74 lines
3.8 KiB
Plaintext
74 lines
3.8 KiB
Plaintext
SUBJECT: OLD UFO SIGHTING IN RUSSIA FILE: UFO2623
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BY JAMES OBERG for OMNI
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Once a UFO case becomes " a classic," no amount of logic can convince some
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people that a prosaic explanation holds sway. Take the sighting made in the
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pre-dawn darkness of Friday, September 7, 1984, when a Soviet Aeroflot
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airliner was flying north from Belorussia toward Estonia. At 4:10 a.m.,
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passing Minsk, the co-pilot noticed a bright light ahead and to the right. For
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the next several minutes, the light, or whatever it was, supposedly escorted
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the airliner along its path.
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Captain lgor Cherkashin called the local traffic contol, who saw nothing in
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the sky. But after several minutes of searching on radar, ground contollers
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reported a funny "double image," presumed by some to be the airliner and its
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escort from beyond. as the radar was tracking, co-pilot Gennadli Lazurin
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grabbed his logbook and began making sketches of the apparition as it changed
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shape, color, and size. Its scintillating sequences of color were so bright
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the crew could see its refleciton in the ground below.
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Years after the original report, pundits started discussing another civil
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airliner, one supposedly heading in the opposite direction, that had observed
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the strange lights as well. According to rumor swirling around the UFO
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community, this second craft had been a military interceptor sent up to chase
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the UFO. Its pilot reportedly died a year later of cancer, and its co-pilot
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suffered heart problems. A stewardess was said to have contracted a mysterious
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skin disease.
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To some investigators on the case, the medical puzzle had an obvious
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explanation: the poisonous rays of the UFO. Russian UFO-watcher Antonio
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Huneeus later called it" one of the most serious UFO injury cases ever
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reported."
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But despite all the theories, a prosaic explanation exists. It turns out that
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just when the pilots in the first craft glimpsed the mysterious lights, a
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Soviet military missile was being launched from the supersecret Plesetsk
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Cosmodrome. In fact, the sketches by co-pilot Lazurin show a distinct sequence
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of lights - first rays, concentric circles, and expanding rings, then a cloud,
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and finally, a fading amorphous mass; it's not coincidence that the same
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sequence of shapes graces sketches made by other witnesses depicting known
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rocket launchings. What's more, at precisely the same time the Soviet pilots
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were freaking out, amateur observers throughout Finland were observing the
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Soviet missilte launch themselves.
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As for the radar sightings and health problems, skeptics dismiss them as
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coincidence and exaggeration. Most people " exposed" to the UFO, after all,
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were not affected, and those who were seem to have been injured in strikingly
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different ways. And Phillip Klass, an electronics expert for Aviation Week
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magazine, noted that given an insistent enough visual sighting, a radar
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operator will almost always find something "funny" on his display.
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Speaking for the record, Moscow, of course, did not agree. Soviet officials
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denied the existence of the Cosmodrome itself. And the official army
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newspaper, Red Star, later asserted that the Minsky sighting might have been
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caused by refracted light beams striking floating space garbage.
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As for UFO proponents, they admit that the rocket launching occurred, but
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suggest that this was what attracted the real UFO to Russia in the first
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place. "The UFO must have continued its flight toward Plesetsk, probably to
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see what was going on," one expert speculated in the magazine, Science in the
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U.S.S.R.
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A starship from beyond or a secret Soviet missile? Decide for yourself. As far
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as I can reckon, the telling evidence is there.
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**********************************************
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* THE U.F.O. BBS - http://www.ufobbs.com/ufo *
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********************************************** |