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#94 Graeme Rendall - UFO Research & Historical Cases
475 Plays1 year ago
Graeme Rendall is the author of three books on the UFO subject. UFOs Before Roswell: European Foo-Fighters 1940-1945, Flying Saucer Fever: Airborne UFO Encounters, 1950-1952 and Dawn Of The Flying Saucers: Aerial UFO Encounters & Official Investigations 1946-1949.
He is also a member of UAPMedia UK.
Graeme’s article on the 1952 Swiney/Crofts case: https://www.uapmedia.uk/articles/swin...
Graeme Twitter: https://twitter.com/Borders750
Graeme Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/graeme_rend...
Graeme's books: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Graeme-Renda...
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He is also a member of UAPMedia UK.
Graeme’s article on the 1952 Swiney/Crofts case: https://www.uapmedia.uk/articles/swin...
Graeme Twitter: https://twitter.com/Borders750
Graeme Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/graeme_rend...
Graeme's books: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Graeme-Renda...
!! SUPPORT DISCLOSURE TEAM !!
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/disclosureteam
Buy me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/disclosu...
Disclosure Team Merch: https://disclosureteam.bigcartel.com/
Disclosure Team Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/disclosure_...
Disclosure Team Twitter:
Transcript
Introduction to Podcast and Topics
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Anomalous Podcast Network. Multiple voices, one phenomenon.
Jokes and Ongoing Investigations
00:00:47
Speaker
Hey, everybody. How's it going? Welcome back to the channel. And for the first time in a mile, we're not talking about Calvin. Thank goodness.
Exploring National Archives
00:00:58
Speaker
I joke but yeah one thing I will say about that is the investigation is ongoing for all the many many many messages that I'm getting that's ongoing but what we're doing tonight is we're focusing on some historic cases because I've spent the last few days digging back into some National Archives records and looking at some really interesting cases with multiple data points and they are fascinating so
00:01:21
Speaker
We're gonna cover some cases tonight with my guest and we're probably gonna start doing this on a regular basis You know looking back at cases that need to be probably brought forward a little bit more because they really are They're just as good as any modern case if not better in some respects. So yeah, good to see you guys in the live chat thank you for being here keep it nice calm and cordial and Yeah, that'd be great. We'll have a smooth show. So yeah, let's not waste any more time.
Guest Introduction: Graham Rendell
00:01:47
Speaker
Let's bring in my guest, my colleague at UAP Media UK, my good friend and an amazing author, Mr Graham Rendell. Graham, how's it going? Hello, Vinnie. Here's to you, mate. I've got a nice Argentinian belt back here. I had a couple of glasses of red with my dinner.
00:01:50
Speaker
I
00:02:09
Speaker
Oh, wow. Cool. You're making me envious there. Well, listen, thank you so much for doing
Passion for Archive Research
00:02:16
Speaker
this, Graham. And as I just said, you know, I've been diving back into some archives, some documents, which is something that I did for many years before I even did any of my social medias or even came on the scene. I was always in the background late at night in front of this screen, digging and digging and digging. And I've kind of just rekindled that love for it again.
00:02:39
Speaker
We mentioned before we came on about going actually go into the National Archives as well. And that was the first time last year when we both went together. And I can see how addicting it is, how that feel for like finding that little gem mixed in those documents that's been archived away for so many years. So, yeah, how long have you been going to the archives and things like that? And
00:03:06
Speaker
And do you still get the buzz every time you go?
Challenges of Remote Research
00:03:09
Speaker
So digging into the archives, actually physically going to queue, that was my first time I've done a lot of stuff remotely because of COVID, you couldn't go anyway. So for two years, kind of thing that I was doing things I was having to pay, do everything the long way. So pay them to search.
00:03:24
Speaker
then if they found anything then I would have to pay again for the records to be either sent digitally or in a post and sometimes you lost money because of things you were asking for they couldn't find and you had to stump up like eight pound for a search fee. But there's also things like Freedom of Information Act requests that you know you can do as well online so a few of
Using Online Archives
00:03:44
Speaker
them in the past.
