261 lines
14 KiB
Plaintext
261 lines
14 KiB
Plaintext
![]() |
SUBJECT: KECKSBERG UFO REVISITED FILE: UFO1429
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
-----------
|
||
|
|
||
|
Reprinted for the Spring 1991 Skeptical Inquirer
|
||
|
By Robert R. Young
|
||
|
.
|
||
|
.
|
||
|
.
|
||
|
On September 19, 1990, the NBC television network's
|
||
|
season opener of "Unsolved Mysteries" featured a half hour
|
||
|
segment on the heretofore little-known "Kecksburg UFO Crash." It
|
||
|
was alleged that this involved the crash and recovery by the U.
|
||
|
S. military of an unidentified flying object with strange alien
|
||
|
markings in the small western Pennsylvania town of Kecksburg, near
|
||
|
Pittsburgh, on December 9, 1965.
|
||
|
The program was the tenth most watched in America in a week
|
||
|
that saw the introduction of the season's "new" shows. It was
|
||
|
viewed in an estimated 17.7 percent of households with television
|
||
|
and on 30 percent of all television sets turned on (Broadcasting
|
||
|
1990). Recent surveys for the National Science Foundation report
|
||
|
that 2 in 5 adult Americans believe that alien spaceships account
|
||
|
for some UFO reports (Science News 1986). It therefore seems
|
||
|
likely that several million viewers may have been predisposed to
|
||
|
accept the premise of the program.
|
||
|
This "saucer crash" has not been widely known to UFOlogists
|
||
|
or UFO skeptics because it appears never to have happened.
|
||
|
According to a review of all original published accounts, the sole
|
||
|
witnesses to the saucer crash apparently were two eight-year-old
|
||
|
children who were among thousands in nine states and Canada to
|
||
|
view a bolide (brilliant) meteor (Gatty 1965).
|
||
|
Add to this a gullible local flying saucer buff who has
|
||
|
finally found "his own" thrilling flying saucer crash to
|
||
|
investigate; the U.S. Air Force "Project Blue Book" UFO
|
||
|
investigating office; "unnamed Pentagon sources"; a secret
|
||
|
military satellite launch; the Pennsylvania State Police; the
|
||
|
Kecksburg volunteer fire company; local news reporters who were at
|
||
|
first kept away; the 24-year-old recollections of local
|
||
|
citizens; and the recent materialization of "new" witnesses.
|
||
|
According to a front-page story in the nearby Greensburg,
|
||
|
Pennsylvania, Tribune-Review the day after the TV show, some
|
||
|
Kecksburg residents, including many observers of the 1965 event
|
||
|
and even some portrayed in the program, say it is all a hoax.
|
||
|
Some residents blame two local men whose story of a copper-colored
|
||
|
12' by 7' "acorn-shaped" object with "hieroglyphic" markings had
|
||
|
surfaced only a couple of months earlier-almost a quarter-century
|
||
|
after the original publicity.
|
||
|
Tribune-Review staff writer David Darby (1990) reported
|
||
|
that more than 50 Kecksburg residents sent a petition to the
|
||
|
program's producers in an attempt to stop its airing. The paper
|
||
|
reported that these nonbelievers included Ed Myers, the Kecksburg
|
||
|
fire chief in 1965, who was portrayed by an actor on the program;
|
||
|
Jerome and Valerie Miller, whose home was portrayed as the site of
|
||
|
a "military command post" during UFO recovery operations; the
|
||
|
owners of the land where the saucer was supposed to have landed;
|
||
|
and Kecksburg firemen.
|
||
|
Myers expressed concern. "It's killing me to know this is
|
||
|
going nationwide, because there's absolutely no truth to it," he
|
||
|
told Darby. "Something's gonna be put in the history books for
|
||
|
my grandchildren to read, and it is just not true."
|
||
|
The Millers, the paper reported, deny that their home was a
|
||
|
center of military activity. Darby said "whoops of laughter"
|
||
|
filled the Miller living room when a group of residents who
|
||
|
consider the whole thing a hoax gathered to watch the melodramatic
|
||
|
program.
|
||
|
Several elements combined in 1965 to create local hysteria.
