craft,
twenty-one in number as tracked on radar, for several hours over Sao
Paulo on May 19, 1986. (7/21/1986) Two UFO crash events that
reportedly occurred in the same general area of Long Island, New York, one
off Moriches Bay on September 28, 1989, and one in Southaven Park on November
24, 1992, are unfortunately clouded in controversy. The principle
investigator of these two cases was John Ford, founder and president of the
Long Island UFO Network. Ford ran the UFO group for ten years, until
his arrest June 12, 1996, on charges of plotting the murder of two political adversaries.
Since then he has spent most of his time either imprisoned in the county jail
at Riverhead, New York (he was transferred back to this prison in September,
1998) or institutionalized at the Mid-Hudson Psychiatric Center in New
Hampton, New York (where he spent at least half of the year in 1998).
Maybe it is a fact that John Ford has been mentally and emotionally ill, but
was this true prior to, and contributing to, his alleged plot or was such a
condition the effect of persecution for his beliefs that he refused to keep
to himself? We may never know the answer to this question, but I think
it is remarkable that the first event above occurred on the exact date
predicted for a peak in the UFO cycle discussed here. I feel it also
significant that the second event was only twelve days from another peak in
this cycle. Maybe John Ford really was on to something; so much so that
a clandestine plan was set in motion to shut him up. (9/28/89
& 12/6/92) We now come full circle to
the Varginha event of January 20, 1996, but this may not be the only possible
UFO crash event for the last cycle peak. Three other incidents are
possible candidates for this time frame. All come from outside
the United States. Off the internet comes an unconfirmed report of
an explosion of an unidentified and unusual aerial craft that was retrieved
by the military of the former Soviet Union. This, supposedly, occurred
in November 1995, during the early morning hours near Itum-Katein the
Chechnya Mountains of the Chechen Republic-Itchkeria. On February
13, 1996, an object streaking across the sky, from East to West, crashed on
the west side of the Isle of Jura, off the west coast of Scotland. Many
witnesses described it as a UFO (a meteor or bolide didn't come to
mind). Also, in May 1996, a UFO apparently went down near Boyle, Eire
(Ireland). One night during that month many witnessed an unusual object
glide down towards the Curlieu Mountains north of Boyle. It appeared to
be an aerial craft coming into land, but had misjudged its approach, clipping
the tops of trees and landing in a lake. Several occupants were
said to have been taken into custody by a retrieval team and much
military activity (including American soldiers) continued in the area for a
six-month period following the incident. Civilians were
prevented from going near the scene and the local police were instructed to
keep their noses out of it and their mouths shut. (2/14/1996) What has been presented, so far, is
less than half of the better crash reports that I have found, which fit into
the peak cycle range (a period of one week short of five months
on either side of the peak cycle date) of my 3.19 year cycle [click here for table]. This range encompasses
one quarter of the full cycle length, and as shown in the distribution graph, of all crashes used for the
period 1948-1989.5, half of them fell within this range. What this
means is that UFO crashes have occurred within this cycle range twice as
often as would be expected from the statistical average. It is also
three times higher in this quarter of the cycle than the average occurrence
per quarter within the three quarters lying outside of this range [click here for table of non-cycle crashes].
[Click here to return to the top of the article]. More remarkable is the spike
shown within the 1/24th range of the cycle surrounding the cycle peak
date. Ten crashes fall within this range, which is almost five
times greater than would be expected from chance. Consistent
with this result is that there are no crash events at the zero point of
the cycle (fraction 1 and 48) or 180 degrees from fractions 24 and 25.
As might be expected from a
study with so few data points, the overall distribution is not quite ideal as
demonstrated from the trend line. However, another likely reason for
what is displayed is an apparent link between the 3.19 year cycle
and the Mars cycle. Looking at the trend line on the distribution
graph, you will see minor peaks at around 1/3rd of the cycle length from
the primary peak. The peak of the Mars cycle occurs approximately every
776 days (the period of time it takes Mars to orbit from one occurrence of its
closest earthly approach to the next one), which comes out to almost exactly
two thirds of the length of the 3.19 year (1,165 day) cycle. In my first
MUFON article (March 1995) it was noted that Jacques Vallee discovered not
only an apparent relationship between UFO waves and the Mars cycle, but also
some correlation for half the length of the Mars cycle or 13 months (it would
actually be 12.75 months if it was exactly half of 776 days). In a
manner identical for that used with the 3.19 year cycle, the possibility of a
connection between the Mars cycle and UFO crash reports was also investigated
and, although there appears to be significant results, it is not as
dramatic as with the crash cycle. However, it is interesting to
note that two crash report dates (one cycle and one non-cycle crash) occurred
on the very same day as the planet Mars was closest to the earth (11/3/58 and
10/17/73). Besides an interaction between the effects of the Mars cycle
and the crash cycle, there also seems to be a relationship between the 3.19
year crash cycle and the 5+ year cycle (the latter discussed in my
first MUFON article). Every sixteen years (less nineteen days) the
peaks of these cycles coincide (encompassing five 3.19 year
cycles and three 5+ year cycles). Not only did these two cycle
peaks coincide on October 17, 1973, but Mars was at its closest to Earth on
the same day. This is the only crash cycle peak date on my list where there
was an exact synchronization between a possible UFO crash, and the peak of a UFO
wave (with the possible exception of 9/28/89). Now, as this article comes to a
close, it is time to look at what is on the horizon. On April 24, 1999,
not only does the 3.19 year cycle peak again, but also the planet Mars is
only a week away from its closest orbital approach to Earth. Another
interesting time should be on September 9, 2005, when all three of the cycles
discussed here will coincide as they did in 1973 (however Mars will be nearly
two months away from its closest approach to Earth). Based on my
findings as here given, I can only wait expectantly for these dates and hope
that all of those who have read this article will be more alert and prepared
to jump at the opportunity to investigate any possible crash reports that
come to light during these times. Postdate: In updating links to
my site in the early part of 2001, I located two mysterious events that may
be relevant to my proposed UFO crash cycle. They both involved the
reported crash of unknown aerial objects on July 27, 1999. One was into
a lake in Sweden and the other was on land in the eastern portion of the
state of Ohio in the U.S. Reports of these two events can be found
at the following URLs: http://www.ufo.se/english/news/ http://home.fuse.net/ufo/Ravenna99.html
The other more recently discovered
report was found in a book entitled Soviet UFO Files, authored by Paul
Stonehill and printed in Italy by an English publisher in 1998. In
chapter five of the book, under the title "The Ordzenikidze Object"
is conveyed that the air defense units of the Trans-Caucasus military region
fired a missile at a cone-shaped UFO on May 5, 1983, after being detected on
radar for some time. Afterwards, a local inhabitant of the Stolovaya
Mountain area, near Nalchik, claimed that he had made contact with
"Aliens". Later, some adventurers from Moscow, after learning
of the incident through a media report, claimed they found and entered a
spacecraft there (the Daryal Gorge area). The article went on to say
that senior military officers evacuated the area and the craft hauled off to the
secret Mitische base near Moscow where the propulsion system was studied and
scientists determined that the engine used neutrino radiation.
Interestingly, the date of this incident was just eight days before a peak
date in the 3.19 year cycle. Note: For those readers who would
like more information to events described here that do not include source
documentation, they may find the references within Larry Hatch's *U* UFO
Database software program (nearly two thirds of the 50 crash events
used in this article for 1948-1989.5 are contained within that
database). For those interested in this program, a demo can be
downloaded off the internet from Larry Hatch's website at this URL: http://www.larryhatch.net/index.html
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