Biography of Gordon Cooper

PERSONAL DATA: Born March 6, 1927 in Shawnee, Oklahoma. His interests included treasure hunting, archeology, racing, flying, skiing, boating, hunting and fishing. Gordon Cooper passed away on October 4, 2004, at his home in Ventura, California, at the age of 77.

EDUCATION: Attended primary and secondary schools in Shawnee, Oklahoma and Murray, Kentucky; received a Bachelor of Science degree in Aeronautical Engineering from the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) in 1956; recipient of an Honorary Doctorate of Science degree from Oklahoma City University in 1967.

ORGANIZATIONS: The Society of Experimental Test Pilots, The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, The American Astronautical Society, The Blue Lodge Masons, The York Rite Masons, The Scottish Rite Masons, The Royal Order of Jesters, The Sojourners, The Rotary Club, The Daedalians, The Confederate Air Force, The Boy Scouts of America, The Girl Scouts of America.

SPECIAL HONORS: The Air Force Legion of Merit, The Air Force Distinguished Flying Cross, The Air Force Distinguished Flying Cross Cluster, The NASA Exceptional Service Medal, The NASA Distinguished Service Medal, USAF Command Astronaut Wings, The Collier Trophy, The Harmon Trophy, The Scottish Rite 33, The York Rite Knight of the Purple Cross, The DeMolay Legion of Honor, The John F. Kennedy Trophy, The Ivan E. Kincheloe Trophy, The Air Force Association Trophy, The Primus Trophy, The John Montgomery Trophy, The General Thomas E. White Trophy, The Association of Aviation Writers Award, The University of Hawaii Regents Medal, The Columbus Medal, The Silver Antelope, The Sport Fishing Society of Spain Award.

EXPERIENCE: Cooper, an Air Force Colonel, received an Army commission after completing three years of schooling at the University of Hawaii. He transferred his commission to the Air Force and was placed on active duty by that service in 1949 and given flight training.

His next assignment was with the 86th Fighter Bomber Group in Munich, Germany, where he flew F-84s and F-86s for four years. While in Munich, he also attended the European Extension of the University of Maryland night school.

He returned to the United States and, after two years of study at AFIT, received his degree. He then reported to the Air Force Experimental Flight Test School at Edwards Air Force Base, California, and, upon graduating in 1957, was assigned as an aeronautical engineer and test pilot in the Performance Engineering Branch of the Flight Test Division at Edwards. His responsibilities there included the flight testing of experimental fighter aircraft.

He logged more than 7,000 hours flying time–4,000 hours in jet aircraft. He had flown all types of Commercial and General aviation airplane and helicopters.

NASA EXPERIENCE: Colonel Cooper was selected as a Mercury astronaut in April 1959.

On May 15-16, 1963, he piloted the “Faith 7” spacecraft on a 22-orbit mission which concluded the operational phase of Project Mercury. During the 34 hours and 20 minutes of flight, Faith 7 attained an apogee of 166 statute miles and a speed of 17,546 miles per hour and traveled 546,167 statute miles.

Cooper served as command pilot of the 8-day 120-revolution Gemini 5 mission which began on August 21, 1965. It was on this flight that he and pilot Charles Conrad established a new space endurance record by traveling a distance of 3,312,993 miles in an elapsed time of 190 hours and 56 minutes. Cooper also became the first man to make a second orbital flight and thus won for the United States the lead in man-hours in space by accumulating a total of 225 hours and 15 minutes.

He served as backup command pilot for Gemini 12 and as backup commander for Apollo X.

Colonel Cooper logged 222 hours in space.

He retired from the Air Force and NASA in 1970.