|
||
|
For several days the world had been fascinated by front-page
|
||
|
coverage of the missions of Gemini 6 and 7, two U.S. spacecraft
|
||
|
set for a manned joining. The day of the incident (December 9)
|
||
|
the Pitts- burgh Press, widely read in the Kecksburg area,
|
||
|
reported that Frank Edwards, a nationally known flying saucer
|
||
|
lecturer and broadcaster had arrived in the city to speak. The
|
||
|
headline, "Lift UFO Secrecy, Saucer Believer Says," had a "kicker"
|
||
|
above it, "U. S. Hush-Up Charged."
|
||
|
However, the Erie Daily Times (December 10) reported
|
||
|
another event that day that went largely unnoticed: a secret
|
||
|
satellite was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Califor-
|
||
|
nia, a launchsite for military polar-orbiting reconnaissance
|
||
|
missions. The stage was set.
|
||
|
Shortly after 4:40 p.m. (EST) a brilliant bolide, or
|
||
|
"fireball," was seen by thousands in Idaho, Illinois, Indi- and
|
||
|
Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia,
|
||
|
and Ontario, Canada, according to reports on December 10 in the
|
||
|
Erie Daily Times; the Pittsburgh Press, the New York Times, and
|
||
|
the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The fireball was even said to have
|
||
|
been seen in California (Pittsburgh Press, Dec. 10, 1965).
|
||
|
Astronomers from Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, who had
|
||
|
received many reports, concluded the object had been a bright
|
||
|
meteor (Erie Daily Times, Pittsburgh Press, New York Times,
|
||
|
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Dec. 10). This was also the conclusion
|
||
|
of the Federal Aviation Administration, according to a spokesman
|
||
|
at Erie, Pennsylvania (Erie Daily Times; Pittsburgh
|
||
|
Post-Gazette); Air Force spokesmen in Washington; and unnamed
|
||
|
"Pentagon sources" (Pittsburgh Press, New York Times).
|
||
|
|
||
|
Reports of bolides are typically inaccurate. Astronomer
|
||
|
Frank Drake (1971), after efforts to recover meteorites from
|
||
|
fireball reports, has estimated the fraction of eyewitnesses who
|
||
|
are wrong about something to be I out of 2 after one day, 3 out of
|
||
|
4 after two days, and 9 out of 10 after four days. Witnesses
|
||
|
often grossly underestimate the distance of fireballs, which may
|
||
|
be dozens of miles high. When the meteors disappear over the
|
||
|
horizon it is sometimes taken as a "nearby" event (Klass 1974:42-
|
||
|
49).
|
||
|
The 1965 fireball was no exception. It was reported to
|
||
|
have "crashed" or "landed" in six widely separated locations. A
|
||
|
pilot in the air reported watching as it "plummeted" into Lake
|
||
|
Erie (Pittsburgh Press, Dec. 10). At Midland, Pennsylvania, west
|
||
|
of Pitts- burgh, falling debris was reported but police found
|
||
|
nothing (Erie Daily Times, Pittsburgh Press, Dec. 10). At
|
||
|
Elyria, Ohio, west of Cleveland, a woman reported that a
|
||
|
fireball the size of a "volley ball" fell into a wooded lot.
|
||
|
Firemen reported 10 small grass fires but no flying saucer
|
||
|
(Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Dec. 10).
|
||
|
At Lapeer, Michigan, 40 miles north of Detroit, sheriff's
|
||
|
officers investigating the report of "a ball of fire crashing"
|
||
|
found only pieces of tinfoil (Pittsburgh Press, Dec. 10). The
|
||
|
most spectacular report came from Detroit and Windsor, Ontario,
|
||
|
where pilots, weather observers, and U. S. Coast Guard personnel
|
||
|
reported that a flying object "exploded" over Detroit. Coast
|
||
|
Guard boats sent into Lake St. Clair found nothing (Tribune-
|
||
|
Review, County Edition, Dec. 10). The Air Force UFO
|
||
|
investigating office at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, may
|
||
|
have been interested in the recovery of space-launch debris and
|
||
|
sent three-man investigating teams from the 662 Radar Squadron,
|
||
|
based near Pittsburgh, to Kecksburg and Erie (Erie Daily Times,
|
||
|
Pittsburgh Post- Gazette).
