The mysterious Cold War case of unidentified aircraft descending on Loring AFB

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/35674/the-bizarre-mystery-of-unexplained-aerial-incursions-over-loring-air-force-base

by bookofjoe • 6 years ago

127 48 6 years ago

thedrive.com

j3th9n• 6 years ago

The article refers to loringremembers.com which shows a domainparking website. But loringremembers.com/home shows more info.

XzetaU8• 6 years ago

https://sites.google.com/site/loringremembers/

DanielBMarkham• 6 years ago

Fascinating. More examples of large organizations encountering unknown and non-reproducible phenomena.

Like everybody else, I have no idea what this is. I have, however, consumed scads of stories about military organizations encountering things they can't deal with. Some of these are quite prosaic for their situation, such as UN forces figuring out that the Chinese were entering the Koran War.

I _think_ I have enough of these examples to reach a tentative conclusion: for many organizations, the information that they've had incursions and are stumped is extremely important. If there's a known weakness, other competing powers might take advantage of it. What actually happened is besides the point. The mission is to control information, access to information, and the larger narrative.

You layer on half-remembered (and perhaps exaggerated) stories from fifty years ago and you get articles like this. My best guess is that this is very similar to what happened to the US Navy recently, only in this case the military has managed to confuse the issue enough that investigators will be debating details for decades to come.

Reality is not required to conform to our standards of scientific proof. If we can't observe or manipulate something, there's no way for us to scientifically reason about it. That's tough for a lot of folks to deal with.

bfieidhbrjr• 6 years ago

It happens to the Navy all the time, what happened recently was some public acknowledgement.

Also there's a non-zero chance that all the Lazar stories are true, and there is a body of knowledge, just kept from the wider military.

andrewflnr• 6 years ago

Reality is not required to conform to our standards of scientific proof.

Yep, this comes up with quantum superdeterminism, too.

gus_massa• 6 years ago

Reality is not required to conform to our standards of scientific proof. If we can't observe or manipulate something, there's no way for us to scientifically reason about it. That's tough for a lot of folks to deal with.

The standards of scientific proof are rules to avoid error that we made in the past.

For example with 'Oumuamua, one guy think it is a solar sail, another guy thinks it is made of Hydrogen ice and another one thinks that it is made of very low density dust. We know that two of them are wrong, at least. With a low enough standard, someone can claim that one of the answers is the correct.

For another examples think about low temperature fission or high temperature superconductivity. Well we have strong proof of the later now.

Spooky23• 6 years ago

I know from my own experience that even with normal news stories, most miss the point at some level because the journalists have incomplete information or cherry pick to reach a desired conclusion.

In these scenarios with the military, you’re guaranteed that anyone who knows what is going on isn’t talking. Especially on a SAC base. And it’s highly probable that anyone who is talking has no clue or is delivering BS information.

Just after this time period, there were a number of UFO sightings in the northeast, especially around Plattsburgh AFB, Rome AFB and Fort Drum. The UFO aspect was widely reported, and later the “sightings” were attributed to flight testing of terrain comparison navigation systems for cruise missiles. I’d look more at that type of explanation than anything else.

boomboomsubban2• 6 years ago

Happening in 1975 makes it about the only case I've heard of that I wouldn't immediately suspect CIA involuntary drugging, though I wouldn't rule out some military intelligence agency research.

polytely• 6 years ago

Yeah my guess it's one big psychological warfare magic show, the modern equivalent of the WWII Ghost Army

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Army

mhh__• 6 years ago

As in, you think the drugging stopped?

boomboomsubban2• 6 years ago

As in during the Church Committee is about the only time I think the CIA wouldn't willingly drug a whole base

082349872349872• 6 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor says 1968–1989, but it does seem a little early.

Condor, the musical: https://imgur.com/a/3b65X

kelvin0• 6 years ago

Truly a pearl of dark and cynic humor, right up my alley! Skrreeee.

ricardobeat• 6 years ago

The men in the crew decided not to report what they had seen, because they had entered a restricted area and could have been arrested for the violation.

Some classic conspiracy theory quotes: "we met with alien life for the first time, but did not report for fear of disciplinary action".

Also, what are the real odds that the first guy would've been ordered to not shoot a helicopter snooping on nuclear arsenal for three nights in a row? I imagine you'd get shot down immediately if you as much as tried to enter the vicinity of a military zone.

jagged-chisel• 6 years ago

I imagine you'd get shot down immediately if you as much as tried to enter the vicinity of a military zone.

Having been detected, yes. Delayed detection begets delayed response. The implication is this craft was not immediately detectable electronically. I don't think any ground-based security force (e.g. some folks standing guard or patrolling in vehicles) are under standing orders to just shoot at something they see in the sky.

If you can get your mini-drone past the radar, you've got a chance at getting some good video and stills and getting your drone back.

rbanffy• 6 years ago

Also, what are the real odds that the first guy would've been ordered to not shoot a helicopter snooping on nuclear arsenal for three nights in a row?

Could be a friendly running a test for some jamming technology with orders to fly specific patterns on top of a real installation to gather data in the form of radar and witness reports.

IAmGraydon2• 6 years ago

Yeah the lack of a shoot-down makes this already unbelievable story even less likely. A helicopter hovering 150 feet above a stockpile of nuclear weapons? Please. This place would have had a 10 mile restricted airspace around it with a no-questions-asked shoot-down policy.