BUSINESS EXPERIENCE:

• From 1962 to 1967, he was President of Performance Unlimited, Inc., a manufacturer and distributor of race and Marine engines, and fiberglass boats.
• From 1963 to 1967, he was President of GCR, Inc. They designed, tested and raced championship cars at Indianapolis and other USAC tracks, conducted tire tests for Firestone Tire and Rubber Company and pioneered turbine engine installation on cars.
• From 1965 to 1970, he was President of Teletest, Inc. They designed, installed and tested various systems using advanced Telemetry.
• From 1966 to 1969, he participated with Doubloon, Inc., on design, construction, and utilization of Treasure Hunting equipment.
• From 1968 to 1969, he participated with Cosmos, Inc., on Archeology exploration projects.
• From 1968 to 1970, he was part owner and race project manager of the Profile Race Team. He also designed, raced and constructed high performance boats.
• From 1968 to 1970, he was a Technical Consultant for corporate acquisitions and public relations for the Republic Corp.
• From 1967 to 1969, he was Technical Consultant for design and construction of various automotive production items for General Motors, Ford and Chrysler Motor Companies.
• From 1970 to 1972 he was Member of the Board of Directors and Technical Consultant for developing technical products and public relations in land development projects for Canaveral International, Inc.
• From 1970 to 1975, he was President of the consulting firm Gordon Cooper & Associates, Inc. They specialized in technical projects ranging from airline and aerospace fields to land and hotel development.
• From 1970 to 1974, he was on the Board of Directors for APECO which produced and marketed modular homes, computer systems, office systems, copy machines and boats and marine equipment.
• From July 1972 to June 1973, he was a Member of Board of Directors and Technical Consultant for Campco, a corporation which built campers and mobile homes.
• From August 1972 to December 1973, He was on the Board of Directors and a Technical Consultant for design and production of various advanced electronic systems for LowCom Systems, Inc.
• From 1972 to 1973, he was on the Board of Directors and a Technical Consultant for design and construction of lifting, inflatable, steerable foils which could land cargo and/or personnel at a precise spot for Aerofoil Systems, Inc.
• From July 1973 to January 1974, he was Vice President and member of the Board of Directors for Craftech Corporation. They specialized in the design and construction of economical homes, garages, storage buildings, and hangers of Craftboard and fiberglass.
• From January 1973 to 1975, he was Chairman of the Board for Constant Energy Systems, Inc.
• From January 1973 to 1975, he was Vice President for Research and Development/EPCOT for Walter E. Disney Enterprises, Inc., the research and development subsidiary of Walt Disney Productions.

Background on UFO Sightings

Cooper claimed to have seen his first UFO while flying over West Germany in 1951, although he denied reports he had seen a UFO during his Mercury flight.

In 1957, when Cooper was 30 and a Captain, he was assigned to Fighter Section of the Experimental Flight Test Engineering Division at Edwards AFB in California. He acted as a test pilot and project manager. On May 3 of that year, he had a crew setting up an Askania Cinetheodolite precision landing system on a dry lake bed. This cinetheodolite system would take pictures at one frame per second as an aircraft landed. The crew consisted of James Bittick and Jack Gettys who began work at the site just before 0800, using both still and motion picture cameras. According to his accounts, later that morning they returned to report to Cooper that they saw a “strange-looking, saucer-like” aircraft that did not make a sound either on landing or take-off.

According to his accounts, Cooper realized that these men, who on a regular basis have seen experimental aircraft flying and landing around them as part of their job of filming those aircraft, were clearly worked up and unnerved. They explained how the saucer hovered over them, landed 50 yards away from them using three extended landing gears and then took off as they approached for a closer look. Being photographers with cameras in hand, they of course shot images with 35mm and 4×5 still cameras as well as motion picture film. There was a special Pentagon number to call to report incidents like this. He called and it immediately went up the chain of command until he was instructed by a general to have the film developed (but to make no prints of it) and send it right away in a locked courier pouch. As he had not been instructed to not look at the negatives before sending them, he did. He said the quality of the photography was excellent as would be expected from the experienced photographers who took them. What he saw was exactly what they had described to him. He did not see the movie film before everything was sent away. He expected that there would be a follow up investigation since an aircraft of unknown origin had landed in a highly classified military installation, but nothing was ever said of the incident again. He was never able to track down what happened to those photos. He assumed that they ended up going to the Air Force’s official UFO investigation, Project Blue Book, which was based at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

He held claim until his death that the U.S. government was indeed covering up information about UFOs. He gave the example of President Harry Truman who he claimed said on April 4, 1950, “I can assure you that flying saucers, given that they exist, are not constructed by any power on Earth.” He also pointed out that there were hundreds of reports made by his fellow pilots, many coming from military jet pilots sent to respond to radar or visual sightings from the ground. In his memoirs, Cooper wrote he had seen other unexplained aircraft several times during his career, and also said hundreds of similar reports had been made. He further claimed these sightings had been “swept under the rug” by the U.S. government. Throughout his later life Cooper expressed repeatedly in interviews he had seen UFOs and described his recollections for the documentary Out of the Blue. Special thanks to Wikipedia for this section.