|
||
|
In Kecksburg the scene had turned into a circus. Little
|
||
|
Kevin Kalp had run and told his mother, Mrs. Arnold Kalp of RD 1,
|
||
|
Acme, Pennsylvania, that he had seen something "like a star on
|
||
|
fire." Going outside she saw "blue smoke" that seemed to come from
|
||
|
a nearby woods (Gatty 1965; Pittsburgh Press, Dec. 10). Other
|
||
|
reports had described a bright trail left in the air by the meteor
|
||
|
(Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Dec 10). A "thump" whose vibration felt
|
||
|
by one witness was attributed to dynamiting at a local quarry or
|
||
|
to a shock wave heard by many western Pennsylvanians who witnessed
|
||
|
the fireball. Mrs. Kalp called a local radio station that had
|
||
|
been reporting a plane crash. Soon, according to the Tribune-
|
||
|
Review, a "massive traffic jam" had engulfed the small town
|
||
|
(Gatty, Tribune-Review, City Edition, Dec. 10, Dec. 11).
|
||
|
A local volunteer fire policeman informed reporters that
|
||
|
the Army and the state police had told them not to let anybody in
|
||
|
(Gatty 1965). One result was that an early edition of the
|
||
|
Greensburg paper carried a seven- column banner headline atop page
|
||
|
one, "'Unidentified Flying Object Falls Near Kecksburg," and,
|
||
|
"Army ropes off area" (Greensburg Tribune-Review, County Edition,
|
||
|
Dec. 10).
|
||
|
Captain Joseph Dussia, commander of the Pennsylvania State
|
||
|
Police Troop A Headquarters at Greensburg, announced the next day
|
||
|
that after an all-night search "absolutely nothing had been
|
||
|
found." Reports of something being carried from the area
|
||
|
referred only to equipment used in the search, Dussia said. He
|
||
|
added, "Someone made a mountain out of a molehill" (Greensburg
|
||
|
Tribune-Review, City Edition, Dec. 10). The Air Force also
|
||
|
announced that nothing had been found (Pittsburgh Press, Dec.
|
||
|
10). The next day a Greensburg Tribune-Review editorial
|
||
|
summarized its staff's independent investigation: Nothing at
|
||
|
all seems to have happened (Dec. 11). The official explanations
|
||
|
are totally consistent with all published accounts and the
|
||
|
present recollections of scores of witnesses.
|
||
|
|
||
|
When does the "unsolved mystery" come in? Now enters Stan
|
||
|
Gordon, founder of the Pennsylvania Association for the Study of
|
||
|
the Unexplained (PASU), a Greensburg-based group that collects
|
||
|
sightings of UFOs, Bigfoot, and other oddities, such as the
|
||
|
"Eastern Cougar," an animal that has been extinct for a hundred
|
||
|
years. PASU seems to do little research into these events but
|
||
|
does issue press releases. Gordon, a 30-year veteran of saucer
|
||
|
chases, is also Pennsylvania director of the Mutual UFO Network
|
||
|
(MUFON), the nation's largest surviving flying-saucer group.
|
||
|
Each year in early January PASU issues its annual press
|
||
|
release to Pennsylvania newspapers listing exciting reports
|
||
|
received during the previous year. Their 1989 release featured an
|
||
|
alleged UFO encounter by a Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, policeman
|
||
|
(Latrobe Bulletin, Jan. 9, 1989). A PASU investigator later said
|
||
|
the witness had suffered "severe burns" and a "severe eye injury."
|
||
|
MUFON's state director soon turned it into a "returning UFO
|
||
|
abductee" encounter, making claims publicly denied by the witness.
|
||
|
Local amateur astronomers found the witness had been looking at
|
||
|
the planet Venus. The witness refused to be examined by a
|
||
|
physician; a PASU investigator "lost" film evidence of the
|
||
|
witness' injuries, and a substance Gordon had tested at a
|
||
|
laboratory and then described as "strange" and "unusual" turned
|
||
|
out to be a common fertilizer (Young 1989).
|
||
|
In 1990 PASU issued a call for anyone with knowledge of the
|
||
|
Kecksburg UFO crash to come forward (Latrobe Bulletin). With an
|
||
|
experienced nose for saucer news, they must have sensed that even
|
||
|
after 24 years witnesses always seem to be willing to come forward
|
||
|
if the case is exciting.