00:03:44
Speaker
And then again it's just trawling through online archives like Hansard the government archive of all the transcripts of all the debates in the House of Lords, the House of Commons in the UK and some of the written replies to questions. You can look through those on the internet and you can delve into things that way and you can see debates on UFOs going back into the 70s and even earlier.
00:04:07
Speaker
So there's a lot of stuff like that. But of course, in a previous life, and it sort of continued into now that I write about aviation history as well. So a lot of the things I used to do have basically translated themselves really easily to UFOs. It's the same kind of thing.
00:04:24
Speaker
I'm looking into historical documents. I did that for the aviation history. So again, I'm looking at, you know, loss records for people when you're looking at sometimes casualties. It's a set, you know, that's also I'm not looking at those for UFOs, but those types of online record databases. There's a lot of things like that that you can you can search and you're just pulling out a little bit of information. You're setting them against something else that you might have found out and you're seeing whether they match.
Distilling Research for Audiences
00:04:50
Speaker
or whether there's any discrepancies and then you chase down what the discrepancies are and you just you know the sky's the limit kind of thing in terms of how much information you might be able to amass and but then again it's then a question of distilling it down into a form that's easy enough to read and understand. You can't assume that everybody who reads it is up to speed with UFOs
00:05:11
Speaker
Some people might just pull it off the bookshelf or buying on Amazon and they know nothing about the subject and they want to get into it much easier. So you have to sort of pitch it to a lot of different audiences. Yeah, absolutely. I think one thing that I really found rewarding was
Comparing US and UK Archives
00:05:28
Speaker
Going back all those years where I was doing a lot of research, I was researching a lot of the American files, so the Blue Book files and things like that. But then when I started digging into the UK National Archives, you'd come across cases that you'd seen in Blue Book, but from the UK perspective. And when you match them up together, that is amazing because you've got both sides and double the details, the evidence and stuff. So I found that really rewarding. And one thing that I initially
Accessing Files at National Archives
00:05:56
Speaker
kind of was a bit wary of was before our visit to National Archives, it asks you what files you want and you're like,
00:06:04
Speaker
I just want to look at this and this, but you need to give them specific numbers now. You've got to do a lot of homework beforehand, Vinny. Yeah. As the audience may or may not appreciate. It's not a case of, as you say, just going down and talking to the guy on the desk and saying, oh, I need to see your files on UFOs for X month, X year. It doesn't work
Advice for Archive Research Newcomers
00:06:23
Speaker
that way. You have to find the file references and you have to tell them in advance online and then they'll find them.
00:06:29
Speaker
and they'll put them in a little kind of little pigeonhole for you when you turn up. And you can only take one file at a time to the reading desks to go through them as, well, I found out certainly because I got told off by a member of staff for having like eight or nine stacked up on the desk. I actually had the stack as well about that hype. I was right in the far corner of the archives and no one saw me. So I got away with it. So for anybody that does want to dig into this, my recommendation would be reach out to people that have already done it.
00:06:59
Speaker
and people really do want to help and that helped me so you know it's and this is the thing like I've struggled in the past going where do I start and I think you have to first think about the era you know is it the 40s the 50s the 60s and then whittle it down from there but what would you suggest to anybody Graham about you know I just want to look at cool UFO documents where would you start
00:07:23
Speaker
So there's plenty out there already.
Resources for UFO Research
00:07:25
Speaker
If you search for likes of, you know, NYCAP, there's kind of all the other sort of online databases. There is lots of documentation out there. NYCAP have a good sort of stock of oral documents covering all sorts of types of cases. And you can look at them online. Also, there is an Internet Archive, which actually has all the Blue Book documents or at least all the ones that can be found.
00:07:52
Speaker
and that's available online as well. I'm sure it's called the Internet Archive and you can just specify a month and a year and then it pulls them all out. Now I'll see that it's mostly American-centric so for people outside America they're looking for something nearer to home.
00:08:07
Speaker
then it may not quite cover what they're looking for. But it does have foreign cases in it, it does have some British cases, it does have some from South America, from Africa and elsewhere.
