New witness documents USAF reaction to Phoenix Lights UFOs (The Examiner, 02-15-2009)
From The Black Vault Encyclopedia Project
Copyright ©2009 The Examiner
Contents |
The Article
by Larry Lowe, Phoenix UFO Examiner
A new witness has emerged with stunning allegations - based on personal observation - that the the United States Air Force was in a "state of anxiety" immediately after the March 13, 1997 incident now known as the Phoenix Lights.
In a posting at the Above Top Secret forum, the witness - identified only by the initials 'AL' - details the operational response of the 56 Fighter Wing at Luke Air Force Base to the unprecedented and still unexplained events of that evening.
Specifically, 'AL' states that on that date "USAF personnel stationed at both Luke AFB in Glendale and Davis-Monthan AFB in Tucson were a bit scared, as something was occurring over the skies of central and southern Arizona that night, and the on-duty personnel at both bases had no idea what it was."
In his first post, 'AL' describes the Air Force response to UFO activity that night.
Luke AFB scrambled two F-16C's from the 56th Fighter Wing, however, these aircraft were not vectored southwest of Phoenix toward the source of the [publicly reported flare] lights, but directly south toward Tucson. What is known further, is that less than 10 minutes later, a second set of F-16C's from the 56th were also scrambled and sent southeast.
Radio reports from the first flight of aircraft indicated something "odd" was occurring, however the pilots never gave any indication or specifics (in the open at any rate), as to what that was. Both flights were kept away intentionally from the lights being seen near the Estrella range. It was obvious to all with access that there were other aircraft in the area, with orders to drop flares (whether this was the Maryland ANG is unknown). It was felt that this was indeed a "deception" measure to keep curiosity focused on one space in the sky, as flares were never used that far north of the Goldwater training range (as any Luke personnel can tell you, if they were, there would be weekly "Phoenix Lights" incidents).
-- 'AL' posting on Above Top Secret forum In a subsequent post, 'AL' detailed what he knows happened from personal observation—careful to make the distinction between that and what he understands to have happened on the basis of reports from sources he trusts.
On the night of March 13th, 1997, an alert klaxon sounded at Luke, orders for two armed aircraft to perform an immediate take-off to 10,000 feet, and head south-east towards a radar sighting north of Casa Grande, Arizona. The first two aircraft, from the 56th Fighter Wing (310th Fighter Squadron), were armed only with 2x AIM-9M Sidewinder missiles and 20mm Vulcan cannons each. Once the flight was airborne, the flight leader called in that something “odd” was occurring after he picked up a radar contact a few thousand feet below, and several miles ahead of his position. His radar was showing “clutter” common to stand-off jamming.
This led to two further F-16C’s from the 56th, that were being fueled and armed since the first flight was launched, being sent up. This pair, in addition to the armament as above, also carried 2x AIM-7M Sparrow medium range missiles as well. They were also vectored south-east towards Flight 1 (now over Marana, AZ and approaching Tucson) on full afterburner. Flight 1 leader was able to regain radar contact on something large and low that was beginning to accelerate rapidly. Flight 1 lost the contact approximately 7 miles south of Tucson, and was ordered to proceed close to the border and try to regain contact.
Once Flight 1 lost radar contact, Flight 2 was ordered back to Luke (Flight 2 had just approached the Tucson area). Once Flight 1 was on station, attempts were made to re-establish radar contact to no avail. After 10 minutes or so, Flight 1 was ordered back to Luke. ALL of this occurred as the “flares” were being taped and photographed south-west of Phoenix. No aircraft were vectored to that area to investigate.
— 'AL', posting on Above Top Secret forum While the fighters were out tracking true unknowns the public relations officers were maintaining the double standard of truth — one for public consumption and another for those with "need to know". Nothing was going on that night, the Luke AFB P.A.O. maintained when asked about it the following day.
• • •
'AL' continues: "Few in the mainstream press talked about the 'other' sightings that night, focusing on the large triangular craft that had passed over the Phoenix metro area, the outskirts of Tucson, and over Fort Huachuca before slipping in to Mexico."
In this, 'AL' has a salient point. Mainstream media has long confabulated reporting of the March 13, 1997 episode, airing footage of flares dropped late at night while voice overs recount reports from earlier in the night of a gigantic V-shaped craft that overflew Phoenix. The viewers are left with a muddled conception of two events to argue over. [You can observe this technique in the CNN Report below.]
