- JAPAN LOSES ANOTHER ASDF FIGHTER
JET
-
- On Friday, October 9, 1998, at 8:02 p.m.,
a two-seater F4EJ fighter jet took off from Chitose airbase on Hokkaido
Island in northern Japan. The crew included two officers of Japan's Air
Self-Defense Force (ASDF)--Lieutenant Suetake, 28, and Lieutenant Ogasawara,
26. The men were returning to the ASDF air base at Misawa, on Honshu Island
450 kilometers (270 miles) north of Tokyo. At precisely 8:40 p.m., as the
jet was flying over the Pacific Ocean approximately 55 kilometers (33 miles)
northeast of Misawa, "the F4EJ fighter dropped off the radar screen.
The crew abruptly lost radio contact (with the tower at Misawa) and reportedly
crashed." An air-sea rescue operation was launched. On Saturday, October
10, "An MSDF (Maritime Self Defense Force) destroyer-escort had retrieved
documents floating on the sea and part of one wing." Lt. Suetake and
Lt. Ogasawara remain missing in action. Their jet disappeared in an area
where two Mitsubishi jet fighters vanished six weeks ago. (See the newspaper
Yomiuri Shinbun for October 10 and October 11, 1998, "Two pilots on
ASDF fighter lost." Many thanks to Miyuki Tamura, UFO Roundup correspondent
in Japan, for forwarding the articles.)
-
- FAMILY VIDEOTAPES A UFO IN
SOUTHERN CHINA
-
- On Saturday, October 3, 1998, the Han
family visited a mountainside cemetery on the outskirts of Kunming, a large
city in China's Yunnan province, 1,050 kilometers (630 miles) southwest
of Shanghai. While they were paying their respects to their ancestors,
"at about 11:50 a.m., Han took a look back into downtown Kunming and
all of a sudden discovered an extremely dazzling object flying over the
city. He tracked the flying object with his video camera and shot about
three minutes of videotape of the UFO." The object, which emitted
"a dazzling light," first took "the shape of a blazing ball
surrounded by two pieces of black rubber, and then five diamond- shaped
objects flying in a diamond formation, said Han. This process continued
for more than ten minutes." (See the newspaper Guangzhou Morning
Post for October 16, 1998, "UFO over Kunming," by Alan Zhang.
Many thanks to Stig Agermose for forwarding this newspaper article.)
-
- PACACCINI, WITNESSES HUNT
FOR BALDIM CAVE CREATURE
-
- On Wednesday, October 14, 1998, Vittorio
Pacaccini, UFO researcher and author of the book INCIDENTE EM VARGINHA,
visited Sete Lagoas in Minas Gerais state, Brazil and met with men who
claimed to have seen a Chupacabra in a cave in the Serra do Espinhaco mountains.
The sighting took place at 7 a.m. on October 1, 1998 in a mountaintop limestone
cave east of Baldim, a small city on the Rio das Velhas 100 kilometers
(66 miles) north of Belo Horizonte. An amateur speleologist, Marcelo Uchoa,
and two companions encountered the creature in a cavern 150 meters underground.
Uchoa shot two photos of the Chupacabra with a Kodak digital camera. His
friend and fellow resident of Sete Lagoas, Leandro da Silva, then posted
the photos on his webpage on October 10. In an interview with UFO Roundup,
Pacaccini reported that Uchoa "could not be sure (how tall the creature
was) but it was bigger than a dog." The creature escaped through one
of the many wall fissures in the cave after Uchoa snapped his pictures.
Pacaccini, Uchoa and da Silva left Sete Lagoas by car and drove east to
Baldim. "The cavern entrance is almost on top of a mountain,"
Pacaccini reported, "Our way up was a little vertical." "Right
at the cave's entrance, it became obvious that we'd have a hard time getting
inside that place. We had to use ropes to get in the first gallery, going
down about 9 meters (29 feet). The cave's walls were very slippery and
dangerous." "Usually the first gallery of a cave is particularly
dangerous because it is the easiest place to find the scorpions, the spiders,
the snakes, the jaguars." "To reach the second gallery, we went
down for 60 more meters (198 feet). Our goal was to reach the fifth gallery--150
meters (495 feet) below the surface--where the picture was taken."