Quality of National Archives Documents
00:08:17
Speaker
And a lot actually does have a lot from Japan, which I think we're going to talk about one in a minute, in a few minutes, and places like Korea as well. So there's definitely a good spread of cases geographically.
00:08:29
Speaker
But then the Ministry of Defence released a whole load of UK documents and they're through the National Archives so you can actually see them. And there's plenty of places on the internet which actually give the file names so it's not as if you're having to search yourself. But you can do that. There is a search engine on the National Archives website which you can just literally put UFO into.
00:08:52
Speaker
and it comes up with all the relevant links. And a lot of that, if you create an account with the National Archives, then you can download 30 or 100 documents each month for free, which is quite a lot. And it rolls over each month. So that's a good way to get a lot of those. And some of them are quite considerable in size. They run to hundreds of pages.
00:09:20
Speaker
dare I say it, dross? You've probably seen these. Some of them are taken up with people writing weird and wacky letters to the MOD with screes and screes of religious text and things that they believe or their kind of scripture or all these weird and wonderful kind of things that they're spouting. And very little of it actually makes any sense and can be backed up with any kind of evidence at all.
00:09:48
Speaker
Some people might think it's fun reading it, but there's a lot of good stuff in there as well.
Piecing Together UFO Information
00:09:54
Speaker
Absolutely. One thing I noticed going through the files was that you'd have that kind of DROS as you call it, but you go from one page of DROS and the next page could be an internal memo between MOD and DI55 or something and you're like, wow, this is really interesting information.
00:10:10
Speaker
It's not sorted out into any kind of genre in terms of the wacky stuff. And as you say, the real kind of gems. It almost seems to be some kind of date order, and it's in rough date order. So you can see sometimes, I'm not going to mention Calibin, but you can mention other cases. You can see sometimes you'll find a document about a certain case. And then because the investigation might have taken a few weeks, then there'll be another document a bit later on in the file.
00:10:39
Speaker
And then there'll be another follow-up a bit later on because they might have come back to it somehow. Or there might be a reply by the original correspondent who notified the MOD of the case or reported it. And they're going, he or she are coming back saying, I don't agree with what you said. And then there's another reply to that and an official reply which might have some more information.
00:10:59
Speaker
So you get this kind of tuning and throwing, but it's split out between the files. So I'm afraid you have to be patient. You can't expect miracles. You're not going to necessarily, well, you're not really going to get many answers, if any, from those, the MOD documents. But you just have to dig and you just have to put it together with other things that you found out or things from elsewhere. And it slowly builds up a picture.
00:11:21
Speaker
It does. And that's probably one of the reasons why I wanted to do this and to continue doing this is that you find multiple data points for individual cases. So, you know, we talk about modern cases like the Nimitz encounter, for example, how there's, you know, testimony, there's radar, apparently. Well, a lot of these cases dating right back have got that as well.
00:11:41
Speaker
Yeah, you just have to be patient, find it, and then put it all together. There's other things as well. You can look at the names of the people involved, and you can search old newspapers, and you might get more information that way from a case which doesn't necessarily make it into the official investigation, such as Bluebook.
Historic UFO Case: 1948 Encounter
00:12:01
Speaker
And then you can chase down those people. And then occasionally, very, very occasionally, you'll find that they actually write
00:12:06
Speaker
accounts of these sightings themselves for sometimes little known UFO newsletters in the 50s, 60s and 70s.
00:12:15
Speaker
And that's another good way of finding just a little bit more information about certain cases, which just adds up just to build a bigger picture. And also, these are people's personal recollections, so they're not necessarily 100% accurate. But that picture just expands more than just a few brief words in an intelligence document.
00:12:37
Speaker
Absolutely. So let's move on to this first case that I wanted to discuss. And I think this one is from Dawn of the Flying Sauces. Am I right? Yeah, it is. Let's bring up my screen. So this is the 1946 to 1949 aerial UFO encounters and official investigations.
00:12:57
Speaker
written by yourself, forward by George Knapp. That's amazing, isn't it? I'm really happy with that. Yeah, right. So I'm just going to go to the first image.