The facts of the matter are that there was much more than a string of lights to talk about that night. Among the UFO community, if not the population at large, this is common knowledge, thanks to the efforts of a pair of investigators and a network of reports and reporters.
Veteran investigators Michael Tanner and William F. Hamilton studied a database which was the result of a coordinated effort by Peter Davenport of the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) in Seattle, Washington and that of then-councilwoman Frances Emma Barwood in the weeks and months following the March incident. This was supplemented with material compile by Skywatch International and Phoenix MUFON field investigations in addition to their own field work.
Studying the data base, the pair sorted out at least 7 separate events that night of unknown origin:
Note: VLO refers to a 'Very Large Object'.
FORMATIONS OF HOVERING ORBS First observed in a hexagram pattern at about 7:30 PM over the Superstition Mountains area east of Phoenix, the characteristic 8+1 formation of amber orbs was next seen in two separate arc patterns with “trailing lights” over the Gila River area at about 9:50 and again at 10:00 at the southern edge of Phoenix where they were seen by thousands and videotaped by a handful who had camcorders close enough at hand to catch the fleeting minutes of their displays.
“VEE FORMATION” of FLYING ORBS
First seen leaving the Henderson-Las Vegas area and entering Arizona at high speed, a vee-formation of five to seven orbs, variously seen as bright blue-white to a yellow-white, came through the Prescott Valley area at low altitude by 7:50 PM, turning south, where by 8:28, were videotaped (displaying their characteristic movement within the formation) at the north end of the valley that comprises the Phoenix metro area.
“CHEVRON” VLO (narrow angle)
Observed first as a “vee formation” of five white lights moving slowly and silently toward Prescott Valley from the northwest at about 8:15, the “chevron” was soon clearly seen as a single object. The huge craft made a pivot turn over the witnesses’ home there while the lights shifted into an arc formation while turning to red, and upon doing so, it suddenly shot off at blinding speed toward Phoenix.
“BOOMERANG” VLO (wide angle)
This vee formation, consisting of five groups of three lights, was confirmed to be a single, huge object by various Prescott-area witnesses, being equivalent to a formation of five 747s flying absolutely lock-step in formation toward Phoenix. The craft was seen to make a southerly turn at about 8:25, once again, in the Prescott Valley area, after first approaching from the northwest.
TRIANGULAR VLO (narrow angle)
Observed clearly by a Mesa family among others in their area at about 8:45 to 8:55, this “enormous” craft was seen to have definite structure to it complete with panels in a grid pattern along with lights at each of the three corners and a larger center light.
TRIANGULAR VLO (wide angle)
By all accounts the largest of the VLOs in the March 13th “demonstration”, this gigantic craft was first seen at close range over north Phoenix between 8:30 and 8:45 where the key witnesses (real estate people who subdivided the area) estimated its size to be as much as two miles wide. Its flight path brought it low to the ground at this point (less than 2,000’) where it was seen to not only have dozens of lights along its leading edges, but also a row of windows wherein the silhouettes of “people” were observed.
GIANT DISCOID VLO
Witnessed first by a retired airline pilot, his sons and a friend, and seen coming down Scottsdale Road at about 10:20 PM, this huge circular craft, featuring amber lights around its perimeter (at an estimated one mile in diameter), was seen to make a purposeful turn toward Sky Harbor at about Camelback Road where it also intersected air traffic before disappearing from view over South Mountain.
In addition to the unknown objects, Tanner and Hamilton were able to correlate reports to identify four separate interception operations that night.
Crown King/5:30 PM A formation of three huge “vees” were seen hovering over this pine-topped mountain and soon were joined by a diamond-shaped or triangular craft which appeared out of thin air (first as an “amber” light). As the four objects were hovering together, two jets were seen to come low from the south (from Luke AFB) at which point the UFOs went into a “stack”, collapsed upon each other while going “into a ball”, then totally disappeared!
Central Phoenix/8:15 PM
A pair of F-15s were dispatched from Luke AFB to attempt an interception of one or more of the vees approaching or entering the valley at that time. This was reported to NUFORC by a ground crewman at Luke who stated that the aircraft were equipped with gun cameras and that one of the pilots had to be helped out of his plane because he was so shaken up by his encounter.