"After a lot of struggle, we went down 30 more meters (100 feet)
We hadn't heard anything so far, but in that gallery, we started to hear
a strange sound. We could not identify the sound. Something was moving
below us." Pacaccini described the noise as "something large
dragging itself up from down there." "That sound continued, sometimes
nearer, sometimes further away, and, due to the crevices, it seemed to
be coming from everywhere." "Leandro shouted, 'Pacaccini, watch
out! There's something coming towards us!'" "His (da Silva's)
flashlight slipped through his fingers and fell down the tunnel. We heard
it smash in the fourth gallery. I said, 'Okay, fellows, enough is enough.
We're going to leave this place now. Let's get out of here immediately.
Okay, move it, move it!'" Pacaccini said he drew his 9mm pistol,
which was loaded with Hydra-Shok ammunition, and acted as a rearguard as
Uchoa and da Silva climbed back up the tunnel. Forty minutes later, they
reached the surface. Once back in Sete Lagoas, the trio made plans for
a second descent on Saturday, October 17, but heavy rains that day cancelled
their plans. Pacaccini added that he hopes to return to the cave in another
week, this time with a party of 10 researchers and a full array of equipment,
including a digital camera, a 36mm camera and a videocamera. (Muito obrigado
a Vittorio Pacaccini por eso caso.) (Editor's Comment: In May 1978, I visited
Ouro Preto, the old capital of Minas Gerais, with my lady friend, Ana Maria
Fagundes. While at one of Aleijadinho's 18th Century churches, we talked
to an elderly Brazilian, and he told us some amazing stories about Itacolomi,
an unusually-shaped mountain near the city. He said "luminous discs"
were often seen over the peak, and there was a large tunnel leading from
Itacolomi hundreds of miles into "the Inner World." Strangely
enough, two weekends later, when Ana Maria and I were in Diamantina, 250
kilometers (150 miles) north of Ouro Preto, we heard the exact same story
about a mountain in that vicinity. UFOs and mysterious caverns are part
and parcel of the folklore of the Serra do Espinhaco.)
-
- UFO BLAMED IN FATAL FIRE IN
NORTHERN BRAZIL
-
- The family of two children killed in
a mysterious fire near Itapecuru-Mirim in Maranhao state in northern Brazil
blame a "floating fireball" for causing the blaze. Killed in
the rural district house fire were Antonio Cardoso, age 10, and his sister,
Maria Lucia Cardoso, age 10 months. Trouble began in June 1998 when the
children's uncle, Francisco Oliveira dos Santos, 49, reported that he had
been chased out of a farm field, "pursued by this fireball and had
to run to escape." Following this episode, Oliveira "was disturbed."
His brother, Jose de Sacramento Oliveira, brought him to a psychiatric
clinic in Sao Luis, the state capital. On Saturday, October 10, Oliveira
left the house to forage for food. A short time later, Sra. Elaine Oliveira
de Cardoso, 29, the children's mother, "left the house to get a bucket
of water. A few minutes after 2 p.m., the house began to catch fire. By
the time he (Oliveira) and Elaine returned, the house was completely destroyed."
"Francisco's relatives don't have any doubts that the house was burned
by the mysterious fireball. They emphasized that there was nothing in
the house that could have caused the fire." The case is being investigated
by the Corpo de Bombeiros of Itapecuru-Mirim. At present, the verdict
is "cause unknown." Itapecuru-Mirim is located about 600 kilometers
(360 miles) north of the national capital, Brasilia. (See AUFON #21 for
1998. Many thanks to Alexandre Minuru and AUFON editor Stefan Duncan for
this news story.)
-
- UFO FLAP HEATS UP IN CENTRAL
ITALY
-
- More UFO sightings were reported in central
Italy last week. On Tuesday, October 13, 1998, residents of Collechio,
a town near Parma 400 kilometers (250 miles) northwest of Rome, spotted
"an ovoid object, silver in color, observed at 6 p.m. by three local
people. The object seemed to move horizontally through the sky for over
a minute." On Wednesday, October 14, 1998, at 9 a.m., "two residents
on the highway between Rieti and Avezzano observed in the sky for a tenth
of a second a silver object in the form of a cigarette that seemed to reflect
the light of the sun and remained stationary. Afterwards it moved slowly
away." Avezzano is 70 kilometers (42 miles) east of Rome. Rieti is
100 kilometers (60 miles) northeast of Rome. A UFO was seen in Rieti on
October 3, 1998. The evening of October 14, 1998, at 7:45 p.m., dozens
of witnesses in the Adriatic seaports of Civitanova Marche and Porto Potonza
"saw a strange apparition of strong luminosity, flying in a zigzag
pattern out to sea." Some said it was a UFO; others insisted it was
a NATO spy plane heading for embattled Kosovo province across the Adriatic
Sea in the Balkans. Civitanova Marche is in Macerata province, approximately
125 miles (75 kilometers) northeast of Rome. (See the newspaper Il Resto
del Carlino for October 16, 1998. Grazie a Renzo Cabassi, Francesco Castagna,
Goffredo Pierpaoli, Simone Grandicelli e Edoardo Russo di Centro Italiano
di Studi Ufologici, CISU, per questo rapporto.)