00:13:10
Speaker
Here we go then. So the picture is of a Northrop 61 Black Widow. Now those of you, and I see you're wearing the t-shirt or the cover there, of the Foo Fighters book that I wrote last year. These aircraft figured, they were sort of featured quite heavily in that because a couple of the squadrons that were seeing them in Belgium and also in Italy were flying this particular type of aircraft. It's actually a night fighter and it was the first
00:13:38
Speaker
aircraft that the Americans built for their Army Air Force. It was a specific night fighter. So you had either a crew of two or a crew of three. So there was a pilot, there was a radar observer who once operated the radar.
00:13:52
Speaker
an airborne radar system. And sometimes they had a gunner on board. This aircraft here doesn't have one, but they occasionally had a remote controlled gun turret on top. You can see a kind of little circle on top of the aircraft and that's where it would have been fitted. So there could have been sometimes were a third member of crew on some of these types of aircraft. I'm just going to refer to a couple of notes because I want to actually read out part of the intelligence document with this particular case. I'll sort of set the scene as well. So we're looking at
00:14:21
Speaker
the 15th of October 1948 and this is off the coast of Japan and this is so this is before the Korean War so you're looking at about a year and a half before that kicked off. It's during the American occupation of Japan after the Second World War and they've got air bases there where they're flying aircraft and they're flying you know sort of patrols over the Yellow Sea and
Context of 1948 Encounter
00:14:45
Speaker
places around Japan because obviously there's a possible threat from the Chinese, the communists, but also from the Russians as well. So it's not a flashpoint as such quite then, but it's a place where obviously the Americans are heavily invested. And this is actually, this happens a fortnight after the so-called Gorman dogfight, which
00:15:07
Speaker
I've talked about at length elsewhere, which was that this happened to a P-61, a National Guard pilot, where he had a dogfight with a light one night around his Fargo in America. So this is, say, just like two weeks afterwards. And the crew, it was actually called an F-61 Black Widow, the change in designation in 1947.
00:15:30
Speaker
based in Japan, and it was involved in what they described as a series of cat and mouse interceptions of what they thought was an unidentified radar contact. Now it wasn't just a radar contact, it was actually a visual contact as well because the pilot saw something in the sky. So you're looking at one of, maybe not the first, but certainly one of the first radar visual cases in the kind of UFO legend.
00:15:56
Speaker
The two fighter cases from the war, from the Second World War, were visual only that they were never picked up on airborne radar or ground radar. But what was kind of strange about this particular case was whatever they were chasing and whatever was sort of chasing them at one point.
00:16:13
Speaker
was its ability to either dawdle around very very slowly at about 200 miles an hour and it was always letting the aircraft catch up to it and then it was rocketing off into the distance and they estimated based on the time it took to sort of disappear off the screen in the aircraft at 1200 miles an hour which is really really quick and it wouldn't break that speed record until 1957
00:16:39
Speaker
So you're looking at 1948 here, there were no aircraft in the world that could actually do that kind of speed. So that's quite notable. And although it's not quite the same, we're looking in terms of things that defy known technology,
00:16:57
Speaker
you're almost getting a tech tech territory there. You're getting things that have abrupt change of the speed can zoom off at speeds which are way in advance of anything that the current technology could have accomplished. And you're talking about a top speed of about 550, 600 miles an hour back then. It's not that quick, even for the sort of the late model jets back in the late 1940s, the kind of P-80 shooting star or the F-94 star fighter.
Crew's Perspective on UFO Encounter
00:17:27
Speaker
Anyway, so we're looking at two crew on board this F61. There's a pilot who was called Oliver Hempel and his radar operator who was called Barton Halter. And in a statement that was made, it actually made quite a lot later, so you're looking at three months later. So it took a long time for this information to come out for various reasons which are unclear at this stage.