I want to believe just like anyone else, but I’m not willing to ignore my gut instincts to get there. I think this entire thing is a perfect storm of group thought, suggestion and paranoia.

bostonsre• 6 years ago

A plausible explanation could be that the chain of command already knew about these and they were scared to start a fight. Would you start a fight with someone who had a gun and you only had a rock?

hindsightbias• 6 years ago

The whole two man patrol over the area with 10 guys on standby as it repeatedly happened? The response does not appear at all proportional to the paranoia of that era.

hourislate2• 6 years ago

I imagine you'd get shot down immediately if you as much as tried to enter the vicinity of a military zone.

I don't think that is the protocol when the military encounters an object they can't identify. It would seem that decision would need to fulfill a set of requirements. I'm pretty sure that if they were able to say it was Chinese or Russian, etc, it would get shot down, but something that doesn't even register to the senses probably gets a pass. When you think about it, what are they going to shoot at, a elongated football the length of 3-4 cars that seems to be in a temporal zone it created?

pavel_lishin2• 6 years ago

When you think about it, what are they going to shoot at, a elongated football the length of 3-4 cars that seems to be in a temporal zone it created?

How about the first description of the aircraft, which appeared to be a helicopter with red and white strobing lights?

crazygringo2• 6 years ago

These days this type of report would seem to be classified under the phenomenon of ball lightning, no? [1]

It seems irresponsible for the article to not even mention it. On the other hand, I suppose that would puncture the fun that it would be actual extraterrestrial spaceships or something...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_lightning

tgflynn2• 6 years ago

I never heard of ball lightning masquerading as a Huey.

crazygringo2• 6 years ago

The article starts off with a report of what sounds like an actual helicopter, but then the bulk of the article is about reports of lights moving around and changing direction far faster than a helicopter could.

The author seems to be deliberately confusing the two for the reader. But obviously an article about a couple of rogue helicopter visits wouldn't be worth reading about.

swader999• 6 years ago

Anti gravity tech.

Eupolemos• 6 years ago

For the interested, no-nonsense types coming by this thread, I want to point to Harley D. Rutledge's[0] "Project Identification: The first Scientific Study of UFO Phenomena"[1][2].

He was a Ph.D. in solid state physics at the University of Missouri (at the same time as this Loring AFB story, it seems). Hearing about the nonsense of a UFO fad, he decided he'd go into the field and explain this phenomenon. He couldn't, but got a grant from a newspaper so he could spend time on this and the result was a book (Project Identification) which is pretty much a very long physics report.

He never concluded they were "spacemen" or some such, he simply observed and reported, and only used his own observations. Despite being dry, it is a very interesting read - a downright page-turner for me.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harley_Rutledge

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Project-Identification-First-Scientif...

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/UAP/comments/d5gtcs/project_identif... (contains link with pdf)

armitron• 6 years ago

There have been plenty of credible scientists rising alarms over the years, none more tragic and important than James McDonald:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_E._McDonald

tetris11• 6 years ago

Powerful read of his life story. A man of great conviction, who only sought the truth. he would be ridiculed in our time too

shadowprofile773• 6 years ago

I also recommend the work of Micheal Persinger on this and related subjects. He worked in a similar vein. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Persinger

severak_cz• 6 years ago

There was similar incident in UK called Rendlesham Forest incident.

Later, it was revealed, that it may actually been an SAS prank to USAF military personel residing on site. See https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6539849/Has-mystery...

andygroundwater• 6 years ago

The track of this thing coming over nightly from Canada was so well known to the locals that they'd sit out and wait for it - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32608477-charlie-red-sta...

doodlebugging• 6 years ago

I know someone who lives just south of the border in Maine. They have told me many times over the years that they see unusual lights sometimes for numerous nights in a row.

I have a few pictures they've taken over the years but honestly it is hard to say what anything in them could be. Not enough magnification in the camera, focusing problems, color saturation, etc. I can confirm that they fit the description of the lights reported in the Loring descriptions.

You can grab the Loring qriteup from the site listed in a post here but you have to navigate through their history page and then almost to the bottom of the historical events they documented. It is a pdf of the events and the investigations.

[Loring AFB - Reading Room - pdf of UFO Event near bottom of list](http://www.loringremembers.com/park/multimedia/reading-room)

After reading this story I decided to see where this Loring SAC base was located. It turns out that the lights this person has observed are close to the old base (tens of miles). I have confirmed that their appearance is not explained by the rise of planets in the evening, stars, etc since I know within a few meters where they were taken and have located ground features visible in the photos on a map.

myrandomcomment• 6 years ago

.....there was no alien. The flash of light you saw in the sky was not a UFO. Swamp gas from a weather balloon was trapped in a thermal pocket and reflected the light from Venus.....

Animats• 6 years ago

If you see something, take video. With reference points in the video if at all possible. Get others nearby to take video. Don't bunch up; get some different points of view. Upload the videos to YouTube. Somebody will crunch on that and get 3D positions. Few optical illusions hold up from multiple viewpoints.

valuearb• 6 years ago

Human memory is not very trustworthy. 45 year old human memories even less so.

bitL• 6 years ago

Was the second, more distant object (a combat chopper?), shooting a prototype particle accelerator to mess up with the base and test their readiness?

The mysterious Cold War case of unidentified aircraft descending on Loring AFB

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