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I was going to add this to the Have any... thread. But it became too long and I thought I'd create a new one instead.
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Now that I have had some time to reflect, I realize that my father did in fact relate to me a story about UFOs. It was not an encounter that he experienced directly. It was a story that he heard from a colleague at work. It was also the case that his colleague did not experience these events directly, but was relating something that he had heard from someone else. His colleague's exact source is unknown.
Usually these many levels of indirection suggest a high level of skepticism is in order when considering the veracity of what follows. But my father was not someone who is easily impressed and he would not have related this story if he had not believed in the sincerity of his colleague.
Furthermore, this UFO story has some notable aspects to it that give it a certain credibility lacking in most stories of this type. For it was more than just the typical rehash of a "flying saucer" encounter that could easily be attributable to an impressionable person thinking that what was seen was an actual UFO, but what is really just an embellished account with all the elements of a sensational tabloid article or low budget sci-fi movie.
In this respect, though sparse, the details are unique. And I mean this in the sense that I have never read or heard about any similar encounter regarding UFOs that was described in the same terms as what my father told me.
But what really suggests the credibility of this story, at least to me and despite all these levels of indirection, is that the most likely explanation comes convincingly back to secret military operations and technology. In fact, I came to this realization in a sudden flash of insight while browsing the web several decades after hearing this story from my father. The connection I made was only indirect and not connected to UFOs. But the pieces all came together in a flash. And thus I am convinced that the story was accurate based just on the plausibility of my insight.
Upon reading the details, some readers may immediately make the same connection that I made many years later. So to get any appreciation out of it, one has to put one's self back on the timeline when these incidents actually occurred and when the information that we have today wasn't readily available.
So here goes.
Back in the late sixties and right around the time of Apollo 11, my father was a civilian contractor stationed in Japan whose job it was to keep the communications equipment operational that mediated the most sensitive and top-secret information flowing between Washington and the war zones in Southeast Asia. The equipment itself was top-secret and thus everyone at the facility required the corollary clearances. The facility itself was located on a small military base outside of Tokyo and was blended invisibly into the backdrop of an Army hospital through which some of the most seriously wounded soldiers, most of whom were not going back to the war zone, were being treated and evaluated prior to their return back to the states.
My father and all his colleagues were thus highly analytic and competent technical people who, by virtue of their job function, can be inferred were capable of quickly distinguishing fact from fantasy and coming up with solutions to difficult problems. These were not people who were gullible and prone to simply believing embellished or sensationalized accounts of someone else's UFO encounter. Most likely they would have spent their time trying to come up with a rational explanation themselves. Yet, as is evidenced by the open questions surrounding this story at the time, none of them were able to do so.
But all of this has little to do with the details of the UFO story itself and is intended only to set the context. In fact, the entire set of details can literally be distilled down to a single sentence. And that is 'during commercial flights airline pilots were reporting what appeared to be large, black 'X's in the sky that would suddenly appear and then just as suddenly disappear'. I do not recall a single additional detail. Nor do I recall my father even using the term UFO.
Any guesses yet?
Now was the information about these encounters skimmed from the flow of information through this top-secret communications equipment? I doubt it. My father would never have divulged anything that was classified. Furthermore, it is virtually certain that the information flowing through this equipment was encrypted end-to-end. And so those who were tasked with maintaining this equipment would not have been able to inspect the messages even had they wanted to. Such is the world of secrecy and compartmentalization. I'm guessing that my father's colleague heard the story from someone he trusted and was just retelling it verbatim.
In any case, when I heard this story, I was still rather young but already highly aware of flying saucers. I was also fanatical about anything related to rockets, missiles, jets, astronauts and anything else having to do with space travel. But this was different and there was something decidedly creepy about these black 'X's in the sky reported by people, i.e. pilots, for whom I had the highest admiration. And being very imaginative, it left me feeling a bit haunted. For here was something genuinely mysterious, symbolically dark and outside the realm of adults to adequately explain.
Years passed and this story remained firmly etched into my mind. Yet, despite all my delving into UFOs and the paranormal, I had never since read or heard of any similar encounter. So the mystery remained for me until decades later when I was browsing the web. Just by accident I came across a particular photograph and everything just kind of fell into place.
What I'm now certain these pilots were seeing were black U-2 spy planes executing a tight banking turn at the point where the aircraft is at a right angle to the visual perspective of the observer. From this perspective, the variation of the U-2 that I saw in that photograph looked exactly like a large, black 'X'. The sudden appearance and disappearance of the 'X' can be explained by the U-2 pilot snapping in and out of the turn in typical operational fashion.
I have searched for the exact photograph that gave me this epiphany, but could never find it again. It would have been in the early 2000's. Though the photographs of the U-2 that come up in typical web searches today should provide enough visual cues to give my explanation sufficient substance.
So is the mystery surrounding the story that my father related to me solved conclusively? No. But it has been solved to my own satisfaction. I do still wonder why this story did not spread and make it into the mainstream given that the source was from commercial airline pilots. Did these pilots solve the mystery themselves and it just kind of extinguished on its own? Was it due to the pressure pilots have on them not to report UFOs? Or was there just enough "whispering in the ears", as in 'we know what's out there but can't tell you what it is', to discourage further reports? Those questions may never be answered.