00:17:49
Speaker
he provided an account of what he's piloted and he had experienced that night and if you don't mind Vinnie I'll just read this out if that's all right. Go for it yeah. Okay so he says that his present duties are radar and communications maintenance officer and the radar observer night fighter with a 68 fighter squadron 347 fighter group
00:18:10
Speaker
15th October 1948, my pilot and I started out on a routine mission on the northwest coast of Kyushu, which is one of the islands in Japan, so it's the main island. And he says when, at 23.05 hours, we're at approximately 50 miles from, and he names a city which I can't pronounce,
00:18:29
Speaker
I picked up an airborne target. It showed up with a range of five miles dead ahead and slightly below us. So that's the radar operator saying that he's picked up something on his airborne radar. He then says, we increased our speed to approximately 220 miles an hour and obtained an advantage of 20 miles an hour. So they were gaining on this object at 20 miles an hour. The target showed no evasive action at first, and we thought it was probably one of the fighter aircraft from our home field.
00:18:56
Speaker
As we closed in, I noticed a slight change in azimuth and a rapid closure between us. So the object had changed the way it was going and it seemed to be either slowing down or it was heading for them. We dived in an attempt to follow the target.
00:19:13
Speaker
And before we could get squared away to follow it, it had passed beneath us and was gone. I notified my pilot, and we're diving the rate of 3,500 feet a minute, 300 miles an hour, and it was gone. The next or second interception, so this is the second one, was from the rear of the target, again, as the first. But then it put on a burst of speed and out-distanced us immediately. And then when they made another pickup,
00:19:42
Speaker
It was in a different distance and a different altitude. So the pilot turned to try and head off the target to try and catch it up again. And again, there was a sudden burst of speed and it disappeared sort of 10 miles away. Now that was the outer limit of the scope on the aircraft, which was 10 miles for airborne targets. And according to the radar observer, Halter, he said that it took 15 to 20 seconds.
00:20:08
Speaker
Now, if you estimate the speed, rather, based on the 10 miles in 15 to 20 seconds, you're looking at an excess of 1,200 miles an hour. So that's how you work that out. And they said, in their opinion, they were showing a new type of aircraft that by some agency are known to us.
00:20:27
Speaker
and then there's a huge amount of information from the intelligence people who looked at this as well and the fact that the ground radars couldn't pick it up but the pilot had seen this thing and then of course it was picked on radar as well so it wasn't just it was a like a radar angel that the pilot had seen something although he couldn't work out what it was he could just see an object and you know it was it was it was slightly discernible
00:20:54
Speaker
You couldn't estimate the size of it or whether it was jet or propeller driven. There was no trail, no exhaust flame, but it was obviously much, much faster and much more maneuverable than them. They had, actually at one point, the pilot had a silhouette of the target, but he couldn't work out what it was because it didn't look like anything he'd seen before. And you couldn't really even describe it. And you've got a picture of it there, I believe. I sent you a picture of it, yes? Yes, let me skip to that.
00:21:22
Speaker
So that was what he said it looked like. And, you know, that it's, well, it defies description really. It looks like an error form. So you've got that kind of curved upper surface of like a wing, like a cross section and a flat underside, but as terms of an object, well, it doesn't resemble anything really. So, but that was what they were chasing and what outdistanced them very, very quickly.
00:21:49
Speaker
So it's literally that oblong shape thing, no wings, no control surfaces, the kind of, I mean, how dissimilar is that to a tic-tac? I mean, it's not the shape of a tic-tac, but it's not far off. No, that's right. And this is what, 48, did you say? Oh, to 48. That's incredible. So you can see this in the blue book files. And you can actually read the interview that the radio observer gave to the investigators.
Speculation on UFO Origins
00:22:17
Speaker
And you can also read the intelligence summary, you know, and what they thought as well. So it's all there. And if you read and if you also read my book, you'll see it as well, because that's where most of that information comes from. So, yeah. So these are things that were seen really early. Now, of course, someone might turn around and say, well.
