UFOs in Reality (13 page)

From the timings graph’s evidence, it seems reasonable to speculate that the SAC had an urgent rendezvous to keep in space and could have taken Valentich and his aircraft with it, as no trace of either has been found.

References

[7] O’Brian, C.‘The Mysterious Valley’ (book) St. Martin’s Press, N.Y. September 1996

[8] Hervey, M.‘UFOs over the Southern Hemisphere’ (book) Robert Hale & Co., London. 1975

[9] Good, Timothy ‘Above Top Secret’ (book) Sidgwick & Jackson, London, 1987 Grafton Books, London, 1989.

Fig. 25

CHAPTER 12
M
ILITARY CLOSE ENCOUNTERS.
 

There have been numerous reports of Close Encounters with SAC experienced, over the years, by military personnel and civilian police. I propose to consider only a few examples in this chapter to demonstrate why I believe the accounts to be true and validated by the Astronautical Theory.

It has been quite clear that, from time to time, orders were issued to Service personnel and police, by members of the security organisations, to place such encounters under confidentiality wraps. During the Cold War period I suppose it was their concern that the public should not be unduly panicked by such stories, when the threats of infiltration and conquest by a foreign power were very real. However, in Britain, those rules seemed to have been relaxed from time to time. The degree of secrecy applied to events seems to have depended on the sensitivity of the military site and on whether to admit to having failed to apprehend the SAC would reveal certain weaknesses to the potential enemy. Despite all that, news has occasionally leaked out that military bases had been visited. During the late 1940s and the 1950s, a number of events were made public knowledge and I will deal firstly with my investigation of one of those. After that, I will consider a few high profile happenings from the following years.

Apart from the over-sensationalised Roswell events, for which it is now difficult to separate the facts from all the moneymaking fictions, the case with the highest profile during the late 1940s was probably the one resulting in the tragic death of the American reservist flyer, Capt. Thomas Mantell, Jnr. The events have been reported by several writers but my definitive view of the them has been derived from the late Major Donald E. Keyhoe’s book of 1953,
‘Flying Saucers from Outer Space’ [10]
. Major Keyhoe was an ex-Marine who had friends in the Pentagon and other high places within the U.S. military establishment
. Timothy Good’s ‘Above Top Secret’
[9]
supplemented Keyhoe’s account by giving details of the official summary of the incident.

The Mantell Encounter – 1948

On the afternoon of January 7th, 1948, hundreds of people in Madisonville, Kentucky, spotted a huge round glowing object overhead. As they watched, the SAC moved over to
Godman Air Force Base
, close to Fort Knox, when the State Police, in their message to Fort Knox, estimated the object’s size to be at least 250 feet in diameter. Capt. Mantell and three other
F51 Mustang
pilots were on a training mission and flying through that area when Godman AFB called on them to investigate the intruder. After climbing through broken cloud, Mantell reported he could see the object, that it looked metallic and that it was huge. He reported that the SAC was beginning to climb. It was above him and making his speed or faster. (This invalidates the suggestion that the object might have been a high altitude research balloon). He said he was going to climb to 20,000 ft. and would abandon the chase if he seemed then to be no closer.

Meanwhile, one of his companions decided to continue on, to complete his original mission. Two others accompanied Mantell up to 22,000 ft. and then had to abandon the chase because they were low on oxygen. Mantell, however, continued to climb.

Shortly afterwards, his aircraft crashed and was seen by an eyewitness to disintegrate in the air. It seemed likely that Mantell had suffered oxygen starvation, blacked out and lost control of the aircraft, which may then have entered a powered nose dive. The location of the crashed aircraft was given as being 2 miles south-west of Franklin, Kentucky, and the approximate time of the crash was given as 16:45 hr. Central Standard Time.

I checked out the details of this terrible accident using my programs. A computer-generated timings graph for that area of Kentucky was produced and then the date and the time of Mantell’s crash was plotted onto it. (The crash time was assumed to be also the approximate time of the SAC’s departure). As can be seen from
Fig.26
, that time fell upon a predicted line, 21:30 hr RA orientated, which represented the last opportunity (for about 18 hours) for that supposed automated SAC to rendezvous with its retrieval ship in Space. A glance at the little Latitude/Longitude grid map of the area, always provided above the (later) computed timings graphs, shows that the associated track over the ground (No.4) of the ship in Space would have placed it in a good position, directly overhead, to retrieve the exploration craft. In the light of all this, it seems particularly unfortunate that Mantell chased the SAC just as it was forced to depart skywards in a hurry.