-
- EIGHT WITNESS SPHERICAL UFO
NEAR BRISBANE
-
- On Sunday, October 4, 1998, at 6:33 p.m.,
eight people witnessed a UFO flyover in the Albany area of Brisbane, Queensland,
Australia "at an altitude of 2,000 to 3,000 feet." According
to eyewitnesses Mr. and Mrs. Eddy, "Object was half the size of the
moon, and at arm's length the size of a tennis ball. Shape was spherical
with a squarish bottom. Color was orange to red. Moving from north to
south on a straight path. The object had flames coming from it. But they
were different, not like the flames of an object coming in from space,
but more like a small plane on fire. The flames were jagged in shape."
"Mr Eddy said that's what he thought it was at first," a burning
plane, "but there was no sound to be heard. Speed moving a little
faster than a hot-air balloon but slower than a Tiger Moth (light airplane)."
(Many thanks to Diane Harrison of UFO Network Australasia for this report.)
-
- UFO STARTLES MOTORISTS IN
STAFFORDSHIRE, UK
-
- On Friday, October 16, 1998, at 9 p.m.,
a glowing UFO appeared over motorway A34 in Congleton, Staffordshire, UK,
38 miles (60 kilometers) southeast of Liverpool, frightening several drivers.
"Theresa Hewitt, from Bromley Road, Congleton, was driving on the
A34 when she spotted a bright object hovering above Moreton Level. She
said, 'I saw what looked like a grey cloud moving around in the sky. It
looked like a school of fish and was quite bright.'" "'At first
I thought it was a cloud lit up by one of the laser lights. But we have
no nightclub in Congleton, and I checked the paper and nothing else was
going on that night.'" "The lights were also spotted by Bill
Edey from Scholar Green who was travelling along the same stretch of road
at 9 p.m. He said, 'i was near Little Moreton Hall when I saw about 25
lights in a perfect spherical shape above the car. The lights seemed to
follow me until I reached Congleton. I am quite a rational man and thought
it might have been an aircraft, but it was travelling too slow and the
lights seemed to be spinning. I nearly crashed the car because of what
I saw, and I was covered in goose bumps." (See the newspaper The
Sentinel of Stoke-on-Trent, Staffs. for October 19, 1998, "Drivers
alarmed by UFO sightings on the A34." Many thanks to Gerry Lovell
of Far Shores for this newspaper article.)
-
- UFOs REMAIN ACTIVE IN WESTERN
OHIO
-
- On Friday, October 16, 1998, at 7:15
p.m., ufologist Steven Neeley was returning home from archery practice
in rural Hardin County, near Kenton, Ohio when he saw "what appeared
to be a star with red and blue lights...ahead of me in the southern sky."
"Using my game binoculars, it was clearly visible and stationary,"
Steve reported, "I watched it for two to five minutes." "I
stood there watching, and it began to move away and up from its original
position. I walked on and came around a bend in the trail," only
to see the UFO glowing "on the opposite side of the sky. It was then
180 degrees northerly. It was closer and lower and left no doubt that
this was what I had seen minutes before. It was a medium-sized star of
white bright light with red and blue lights seemingly moving in a circle
around its equator. Then it disappeared. In the blink of an eye, it vanished
from sight." Hardin County is 72 miles (115 kilometers) south of Toledo,
Ohio. (Many thanks to Errol Bruce-Knapp for forwarding this report.) On
Thursday, October 22, 1998, Samuel X. and his wife were driving "on
Camden/West Elkton Road, just north of Wayne Trace" in Gratis, Ohio
(population 998), a town at the intersection of Routes 122 and 725 about
25 miles (40 kilometers) north of Cincinnati. Then Sam noticed "a
bright light in the sky, flying low, headed eastward. We supposed the
light to be the headlight of a light aircraft. Yet it pulsated instead
of flashing on and off." "As the craft got closer, we noticed
two flashing lights on both sides of the center light. We parked our vehicle
in the middle to the road and just observed the craft as it came closer.
