Major Keyhoe was head director of the National Investigation of Aerial Phenomena (NICAP). On the board were other prominent members of rank in the different military branches. Their goal was to expose the massive cover-up that was, and still is, in place surrounding UFOs. With their inside connections with the Pentagon they had access to information, through informants who thought the cover-up was dangerous, which the public would never know.
This is one of those cases in which the public didn't know! Judge for yourself after reading it, and then reading the New York Times article which follows.
The most outstanding case involved an AF (Air Force) interceptor crew. Just before noon, on July 1, 1954, an unknown flying object was tracked over New York State by Griffiss AFB radar. An F-94 Starfire jet was scrambled and the pilot climbed steeply toward the target, guided by his radar observer. When a gleaming disc-shaped machine became visible he started to close in.
Abruptly a furnace heat filled both cockpits. Gasping for breath, the pilot jettisoned the canopy. Through a blur of heat waves he saw the radar observer bail out. Stunned, without even thinking, he ejected himself from the plane.
The cool air and the jerk of his parachute aroused him. He was horrified to see the jet diving toward the heart of a town.
The F-94, screaming down into Walesville, N.Y., smashed through a building and burst into flames. Plunging on, the fiery wreckage careened into a car. Four died in the holocaust - a man and his wife and their two infant children. Five other Walesville residents were injured, two of them seriously.
Soon after the pilot came down, at the edge of town, a reporter appeared on the scene. Still half dazed, the pilot told him about the strange heat. Before he could tell the whole story an AF car arrived. The pilot and the radar observer were hurried back to Griffiss AFB. Interviews were prohibited, and when the Walesville reporter's story of the sudden heat was published the AF quickly denied it. There was no mystery, headquarter told the press, merely engine trouble.
Many in Walesville were bitter about the crew's bailing out, especially the injured citizens and relatives of the dead family. Other AF pilots had stayed with crippled planes - a few at the cost of their lives - to keep from crashing in cities. But after the AF statement many Walesville residents believed the airmen had jumped at the first hint of fire, without a thought of anyone below.
Although I investigated this case in 1954 there was one angle I did not learn until early in '68. While the AF was rechecking the Walesville disaster, also another heat injury case, a headquarters officer I knew gave me the information:
"That F-94 pilot said there was a separate effect besides the heat. Something made his mind black out - he couldn't even remember bailing out. He did recall the sudden heat and he saw the radar observer eject himself. But everything was a blank from then on until his parachute opened. That partly snapped him out of it, but he still had a peculiar dazed feeling.
"The medicos told him it was the intense heat that caused the blackout. And they said the dazed feeling probably came from seeing the jet crash in Walesville. But he didn't believe them. He was sure there was something else besides the heat."
"What about the radar observer?" I asked.
"He was stunned, too, but he didn't black out. Of course he got out sooner than the pilot."
"It must have been terrible, seeing the jet dive into that town."
"It was, and those two men went through hell afterward. The pilot begged the AF to let him talk privately with the relatives of that family, and the people who got hurt, so they'd know what really happened. But they wouldn't let him. Both men were really muzzled."
Even today, the AF report on the Walesville crash remains buried, classified SECRET.
Several investigators believe this case indicates the aliens are not hostile. No Attempt was made to injure the pilots after they bailed out. Apparently the heat-force was used only to keep them from closing in to attack. There are several other Cases which appear to reinforce this opinion.
One encounter, over Uruguay, was reported by Carlos Alejo Rodriguez, a pilot and parachute instructor. He was flying near the Curbelo Naval Air Base when a domed UFO about seventy feet in diameter came toward him. When it stopped and hovered, Rodriguez decided to risk a closer look. Halfway to the flying disc he was almost suffocated by a wave of heat. As he hastily banked to escape, the UFO sped away and the temperature returned to normal.
In 1954, a French test pilot for the Fouga Aircraft Company saw a circular machine over the city of Pau. As he climbed toward it a heat blast hit him. On the verge of passing out he dived into cooler air. The UFO made no attempt to follow him down.
But regardless of the purpose, the strange heat-force can be dangerous, as the Brazilian case proved. If the temperature were increased it could be a deadly weapon. This is one more reason for the growing, tough criticism of the cover-up - some of it from unexpected sources. One surprising attack has come from the RAND Corporation, often called the Air Force "think tank." RAND (for Research and Development) generally is known as a top consulting organization of military experts, scientists and engineers. Actually, it is at least semi-official in some operations, through its strong Pentagon connections.
For years, RAND has been the main policy maker for the Air Force. In 1955, it drew up a document for the AF entitled "Special AF Project Report 14," which rejected the UFO evidence. The new analysis, almost a complete reversal, worried AF Headquarters. Though it carried a warning against outside use, this was not an official AF classification which could bar publication. (A copy was privately given to me in 1970.)
Bearing the label "RAND DOCUMENT," this analysis confirms evidence of UFO reality, injuries to humans, interference with electrical power and other important aspects of surveillance. Portraying the AF investigation as practically worthless, it urges an uncensored central reporting agency and serious, accurate information from the press.