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“For many years I have lived with a secret, in a secrecy imposed on all specialists in astronautics. I can now reveal that every day, in the USA, our radar instruments capture objects of form and composition unknown to us. And there are thousands of witness reports and a quantity of documents to prove this, but nobody wants to make them public. Why? Because authority is afraid that people may think of God knows what kind of horrible invaders. So the password still is: We have to avoid panic by all means.”

ASTRONAUT GORDON COOPER’S MESSAGE TO THE U.N.

“I believe that these extraterrestrial vehicles and their crews are visiting this planet from other planets, which are a little more technically advanced than we are on Earth. I feel that we need to have a top level, coordinated program to scientifically collect and analyze data from all over the Earth concerning any type of encounter, and to determine how best to interfere with these visitors in a friendly fashion. We may first have to show them that we have learned how to resolve our problems by peaceful means rather than warfare, before we are accepted as fully qualified universal team members. Their acceptance will have tremendous possibilities of advancing our world in all areas. Certainly then it would seem that the U.N. has a vested interest in handling the subject quickly and properly. I should point out that I am not an experienced UFO professional researcher – I have not as yet had the privilege of flying a UFO nor of meeting the crew of one. However, I do feel that I am somewhat qualified to discuss them, since I have been into the fringes of the vast areas of which they travel. Also, I did have occasion in 1951 to have two days of observation of many flights of them, of different sizes flying in fighter formation, generally from west to east over Europe. They were at a higher altitude than we could reach with our jet fighters….If the U.N. agrees to pursue this project and lend the credibility to it, perhaps many more well qualified people will agree to step forth and provide help and information.”

– Astronaut Gordon Cooper addressing a U.N. panel discussion on UFOs and ETs in New York, in 1985; Panel was chaired by then U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim. The above message was given to the U.N. by Astronaut Gordon L. Cooper, one of America’s original seven Mercury Astronauts. Cooper orbited the Earth for a record 34 hour, 22 orbit flight in the spacecraft ‘Faith 7’, in May of 1963. He has been outspoken about the need for an open inquiry into UFOs – based on his own personal experience of sighting UFOs in space and the testimony of other Mercury, Gemini and Apollo Astronauts.

GORDON COOPER & UFOs: AN ASTRONAUT SPEAKS OUT

  by Timothy Green Beckley

“One of the few individuals whose prominence is beyond question has, however, over the past few months, dared to open his mouth and challenge the status quo. Gordon Cooper was one of America’s original astronauts. He helped pioneer this country’s space exploration efforts when, aboard a tiny space capsule known as Mercury [Faith] 7, Cooper orbited the Earth for 34 hours, proving that man could live outside our atmosphere for prolonged periods. His patriotism, bravery and respectability go without saying… Cooper has recently made several public pronouncements concerning his strong belief in UFOs. While a guest on the Merv Griffin Show, Cooper shocked the viewing audiences by speaking for over five minutes on a topic that was only within the past few years often considered too bizarre for polite conversation. But there were some things that Cooper wouldn’t even discuss on the air in front of the curious multitudes. Luckily Lee Spiegel is a personal friend of Gordon Cooper. They have conferred on several occasions, and while in the company of the man who is bound and determined to crack the ‘Cosmic Watergate’ which he is convinced exists within the higher echelon of government, the former space traveler is more than happy to talk about his UFO experiences – and they are many. In the early 1950s, Cooper was assigned to a jet fighter group in Germany.