Fig. 26

The Bethune Encounter – 1951

During the dark, clear, night of February 9th/10th, 1951, a U.S Navy
C-54 (DC4) transport aircraft
droned along on its lonely way from Keflavik, Iceland to Argentia, Newfoundland, following the Great Circle route linking those two places. It was carrying cargo and its passengers were military personnel. At the controls, in captain’s seat on the flight deck, was the young Lt. Com. Graham Bethune. The flight was proceeding at 10,000 feet, in an uneventful way up to the point when the navigator confirmed their course and estimated the distance to Argentia to be only 200 miles. What happened shortly afterwards would almost certainly have changed the lives of everyone onboard that aircraft, not least, Lt. Com. Bethune’s. (A full account of the ensuing events is given by Michael Hesemann’s book
‘UFOs – The Secret Evidence’ [11]).

Ahead and off to the right, in the 12:30 position (the 12 o’clock position would have been directly ahead), an underwater glow was spotted from the flight deck. It seemed to be of considerable size and an estimated 30 miles away. Five minutes later, the glow suddenly disappeared and was replaced by large ring of white lights, located in the same position, but about 20 miles away. Shortly afterwards the relief crew members were called to the cockpit. The lights were then at the 1 o’clock position. Suddenly, the underwater lights were extinguished and a smaller ring of light, more like a yellow halo, appeared above the surface of the water about 15 miles ahead. This ring, becoming oval and growing larger as it did so, suddenly zoomed upwards towards the C-54 with unbelievable acceleration. Startled by this and fearing a collision was imminent, the pilot disengaged the autopilot and initiated an evasive nose down manoeuvre. However, that turned out not to be necessary. The ring resolved itself into a huge disc-shaped craft with a large upper-surface dome and it stopped suddenly ahead of and below the aircraft. Bethune estimated it had a diameter of about 200 feet. It moved to the starboard side and seemed to be examining the C54 before it accelerated away into the night. (It became known after the event that the departing disc had been tracked on radar and its measured speed had been 1,800 mph.)

Within the aircraft, the sudden evasive manoeuvre had caused the standby crew members behind the flight deck to be thrown about and two of them had been injured. Bethune then left the co-pilot at the controls and entered the passenger cabin to check on the well-being of his passengers. The first man he encountered was an important Navy psychiatrist. He asked, “Did you see that?” The man responded,
“Yes, it was a flying saucer – but I didn’t see it because I don’t believe in them”
. Bethune, guessing there was an official cover-up policy prevailing, rushed back into the cockpit saying, “Whatever you do, don’t tell anyone about this!” The co-pilot replied, “Too late. I’ve already contacted Gander Control”.

Some years ago, the Michael Hesemann video, “UFOs – The Secret Evidence” had introduced me to this happening. In an interview with Hesemann, Commander (rtd.) Bethune related the exciting elements of the encounter. He appeared to be a practical and unexcitable man, even when he described the excitement and shock of the experience. He was an excellent witness.

Then, during 2006, whilst watching through an on-line
‘Disclosure Project’
video, I heard Com. Bethune tell his story again in the company of other retired US service men, most of them high ranking, all of whom had experienced UFO encounters during their years of service. One of those on the platform was retired (USAF) Major George Filer. This man had been a member the crew of a US patrol aircraft based in the U.K. during the 1960s. One night, whilst returning from a patrol over the North Sea, his aircraft had been instructed to seek out and investigate a UFO located somewhere west of London. They had succeeded in this mission, but the UFO had then left the scene with amazing acceleration that left the onlookers open-mouthed. In retirement, Major Filer eventually went on to create a MUFON-related web site called
‘Filer’s Files’
. These files, updated every week, reported the latest UFO events reported world-wide and could be accessed by subscription.

My second viewing of Com. Bethune inspired me to investigate his event in detail. As this book has already revealed, by then, I had created a means of checking UFO events involving Strange Aerial Craft (SAC), using the computerised astronautical theory (AT). This tool had proved its worth during the processing of well over 1000 new global events collected subsequent to its creation during the late 1980s.

I needed accurate positioning and event times to apply this work to the Bethune encounter. Major Filer seemed to be an obvious source and link with the Commander, so I contacted him by e-mail. He seemed very happy to help me and even gave me details of his own encounter. He supplied me with Com. Bethune’s telephone number, with the rider that they hadn’t been in touch for more than a year.

When I rang the New Jersey number, immediately I found myself talking with Graham Bethune. After my introduction, he answered my first enquiry about his wellbeing by telling me he was confined to bed. When I expressed a hope that it was nothing too serious, he brushed my concern aside by saying that the medics these days make a ‘big deal’ of a broken toe-nail – and then kindly proceeded to answer my questions. When I told him I suspected he had encountered an
underwater base
, he surprised me by saying, “Yes, it was”. He had no doubt about the presence on this Earth and in our skies of extraterrestrials. He referred me to the extensive account he had given to Michael Hesemann, which had been reproduced in Hesemann’s book.
[11]

With that, I decided not to prolong the conversation with a sick man, thanked him and wished him a speedy recovery. (Regretfully, a few months later, I saw it announced that Commander Graham Bethune had died. I felt very privileged to have been able to talk with him before he departed from this world.)