============================================================
Now that I have had some time to reflect, I realize that my father did in fact relate to me a story about UFOs. It was not an encounter that he experienced directly. It was a story that he heard from a colleague at work. It was also the case that his colleague did not experience these events directly, but was relating something that he had heard from someone else. His colleague's exact source is unknown.
Usually these many levels of indirection suggest a high level of skepticism is in order when considering the veracity of what follows. But my father was not someone who is easily impressed and he would not have related this story if he had not believed in the sincerity of his colleague.
Furthermore, this UFO story has some notable aspects to it that give it a certain credibility lacking in most stories of this type. For it was more than just the typical rehash of a "flying saucer" encounter that could easily be attributable to an impressionable person thinking that what was seen was an actual UFO, but what is really just an embellished account with all the elements of a sensational tabloid article or low budget sci-fi movie.
In this respect, though sparse, the details are unique. And I mean this in the sense that I have never read or heard about any similar encounter regarding UFOs that was described in the same terms as what my father told me.
But what really suggests the credibility of this story, at least to me and despite all these levels of indirection, is that the most likely explanation comes convincingly back to secret military operations and technology. In fact, I came to this realization in a sudden flash of insight while browsing the web several decades after hearing this story from my father. The connection I made was only indirect and not connected to UFOs. But the pieces all came together in a flash. And thus I am convinced that the story was accurate based just on the plausibility of my insight.
Upon reading the details, some readers may immediately make the same connection that I made many years later. So to get any appreciation out of it, one has to put one's self back on the timeline when these incidents actually occurred and when the information that we have today wasn't readily available.
So here goes.
Back in the late sixties and right around the time of Apollo 11, my father was a civilian contractor stationed in Japan whose job it was to keep the communications equipment operational that mediated the most sensitive and top-secret information flowing between Washington and the war zones in Southeast Asia. The equipment itself was top-secret and thus everyone at the facility required the corollary clearances. The facility itself was located on a small military base outside of Tokyo and was blended invisibly into the backdrop of an Army hospital through which some of the most seriously wounded soldiers, most of whom were not going back to the war zone, were being treated and evaluated prior to their return back to the states.
My father and all his colleagues were thus highly analytic and competent technical people who, by virtue of their job function, can be inferred were capable of quickly distinguishing fact from fantasy and coming up with solutions to difficult problems. These were not people who were gullible and prone to simply believing embellished or sensationalized accounts of someone else's UFO encounter. Most likely they would have spent their time trying to come up with a rational explanation themselves. Yet, as is evidenced by the open questions surrounding this story at the time, none of them were able to do so.
But all of this has little to do with the details of the UFO story itself and is intended only to set the context. In fact, the entire set of details can literally be distilled down to a single sentence. And that is 'during commercial flights airline pilots were reporting what appeared to be large, black 'X's in the sky that would suddenly appear and then just as suddenly disappear'. I do not recall a single additional detail. Nor do I recall my father even using the term UFO.
Any guesses yet?
Now was the information about these encounters skimmed from the flow of information through this top-secret communications equipment? I doubt it. My father would never have divulged anything that was classified. Furthermore, it is virtually certain that the information flowing through this equipment was encrypted end-to-end. And so those who were tasked with maintaining this equipment would not have been able to inspect the messages even had they wanted to. Such is the world of secrecy and compartmentalization. I'm guessing that my father's colleague heard the story from someone he trusted and was just retelling it verbatim.
In any case, when I heard this story, I was still rather young but already highly aware of flying saucers. I was also fanatical about anything related to rockets, missiles, jets, astronauts and anything else having to do with space travel. But this was different and there was something decidedly creepy about these black 'X's in the sky reported by people, i.e. pilots, for whom I had the highest admiration. And being very imaginative, it left me feeling a bit haunted. For here was something genuinely mysterious, symbolically dark and outside the realm of adults to adequately explain.
Years passed and this story remained firmly etched into my mind. Yet, despite all my delving into UFOs and the paranormal, I had never since read or heard of any similar encounter. So the mystery remained for me until decades later when I was browsing the web. Just by accident I came across a particular photograph and everything just kind of fell into place.
What I'm now certain these pilots were seeing were black U-2 spy planes executing a tight banking turn at the point where the aircraft is at a right angle to the visual perspective of the observer. From this perspective, the variation of the U-2 that I saw in that photograph looked exactly like a large, black 'X'. The sudden appearance and disappearance of the 'X' can be explained by the U-2 pilot snapping in and out of the turn in typical operational fashion.
I have searched for the exact photograph that gave me this epiphany, but could never find it again. It would have been in the early 2000's. Though the photographs of the U-2 that come up in typical web searches today should provide enough visual cues to give my explanation sufficient substance.
So is the mystery surrounding the story that my father related to me solved conclusively? No. But it has been solved to my own satisfaction. I do still wonder why this story did not spread and make it into the mainstream given that the source was from commercial airline pilots. Did these pilots solve the mystery themselves and it just kind of extinguished on its own? Was it due to the pressure pilots have on them not to report UFOs? Or was there just enough "whispering in the ears", as in 'we know what's out there but can't tell you what it is', to discourage further reports? Those questions may never be answered.
Last edited:
I hope you kept all your copies.