North Phoenix/9:30 PM
One of the witnesses saw in the distance what appeared to be the return of the triangle, this time with only three lights on, one at each corner. As the UFO hovered near Deer Valley Airport in northwest Phoenix, he saw two military jets approach the triangle, with one jet seen to pass one side of it and the other seen to fly up under it, veering down at the last moment to avoid a midair collision.
Luke AFB/10:00 PM
A truck driver who had been seeing two unusual amber lights move ahead of him to the south for fully two hours as he drove down I-17 from Camp Verde, reported that as he neared his destination, a materials plant near Luke AFB, the two UFOs seemed to have stopped and were hovering. Once at the plant, while waiting for his truck to be unloaded, he stood on a pile of materials to watch what were now seen as two identical, toy top-like amber orbs with the nearest to him being one to two miles away, right next to the runway at Luke. All of a sudden, two F-16s, followed by a third, “blasted out of Luke with their afterburners on full”, made a steep bank directly over the witness and headed straight for the nearest UFO.
The mass of civilian testimony hugely outweighs the assertion that nothing was going on at Luke AFB that night.
None of the witnesses who saw the other craft in the parade that night have any doubt in their minds or testimony that the mile long V-shaped wings, the steady formations of glowing orbs, the huge, silent black triangles or the glowing ovid shaped craft were strings of flares.
'AL' goes on to discuss other USAF operations, of which he does not have first hand knowledge. These, he is careful to distinguish, are alleged facts, that will need first hand witness testimony to confirm. That said, 'AL' is confident enough in the sources that gave him this information to include the hearsay evidence for consideration in his posting.
Further scramble of aircraft was initiated from Nellis AFB, Nevada (prior to the Phoenix sighting) and Holloman AFB, New Mexico (around 10 minutes after the Flight 1 scramble from Luke). F-16’s from Nellis, no word on aircraft type from Holloman (at the time it was the only F-117A “Stealth Fighter” base, with the Luftwaffe having a training squadron of Tornado aircraft, neither would have been used on an intercept mission).
Towers at several locations had tapes of the “event”. Radar at Luke and Davis-Monthan were picking up low level “noise” on several frequencies, similar to what had happened to Flight 1. This “noise” was consistent with active wide-spectrum jamming. It was highly unusual for this to occur in an area that did not have that type of (jamming) training environment (nearest place this was done was at the Nellis AFB range). According to many in the know, something physical was in the sky that night, with radar data providing the primary source of evidence. That “something” entered Mexican airspace and promptly disappeared. Maximum recorded speed was at Mach 1.8 past Tucson nearing Fort Huachuca.
-- 'AL' posting on Above Top Secret forum Judging from the tone and tenor of the posting, the individual who posted this report is an experienced military person, likely an officer, most probably in the air traffic control center at Luke that night, if not in one of the F-16's. Given the potential personal down-side to professionals with a career reputation at stake one can easily understand his initial preference to remain anonymous.
Even the then-Governor of Arizona, Fife Symington thought first of the career implications of his personal observation of the triangular craft. At the time Symington engaged in a derisive charade in order to quell public concern and scrutiny of the event.
The fact that the Air Force scrambled fighters to investigate an unidentified flying object raises several questions.
Those questions and their implications ultimately dismantle the longest standing alibi in military history, as we are about to see.
Start with this:
According to 'AL', the USAF flew two F-16's all the way to the Mexican border to the southeast of Phoenix while ignoring a string of flares dropped by an A-10 southwest of Phoenix that evening. That, along with the air operations detailed by Tanner and Hamilton, constitutes investigation of Unidentified Flying Objects by active duty Air Force pilots, using Air Force equipment. Which makes it pretty much an official USAF investigation into UFO's.
If they did not investigate the flares, it would be because they exactly knew what they were. which puts to rest further debate about flares. Flares were dropped. They were dropped deliberately, in order to provide a distraction to the media and through them, the public. They did not distract the Air Force from investigating Unidentified Flying Objects in US airspace.
If the Air Force did NOT know what was going on in the skies over Phoenix and set out to intercept the unidentified object, were they concerned, in a post 9/11 world, about the security of US airspace?
If so, then their official position regarding UFO's is a lie.
• • •
In 1968 a white-wash commission headed by Dr Ed Condon from the University of Colorado issued a comprehensive report on UFO activity. The 5 page summation to the 965 page report, hand-written by Condon himself, countered evidence presented in the report and concluded that UFO sightings were to be dismissed as evidence of extraterrestrial life.