I was out of the car, listening for the recognizable sound of a helicopter.
I knew it couldn't be a plane, as it didn't travel like a plane does."
"As it came fairly close into view, I noticed that it didn't make
any noise like a plane, jet or helicopter. This craft hummed. I also noticed
a bright rear light as it moved. I asked my wife how she would describe
the light in the rear of the craft, and we were in agreement that it was
yellowish-amber in color and illuminated the rear section of the craft."
This is the third UFO sighting in Gratis during the past year. A UFO was
seen in town on November 17, 1997. A second one was spotted in Gratis
on February 5, 1998. (Many thanks to Kenneth Young, public relations director
for Tri-States Advocates for Scientific Knowledge, T.A.S.K., for this news
story.)
-
- CROP CIRCLE FOUND NEAR LOWVILLE,
ONTARIO
-
- On Saturday, October 17, 1998, a large
crop circle formation was found in a field of cattle corn near Lowville,
Ontario, Canada. The formation was found by Mike Bird, a local researcher,
and Drew Cauley, Ontario coordinator for Circles Phenomenon Research-Canada.
They estimated the structures to be "a few weeks old." It was
"a large crop formation, roughly in the shape of a crescent or C...Found
in cattle corn 8 to 12 feet high," measuring "approximately 210
feet north to south by 177 feet east to west." There was "a teardrop-shaped
area of standing corn inside the crescent approximately 10 feet" with
"two 'companion' shapes attached to the same formation, one on the
edge of the field, the other to the south, each about 5 feet by 15 feet.
Stalks were broken and 'burned' at the break points." Investigators
also found a "white cobweb-like material' under one area of flattened
corn. Samples of the plants, soil and "white cobweb" were taken
by the men for analysis. (Many thanks to Paul Anderson of Circles Phenomenon
Research-Canada for this news story.)
-
- 1952 UFO FLAP ALARMED WINSTON
CHURCHILL
-
- In 1952, during his second term as the
UK's prime minister, Winston S. Churchill ordered a Top Secret clandestine
probe of UFOs, a British newspaper reported last weekend. According to
Sunday People for October 18, 1998, "Worried Winston Churchill ordered
a top-level probe into UFOs, when he was prime minister" for the second
time. "Lord Chancellor Lord Irvine revealed the enquiry as he admitted
the Goernment is holding at least 33 top-secret files on UFOs. The documents
are held under lock and key at the Public Records Office in Kew, West London,
and Lord Irvine says there may be more." "But the information
is so restricted that it cannot be released with the other with the other
23 files reporting sightings between 1943 and 1967, which have already
been made public." "Churchill asked his air minister Lord Cherwell
to investigate in 1952, writing, 'What does all this stuff about flying
saucers amount to? What is the truth?'" "Official documents
show the War Office received reports that flying saucers were spotted by
the RAF's 115 Squadron on bombing raids over Germany in 1943." (See
Sunday People for October 18, 1998, "Churchill's fear of a UFO war."
Many thanks to John Hayes for forwarding the newspaper article.) (Editor's
Comment: In 1943, the same month the Lancaster bombers of the RAF's 115
Squadron were encountering UFOs, a daylight disc was seen hovering above
the town of Pushkino in northern Russia by Spanish soldiers of Division
Azul, a volunteer Axis unit fighting alongside the German Wehrmacht. We
know for a fact that in January 1945 Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary
Force (SHAEF) asked all military units in the European Theatre of Operations
(ETO) to send in their reports of "foo fighters" or UFOs. This
would have included the 115 Squadron reports from Sir Arthur Harris's Bomber
Command and all of the sightings by American GIs in Europe. But nobody
seems to know what happened to this massive SHAEF archive after May 8,
1945. Was there a UFO flap in 1943? The answer is probably in the SHAEF
files, and in the files of the Ground Observer Corps in the USA, which
Uncle Sam has been sitting on for the past 55 years.)