00:22:34
Speaker
is this Chinese or Russian because that's what they talk about nowadays. But you have to remember back in 1948 the Chinese, you know, sort of technology base was practically non-existent. They were in the middle of a civil war, they'd just come out of a civil war rather, and you know they were essentially no, not much further along than the kind of warlord culture that they had back then. You know their technology base for churning out aircraft and weapons
00:22:59
Speaker
They were reliant on other countries to supply them with things. And the Russians weren't in the stage then when they were actually given the Chinese too much in terms of good stuff. But actually, the Russians didn't have anything that could fly at that speed anyway.
00:23:11
Speaker
They were still in the first generation jet fighters. So you're looking at things like the Yak-15 and the MiG-9, which were really early types of jets. And they were all based, or the engines were based on German wartime technology. There were in fact, there were copies of German wartime turbo jets. And then you had things like the MiG-15 were just coming along. They were just prototypes and they were just coming into the first flights.
00:23:34
Speaker
But you wouldn't send them across somewhere like that. They were kept under lock and key in the middle of Russia. So in terms of what this thing was, it's anybody's guess, really.
00:23:46
Speaker
So out of all those countries and aircraft that you mentioned there, you'd say the top speed of all of them or the most would be sort of 600? Well, yeah, you're looking at from the estimate, I mean, if the figures are accurate to what he said, so it's like 10 miles distance from when it was plotted to when it disappeared off the scope and in the time it took, which was, he said, 15 to 20 seconds estimated, then you're looking at about 1200 miles an hour or so or more of it.
00:24:14
Speaker
That's, let's say, twice the speed of anything that was in operational service at that particular time. That's amazing. Listen, before we jump on to the next case, everybody in the live chat, I am seeing your questions, I think, but if you can put them in capital letters, I'm more likely to see them.
Modern-Day UFO Hotspots
00:24:32
Speaker
So far, I've got Jeff, Jason, and Vishwa. I've got your questions. In fact, before we jump on to the next case, let's jump into a couple of these.
00:24:41
Speaker
Jeff says Vinnie I have a question for Graham. Are there any modern day hot spots that seem to be associated with areas of sightings from the World War II time period?
00:24:51
Speaker
Um, yeah, look at the 1990 kind of 90, 89 to 93 wave, the Belgian triangles. Um, so that happened in a sort of part of, well, obviously it happened to have a kind of Southern Belgium and that kind of area. And there were some cases from the, um, from the Foo fighter period of November to the end of the, uh, 44 to the end of the war, uh, that happened in that particular area, uh, with the, uh, the four 22nd, uh, night fighter squadron. So yes, that's one I can think of.
00:25:21
Speaker
But then you look at some of the places that were supposedly hotspots for wartime activities, they're not necessarily the same now. So you're looking at the Po Valley in northern Italy, that doesn't really feature much. I mean, I'm not actually up to speed too much on UFO cases in Italy at the present. So there may well be, but it's not something that tends to break into the more mainstream kind of knowledge of modern day UFO encounters. So I could be wrong on that, but I don't think I am.
00:25:50
Speaker
And then the rest of them, well, there's no real hotspot beyond those those areas. So, you know, I can't really sort of like sort of give you an answer for the rest of it. Interesting. Thank you. Thanks for the question, Jeff. Let's jump into Jason's. Jason asks, if there are any plans to write audiobook versions of your books? Oh, that's plans.
00:26:13
Speaker
We've had these conversations, we've had these chats privately. I think it comes down to being able to do it and being able to actually sort of, kind of the technology being there for me to be comfortable with doing it and also getting people to help because my voice isn't great to be able to, nobody's going to understand me. If we get Andy doing it, then we're going to need subtitles.
00:26:37
Speaker
Sorry, Andy. So, you know, it will, I'm sure it'll happen one day, Jason, but I'm maybe not right at this moment. But yeah, it'd be a lovely thing to have. The Foo Fighter book mind, it's 550 pages. That would take a very, very long time and the chapters are quite long. Whereas the Dawn of the Flying Saucers is probably an ideal one to start because the chapters are much shorter and they're more punchy.
00:27:06
Speaker
How many chapters are there in the Foo Fighter book? 18 or 19. Some are quite long though. You're talking about like 70 or 80 pages, some of the chapters. So here's an idea, you get however 18 separate members of the UFO community to do a chapter each.