It was a particularly convenient truth for the United States Air Force, which was having an increasingly hard time fielding reports flooding in from all over the country. After a quick blessing by the academic community to Condon's conclusions the Air Force shut down Project Blue Book – the publicity sham set up to collect the least important reports and file them.
The report's hand-crafted, pre-determined summation became history, despite the protest of the UFO community who pointed out that the contents included several reports that "state the probable existence of structured, intelligently controlled, unknown objects capable of precise maneuvers and extremely high speeds."
Regardless, the political problem of Unidentified Flying Objects had been formally solved and to this day the USAF has maintained that UFO's offer no credible threat to national security and thus they don't investigate them.
The Air Force's position seems to be 'It's not our job.'
Taken at face value, this is absurd. The reason you have fighter-interceptors and a radar system is to investigate objects detected flying into your country's airspace which cannot readily be identified. Those are, by definition, unidentified flying objects.
Yet the USAF has the certainty to decide in advance that civilian UFO reports are not worth looking into, when the dictates of a credible air defense system say that they must.
Thanks to veterans like 'AL', and the Luke airman who appeared in Dr. Lynne Kitei's video documentary of the event and to the civilian witnesses whose testimony was correlated by Tanner and Hamilton, we know that the Air Force does investigate unidentified flying objects—the ones they know not to be flares.
That means that over a half century of official USAF policy has been a lie.
So why lie to the public?
What is their motive for not disclosing fighter intercept missions against Unidentified Flying Objects in US airspace, as they also did in the Stevensville Texas event?
Are they trying to find out as much about the visitors as the visitors seem to be trying to find out about us?
What kind of signal does it sent to alien visitors that whenever they make overt displays of their craft, the response of the human military is to launch fighter intercepters armed with air-to-air missiles?
What kind of situation would cause our military leadership to conduct that kind of activity and not tell the public?
The typical reasons the military lies to the public are to keep vital war-winning information secret, like the landing point on D-Day, the existence of the B-29, the atomic bomb or the SR-71.
Is the United States engaged in an undeclared war with an unknown foe and the American electorate doesn't know it?
Perhaps.
And perhaps this is only the latest chapter in an old, old story, one that trancends recorded history. A story of brutish and paranoid reaction by a lesser advanced species to the appearence of a more advanced one. Perhaps our history is not what we were told it was in school.
Similar sightings point to a longstanding and ongoing if elusive non-human presence in the central Arizona area. The amber orbs from which the event gets its name have been seen for years—legends about them reach into native American antiquity and they continue to be seen to this day.
It took the end of many of the principle witnesses of the Roswell incidents' lives for them to come forth with the complete version of their stories. The most compelling evidence is the death-bed and posthumous testimony of those who were there, or were involved.
Witnesses to the Phoenix Lights, one of the most significant UFO events of all time, are not waiting so long to tell their truth.
Perhaps motivated by the sheer numbers of reports, perhaps inspired by those who have come out including Dr. Lynne Kitei, airline Captain Trig Johnston, former Gov, Fife Symington, more reports like those of 'AL' are arriving daily. When they are put together, they will paint a picture of something far more important than flares--which have become the 'swamp gas' and 'weather balloons' of our time.
With worldwide UFO activity increasing almost exponentially, it becomes increasingly obvious that something formally unacknowledged by the U.S. Government is going on in our reality. And their continued denials have less impact on the public's consensus reality than they do on the government's credibility.
And that is a shame, because there is much more for the public to learn, were a policy of openness and transparency be applied to the longest running lie the government has ever maintained.
As 'AL' puts it:
"The incident has quietly fallen down the memory hole for most, but not for many USAF personnel close to the incident that night. There is a considerable amount of information that was never leaked, and for an incident of this magnitude, the mind boggles as to why ... "
Fife Symington Interview
Notes
- Investigative Caveat: The report by 'AL' needs to be integrated into the volumes of material already in the Phoenix Lights report database before firm conclusions can be made. Discussion of this report remains preliminary until contact with 'AL' is made and his report confirmed.
- Original Posting: Quotes in this report are the work of "Topol-M; a member of AboveTopSecret.com"
Credits
Special Thanks: Key material for this report was provided by Michael Tanner, who developed it in collaboration with Bill Hamilton during the original investigation.