This RAND analysis was drawn up not long after a new injury case was reported to the House Science and Astronautics Committee, during its UFO hearings in 1968 (p. 79 of the hearings record). The evidence was checked by the late Dr. James E. Mc Donald, who co-operated with NICAP in several hundred investigations.
UTICA, N.Y. July 2 - A jet fighter plane returning from a quick "scramble" to investigate an unidentified plane, later reported to be "friendly," crashed in flames in a crossroads hamlet today.
Four persons on the ground were killed and two houses and an automobile were destroyed.
The two Air Force lieutenants in the F94-C Starfire, which carried forty-eight high-powered two-and-one-half inch rockets, bailed out before it plunged into tiny Walesville, eleven miles southwest of Utica, about 12:30 P.M.
The two, who escaped injury, were Lieut. William E. Atkins, 24 years old of Dutton, Va., the pilot, and Lieut. Henry F. Coudon, 26, of Perryville, Md., radar observer.
Those killed were Stanley Phillips, 38, his wife, Florence, 32, and their son, Gary, 11, all of neighboring Hecla, and Mrs. Doris Monroe, 28, occupant of one of the houses. The Phillips family was in the automobile. Mrs. Monroe was in her home preparing lunch for her four children when the plane crashed.
The plane was attached to the Twenty-seventh Fighter Interceptor Squadron at near-by Griffiss Air Force Base, Rome.
The base said it was one of two planes ordered up on a practice scramble that turned into an actual mission. The public information officer, Maj. Evelyn Watkins, explained that the two planes were barely airborne on the training mission when they received radioed orders to check on an unidentified plane in the area.
Major Watkins said no information was available on the unidentified plane or where it was located by the jets.
In Washington, a Pentagon spokesman said the plane was about seventy miles northeast of Rome, on the edge of the zone covered by Griffiss, when it was detected.
"Scramble" is the term pilots apply to emergency flights.
A Griffiss spokesman said the pilots had been satisfied that the plane had been "friendly" and were headed back to the base when fire broke out in the cockpit of one of the jets.
The air base said the pilot and radar observer had stayed with the plane until the "last minute." A spokesman quoted Lieutenant Atkins as reporting that he had ordered Lieutenant Coudon to bail out, then had jumped himself from about 7,000 feet.
Griffiss officials said that fuel in the burning plane apparently had exploded when the jet crashed. They said it had not been determined whether an explosion occurred while the jet was in the air.
Earlier, an Air Force officer had said there "must have been an explosion."
The unoccupied plane struck a large elm tree back of the Walesville general store. A section of the burning craft, probably a wing, struck the car carrying the Phillips family home, presumably from the Rome State School, where both husband and wife were employed as occupational instructors.
The sedan burst into flames, plowed into the home of Mrs. Mary Peck, 79 and set the colonial frame structure afire. Mrs. Peck fled to safety.
Meanwhile, the body of the plane plunged through the roof of the onestory Monroe home and fire quickly destroyed it.
Mrs. Monroe was preparing lunch while her children played outside. Her husband, Lloyd, was at work in a foundry.
One of the children, Betty Lou, 1, suffered a severe laceration of the leg, presumably when struck by debris from the shattered plane, parts of which were scattered all over the community. The three other Monroe Children escaped without a scratch. They were Kenneth, 9; Buddy, 6, and Nora May, 3.
The plane's engine was found about 200 feet south of the four corners. Heat from the flames was so intense it melted the macadam road.
Orson Buck, whose daughter operates the general store, said he saw the plane strike and Betty Lou Monroe fall. Her pulled the child away from the house and took her to the store. She later was taken to a Utica hospital.
Kenneth Monroe told investigators that he and his sisters and brother had been playing in the yard when "all of a sudden there was smoke and fire and I heard my mother screaming."
He said he had taken his sisters by the hand and half-dragged them to the front of the general store. He said his brother had run along with them.
The pilot and the radar observer were found a relatively short distance apart and a few miles from the crash scene. They were taken to the air base hospital, where examination discloses they had escaped injury.
The air base public information office said that a board of inquiry had begun an investigation.
In Washington, the Air Force said a three-man team had been ordered to the scene to investigate.
UTICA, N.Y., July 2 (UP)--Air Force officials in Washington said the cockpit of the plane that crashed had become unbearably hot during the flight and its abandonment had followed.
After the crash, one rocket carried by the plane was reported unaccounted for and authorities feared someone in the hundreds of persons that gathered at the scene had taken it.
Later an Air Force spokesman in Washington said the intercepted plane probably was one that had failed to file a flight plan with the Civil Aeronautics Administration or one that had drifted off its announced flight path.
The two Starfires were sent up to check it after it was discovered on a radar screen, he said.
Associated Press Wire Photo caption:
UPSTATE AIR DISASTER: Remains of rocket-carrying Air Force F-94C Starfire jet that crashed yesterday on the outskirts of Walesville, eleven miles southwest of Utica. Four persons were killed and two houses and a car destroyed. One house still burns as police guard wreck for official investigation.
There are other stories of this nature in the book Aliens From Space.
Judge for yourself