00:27:28
Speaker
I mean, what do people think? I'd love to know what people think.
Rendlesham Forest Incident
00:27:31
Speaker
Would you like listening to loads of people you know talking or do you want one person doing the whole book? And actually, if that was the case, who would you want to narrate them? Now, don't say Ross because he would just do the voices for all of them and he could do anything different voices and probably nobody would know why, is it? Absolutely.
00:27:50
Speaker
Yeah, so hopefully in the future we'll get the audios. Vishwa's question, would something like Rendersome Forest be MOD, US Pentagon, or both? Well, there's a $64,000 question. It's like the Calvin. Sorry, we're going to go about this. We're going to, it's Calvin.
00:28:06
Speaker
you know, the jury's out on that. A lot of people will say, well, yes, it's some secret US technology. And I can be swayed that way. But equally, if you're looking at things that hover in mid-air and then zoom off into the, you know, into the stratosphere at a rate of knots, can we build that kind of technology? And if so, why isn't it, you know, in circulation 32 years later? And you could look at the same irrelevant, which was even earlier. So why hasn't that technology appeared? So there's,
00:28:34
Speaker
you know grounds to sort of suspect it might be but equally there's things on the other side of the argument that say well no because surely this would have happened by now so I'm sorry I can't I can't say one way or another we just don't have enough information at this stage to to say yes or to say no so more digging is needed.
00:28:53
Speaker
But am I right in saying, well, I know for sure that Rendlesons features heavily in the documents from the National Archives. Oh, it does. I think there are some mentions in some of that. I don't know if it's the FBI files or the CIA files, but I'm pretty confident there is some documentation over in the US on Rendlesham as well, because it was a joint, joint based. That's right. So, yeah, there is information out there, but there's certainly no answers at the moment, unfortunately.
00:29:19
Speaker
But thanks for the question anyway. Shall we move on to the next slide, please? Let's bring up this image and jump right in. There we go.
00:29:32
Speaker
So we have a Martin Mariner flying boat, and this is US Navy. So this is obviously the major thing at the moment is to do with US Navy encounters off the West Coast and East Coast of America with the tic-tacs and with cubes inside spheres and all the rest of it.
1951 US Navy UFO Encounter
00:29:48
Speaker
Now US Navy encounters with strange things go back to actually World War II, but this is a one from 1951. Now this appears in Flying Salt of Fever.
00:29:58
Speaker
So we're looking at November 1951 and this is in the Yellow Sea so again we're off China and this is a long-range flying boat on a maritime patrol basically sort of flying along the you know the sort of the maritime border with China if you like out to sea but it's also a position which is equidistant between China, North Korea and you know somewhere in Japan as well so it's a kind of flashpoint area and of course
00:30:27
Speaker
November 1951 slapped back in the middle of the Korean War. So naturally aircraft based in Japan and also South Korea are going to be on patrol looking for targets of opportunity because the Chinese are already in the war by then. So
00:30:42
Speaker
So we have this particular statement that was sent to the headquarters of Far Eastern Air Force, which was based in Japan. And this was forwarded to the Director of Intelligence of the US Air Force on the 12th of November, 1951. And it reads this as such. There's only three paragraphs. A waste gunner, on lookout duty at an open waste hatch, sighted a light on the port side and notified the patrol plane commander.
00:31:12
Speaker
The PPC, patrol plane commander, saw the light and brought the contact to the attention of the crew, which verified its existence. The radar man confirmed the contact, reporting the distance as 12 miles. The light appeared to be a long, conically shaped flame, suggesting the exhaust of a reaction type motor, such as a rocket or a ramjet.
00:31:34
Speaker
The size, shape, and color of the flame seemed to vary during the period of observation. Originally, the flame appeared to be short with a red-orange hue. Later, the flame became longer with a color changing to a white-orange hue, apparently after power was added. So again, they picked it up on a radar, but they also saw it.