|
||
|
Actually, the Kecksburg UFO tale has been making the rounds
|
||
|
among Pennsylvania saucer buffs for some time. Flying-saucer
|
||
|
evangelist Robert D. Barry hosts a Saturday midnight program, "ET
|
||
|
Monitor," on WGCB-TV, Red Lion, Pennsylvania, a religious
|
||
|
station, where he mixes NASA films, UFOria, viewer calls, and
|
||
|
occasional Bible readings. Barry mentioned the Kecksburg
|
||
|
recovery in a lecture at Elizabethtown College, Elizabethtown,
|
||
|
Pennsylvania, on March 22, 1989, and followed on his April 2,
|
||
|
1989, program with the revelation that the incident involved the
|
||
|
recovery of "bodies." Later, on his April 23, 1989, broadcast, he
|
||
|
stated that no bodies were involved in the UFO accident.
|
||
|
Barry says that years ago he was told by an unnamed NASA
|
||
|
informant that the Kecksburg UFO had been tracked, a claim that is
|
||
|
contradicted by statements made by a North American Air Defense
|
||
|
Command spokesman at the time (Erie Daily Times; Pittsburgh Press;
|
||
|
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Dec. 10). Barry has also reported,
|
||
|
citing Stan Gordon as his source, that a 1965 member of the
|
||
|
Kecksburg Fire Company claims it had been contacted by NASA before
|
||
|
the UFO crashed and asked to keep the public away from the area, a
|
||
|
claim contradicted by the original published reports and
|
||
|
eyewitness statements (Tribune-Review, City Edition, Dec. 10,
|
||
|
1965).
|
||
|
A curious claim, oddly similar to the Kecksburg story,
|
||
|
occurred January 28, 1990, on Bob Barry's television program. At
|
||
|
7:10 P.m. (EST) that evening a bright fireball had been seen over
|
||
|
much of the East Coast (Harrisburg Sunday Patriot-News, Jan. 28,
|
||
|
1990). That night on "ET Monitor" Barry reported that "a
|
||
|
Greensburg source," a euphemism he sometimes uses for PASU's Stan
|
||
|
Gordon, had called to say that "an object landed" nearby at about
|
||
|
7:20 P.M., that the area had been cordoned off, and that the
|
||
|
source was "trying to get as close as he could." A well-known
|
||
|
baseball philosopher would have been prompted to say that it
|
||
|
seemed like "deja vu all over again. "
|
||
|
It is too bad the producers an researchers at "Unsolved
|
||
|
Mysteries" didn't scratch around a little. At least 50 folks at
|
||
|
Kecksburg could have saved them an embarrassment.
|
||
|
.
|
||
|
References
|
||
|
.
|
||
|
Broadcasting. 1990. (Cites Nielsen and its
|
||
|
own research.) P. 40.
|
||
|
Darby, David. 1990. Greensburg Tribune-
|
||
|
Review (Greensburg, Pa.), December 10,
|
||
|
P. 1.
|
||
|
Drake, Frank. 1972. On the abilities and
|
||
|
limitations of witnesses of UFO's and
|
||
|
similar phenomena. In UFO's: A Scientific
|
||
|
Debate, 247-257, eds. Carl Sagan and
|
||
|
Thornton Page (New York: Cornell
|
||
|
University Press and W. W. Norton).
|
||
|
Gatty, Bob. 1965. Unidentified flying object
|
||
|
report touches off probe near Kecksburg.
|
||
|
Greensburg Tribune-Review, December
|
||
|
10, p. 1.
|
||
|
Klass, Philip J. 1974. UFOs Explained (New
|
||
|
York: Random House/Vintage), pp. 42-49.
|
||
|
Science News. 1986. 129:118.
|
||
|
Young, Robert R. 1989. "Harrisburg 'UFO
|
||
|
Incident' Stimulated by Venus." Unpub-
|
||
|
lished manuscript by the author.
|
||
|
.
|
||
|
.
|
||
|
Robert R. Young is education chairman
|
||
|
of the Astronomical Society of Harrisburg,
|
||
|
Pennsylvania. Address: 319 S. Front
|
||
|
Street, Harrisburg, PA 17104.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
**********************************************
|
||
|
* THE U.F.O. BBS - http://www.ufobbs.com/ufo *
|
||
|
**********************************************
|