While stationed there, he remembers very vividly the week an entire formation of circular objects passed over the Air Base on almost a daily routine. ‘We never could get close enough to pin them down, but they were round in shape and very metallic looking,’ Cooper points out. UFOs were to continue to haunt him when the Air Force Colonel was transferred several years later to Edwards Air Force Base Flight Test Center in the California desert. What happened one afternoon while he was on duty at this military base is evidence enough that the government definitely does keep a lot of secrets when it comes to UFOs! The incident took place in the late 1950s, either 1957 or 1958 – as Cooper can best recall; and to this day, the photographic evidence of an actual UFO touching down upon the Earth is being kept under wraps. During this period, Cooper was a Project Manager at Edwards Air Force Base, just three or four years before entering America’s space program. After lunch this particular day, Cooper had assigned a team of photographers to an area of the vast dry lake beds near Edwards. In a taped interview with UFOlogist Lee Spiegel, the former Astronaut disclosed that while the crew was out there, they spotted a strange-looking craft above the lake bed, and they began taking films of it. Cooper says the object was very definitely ‘hovering above the ground. And then it slowly came down and sat on the lake bed for a few minutes.’ All during this time the motion picture cameras were filming away. ‘There were varied estimates by the cameramen on what the actual size of the object was,’ Cooper confesses, ‘but they all agreed that it was at least the size of a vehicle that would carry normal-sized people in it.’ Col. Cooper was not fortunate enough to be outside at the time of this incredible encounter, but he did see the films as soon as they were rushed through the development process. ‘It was a typical circular-shaped UFO,’ he recollects. ‘Not too many people saw it, because it took off at quite a sharp angle and just climbed straight on out of sight!’ Cooper admits he didn’t take any kind of poll to determine who had seen the craft, ‘because there were always strange things flying around in the air over Edwards.’ This is a statement Lee Spiegel was able to verify through his own research efforts, having obtained closely guarded tapes of conversations between military pilots circling the base and their commanding officers in the flight tower, tracking the presence of unknown objects. ‘People just didn’t ask a lot of questions about things they saw and couldn’t understand,’ notes Cooper, who adds that it was a lot simpler to look the other way, shrug one’s shoulders, and chalk up what had been seen to ‘just another experimental aircraft that must have been developed at another area of the air base.’ But what about the photographic proof – the motion picture footage – that was taken? ‘I think it was definitely a UFO,’ Cooper states, as he makes no bones about it. ‘However, where it (the object) came from and who was in it is hard to determine, because it didn’t stay around long enough to discuss the matter – there wasn’t even time to send out a welcoming committee!’ After he reviewed the film at least a dozen times, the footage was quickly forwarded to Washington. Cooper no doubt expected to get a reply in a few weeks’ time as to what his men had seen and photographed, but there was no word, and the movie *vanished* – never to surface again…. On coast-to-coast television, Cooper recently made a blockbuster statement that had the telephone lines tied up the next day, as viewers telephoned the stations which carried the syndicated Merv Griffin Show, anxious to find out if their ears had been playing tricks on them the night before. Toward the end of the talk-show host’s interview with the former Astronaut, Merv broke into a secretive tone of voice right on the air, and aimed a hundred-thousand-dollar question at his guest:

‘There is a story going around, Gordon, that a spaceship did land in middle America and there were occupants, and members of our government were able to keep one of the occupants alive for a period of time. They’ve seen the metal of the aircraft and they know what the people look like – is that a credible story?’ For all intents and purposes Cooper should have laughed for assuredly such a speculative story belongs in the category of science fiction or space fantasy. But Gordon Cooper kept a straight face when he replied: ‘I think it’s fairly credible. I would like to see the time when all qualified people could really work together to properly investigate these stories and either refute or prove them.’ The bombshell had been dropped. Cooper went on to say that from the various reports of UFO contacts and abductions he had been privy to, he was convinced that the occupants of this crashed UFO were ‘probably not that different from what we are,’ – that they are almost totally humanoid (i.e., have two arms, two legs, a torso and readily identifiable facial features) in appearance. Taken aback by what Cooper had said over the national airwaves, Lee Spiegel telephoned Cooper’s office the following morning and managed to get past his private secretary, though others in the media were getting the cold shoulder. ‘Cooper admitted to me that he could have revealed more on the air, but he decided not to play his entire hand because he felt certain that some ‘official eyebrows were going to get raised’.'”

(The above article was excerpted from the book “MJ-12 and the Riddle of Hangar 18” by Timothy Green Beckley; 1981; Inner Light Publications P.O. Box 753, New Brunswick, N.J. 08903; p.12 – 14. An excellent book — JS)

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