46 lines
3.2 KiB
Plaintext
46 lines
3.2 KiB
Plaintext
OMNI September 1987 - UFO UPDATE by Sherry Baker
|
||
|
||
Five TBM Avenger torpedo bombers left the Naval Air Station in Fort Laud-
|
||
erdale, Florida, on December 5, 1945, for a routine training mission. But less
|
||
than three hours later, all five planes and their crews of 14 were missing. A
|
||
Martin flying boat (a plane that can land on water) was immediately sent to the
|
||
rescue; but that craft, along with 13 crew members, also disappeared.
|
||
Cryptic messages attributed to the flight instructor, including the cry
|
||
"Don't come after me; they look like they're from outer space," have long fuel-
|
||
ed speculation that aliens were involved in the planes' mysterious disappear-
|
||
ance. And now a Poway, California, man named Wesley Bateman claims he has
|
||
evidence that extraterrestrials hurled the planes into space. In fact, Bateman
|
||
asserts, at least one of the Avengers is entombed in ice about 6,000 miles
|
||
above the earth, just over the Bermuda Triange.
|
||
Bateman, who says he conducts privately funded UFO research "for a group
|
||
of people who want to remain anonymous," made his discovery while watching a
|
||
videotape about UFOs. After watching the tape several times, Bateman says, he
|
||
noticed an object allegedly photographed by Apollo 11 astronauts. What's more,
|
||
he declares, he realized that the object resembled a TBM Avenger, "The heaviest
|
||
part of the plane-the nose-is pointed toward the earth," he states. "And you
|
||
can easily recognize the bubble turret and the tail."
|
||
But how did a 1945 propeller-driven airplane get into orbit? Bateman
|
||
theorizes that depth charges dropped by the Avengers may have damaged an alien
|
||
craft under the sea. "When the UFO rose out of the water to avoid further dam-
|
||
age," Bateman says, "its rapid departure created a propulsion vortex, sucking
|
||
up a lot of seawater and the planes along with it."
|
||
As far as aviation journalist and UFO skeptic Philip J. Klass is concerned
|
||
however, Bateman's theory is full of holes. "I've personally spent days in the
|
||
Navy archives going through the records of Flight 19, and there is simply no
|
||
mystery to it," he insists. Klass says the craft originally headed east, toward
|
||
the Bahamas. The flight instructor became disoriented and decided that the
|
||
aircraft were over the Florida Keys. He thus ordered the planes north, toward
|
||
what he thought was the mainland. But since the planes were over the Bahamas,
|
||
heading north pointed them toward Greenland. Greenland was just too far away,
|
||
and the aircraft simply ran out of gas.
|
||
But how does Klass explain the photo of an Avengar some 6,000 miles above`
|
||
the earth? "I could say that the object looks like the face of God," he says.
|
||
"Besides, our radar monitors every object in Earth orbit. It's powerful enough
|
||
to detect a six-inch-long metal strap that has fallen off a satellite. An
|
||
object the size of an Avenger would long ago have attracted attention." NASA
|
||
spokesman Ken Atchison adds, "I was around during the Apollo days, and I've
|
||
never heard of the astronauts seeing or photographing anything like what Bate-
|
||
man is talking about." Still, Bateman insists that seeing is believing. "I
|
||
can't imagine anyone looking at this photo," he asserts, "and saying it's not
|
||
an Avenger. This is conclusive proof that UFO's exist."
|
||
|