-
- DEEP SPACE ONE LAUNCHES ON
SHAKEDOWN CRUISE
-
- On Saturday, October 24, 1998, Deep Space
One, NASA's "futuristic" spacecraft, blasted off from Cape Canaveral,
Florida on its maiden flight. The $152 million "solar electric"
or "ion-powered" spacecraft is headed for a rendezvous with an
asteroid 120 million miles (192 kilometers) from Earth. "Marc Rayman,
chief engineer and deputy mission manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory
in Pasadena, California, said the term ion propulsion may be familiar to
TV viewers." "In Star Trek, the refer to ion propulsion as being
even faster than the capability that the Enterprise had--and NASA isn't
quite ready to fly a faster-than-light spacecraft het,' he said."
"But he added, 'It's been known for a long time that it has the potential
to provide very, very high velocity and that aspect of it was accurately
reflected in Star Trek and is what we'll be doing with Deep Space One.'"
The key to Deep Space One's higher speed capacity is its solar-electric
or ion propulsion system. Here's how it works: (1) "Energies from
solar arrays heats barium- calcium-aluminate embedded in a matrix of tungsten.
The material then emits electrons." (2) "Electrons knock other
electrons off the xenon atoms, making the atoms positively charged, called
ions. The electrons follow the helical--kind of like a stretched Slinky--path
of magnetic field lines, increasing their likelihood of meeting up with
xenon atoms." (3) "The charged xenon atoms head for the open
end of the chamber--and toward deep space, where there is no charge, at
a rather speedy 68,000 miles per hour. Two charged grids at the exhaust
end focus the xenon into 3,000 beamlets." (4) A neutralizer inserts
electrons into the path of the exiting positively-charged xenon atoms--
to that the spacecraft (itself) will maintain a neutral charge." Deep
Space One is carrying 180 pounds of xenon gas in its storage tanks. Emerging
from the spacecraft's grid-covered exhaust, the xenon "bombarded by
electrons" is "creating a glowing blue stream of ions that can
provide acceleration for months or even years." Other new features
on Deep Space One include the KA-band solid power amplifier, an ultra-lightweight
unit of 0.7 kilograms that will generate 2.6 watts of KA-band signal for
communication with Earth, and the Solar Concentrator Arrays. These consist
of 720 cylindrical silicone Fresnel lenses that concentrate sunlight onto
3,600 solar cells. The arrays will boost solar power efficiency by 50 percent,
but, like an Earthbound sailboat, Deep Space One will have to "tack,"
i.e. position itself so that sunlight will always be falling on the Fresnel
lenses. (See the New York Post for October 25, 1998, "NASA tries
'Trek' tech." See also Popular Science for July 1998, "Deep
Space Traveler," pages 42 to 47.)
-
- A HIDDEN OCEAN ON CALLISTO?
-
- Scientists have detected evidence of
underground oceans on two of Jupiter's moons-- Europa and Callisto. While
a subsurface ocean was expected in Europa's case, the revelations about
Callisto have come as a shock to the scientific community. During the flybys
of Voyagers 1 and 2 back in 1979, scientists calculated that Callisto had
"a water ice and silicate rock composition like that of Ganymede...Callisto's
icy crust is more than 150 miles thick and this is not prone to break into
(tectonic) plates." But now it appears that Callisto's cratered icy
crust is not as thick as they originally thought. "Scientists hypothesized
the existence of underground seas from data gathered by the Galileo spacecraft.
As the spacecraft zipped past Callisto, Galileo measured strong disturbances
to Jupiter's magnetic field that could be caused by huge underground bodies
of salt water about 60 miles below the frozen surface." "'One
could expect life in such oceans,' said said Krishan Kurana, a geophysicist
at the University of California Los Angeles and lead author of the research."
"If we find out four-and-a-half billion years after the formation
of the solar system that there's still enough heat that ice will melt on
the interior of these bodies, we have to do a little bit of rethinking,'
said one of the researchers, UCLA physicist Margaret G. Kivelson."
Callisto is 390 million miles (624 million kilometers) from Earth, orbiting
the gas giant Jupiter at a distance of 1,170,041 miles (1,883,000 kilometers).
Callisto is 2,995 miles (4,820 kilometers) in diameter and takes about
17 Earth days to complete a rotation. The moon is named for a woman in
Greek mythology who had a son by Zeus. (See the Boston, Mass. Herald for
October 22, 1998, "By Jove! Planet's moons may be home to oceans,"
page 34.)
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