00:31:57
Speaker
The patrol plane commander turned left towards the contact, attempting to silhouette the craft against the moon in order to photograph it. Evidently, the craft turned away, maintaining the distance of 12 miles, so a photograph was not obtained. Consequently, and then the name the commander,
00:32:18
Speaker
increased the power setting to rated power in order to close the range radar contact was lost with visual contact was maintained until the estimated range became three or four miles meanwhile the crew was able to observe the body of the crap visually while in addition the commander was able to observe the wing shape so that this thing actually does have wings or at least seems to have wings using binoculars
00:32:40
Speaker
The hull was very large, estimated to be 60 feet long. The wings were swept back and down with a dihedral at the tips, bending approximately 85% of the wing length. There was no empanage, which means a tail. That wasn't there. And the craft appeared to be flying at what they called a high angle of attack. So if you can imagine, that means that basically that it's nose up. So it's like that. It's flying along like this. Yeah. Weird. That's what that means.
00:33:08
Speaker
And you'll see in a minute when you pull up the diagrams which I sent you as well. There's only a few more lines here. And he says, the flight altitude for this high angle attack suggested a high speed plane staggering to keep airborne at a slow speed. So in other words, they thought it might be like a jet fighter, but having to slow down enough to keep up with or to keep stationed on the flying boat because the flying boat was quite slow.
00:33:35
Speaker
whereas a jet fighter if it gets to a very slow speed it could stall and fall out the air and the best thing to do is you basically pitch the nose up and that's you know how you keep sort of flying in an aircraft like that, at least that's what they suspected.
00:33:50
Speaker
And then the last bit is the craft accelerated slowly, increasing the range to 16 miles, as indicated by radar. It then accelerated rapidly to a range of 22 miles when contact was lost. Visual contact was then also lost due to the clouds, actually 16 minutes after the initial contact. They computed the speed of the aircraft as 530 knots of the period just before contact was lost. So it's a lot slower than the one that was seen off Japan.
00:34:20
Speaker
But if you can possibly pull up the first of the images, let us send to you. So in the Blue Book documentation, we've got a couple of plans of, and these are the sketches of what they said they saw. Now this one, yeah, OK, so you can see the general outline. You can see these wings with the dihedral. So that's slightly downward facing pointing wings, sorry. And then these little kind of wing tips that pointed upwards. If you just pop the next one up, please.
00:34:52
Speaker
And then this one here, and this shows it what the reckoned it might have been. So you can see the bottom right there, and that's pretty much from the previous drawing. And then they try to compare it to a MiG-15, which is a Soviet jet fighter. Now, in some respects, yes, it does look quite similar.
00:35:11
Speaker
And without the tail, it could be. And actually, in my book, I do have a picture of a MiG-15 from behind, which is shot by a US Air Force jet fighter gun camera, as it was about to shoot one down. So you can see that that's quite accurate. Did I send you a picture of MiG-15? I think I did. I think you did, yeah. So somebody can see what it looks like if they're not familiar. There we go. So that's a
00:35:37
Speaker
That's a Soviet picture of a MiG-15. And this is like a kind of second generation MiG jet fighter for the Russians. It was based on, well, it was their own design. It was based on some German technology about swept wings. And if the Labour government hadn't supplied some jet engines to the Russians under some misguided agreement in whenever it was, 46 or 47, then they would never have the technology to build upon to build this aircraft.
00:36:07
Speaker
Also, the story goes. Anyway, the Chinese got some of these about the time this happened. And of course, the Chinese were also supplying aircraft to the North Koreans, and also the Russians were supplying these aircraft to the North Koreans as well, and even supplying the pilots to fight against the Americans, which wasn't something that was known until maybe 20, 30 years ago kind of thing. So they were in the skies over Korea, but were they over the middle of the sea?
00:36:35
Speaker
Now, you had to do some kind of creative thinking to work this out. But if you worked out the kind of endurance of the MiG-15 and the speeds and all the rest of it, it wouldn't have had much flying time to be able to get out there from the nearest base in China or the nearest base in North Korea. It was just too far. Also, the size of the thing was twice the size of the MiG-15. And MiG-15 was about 33 foot long. This thing was estimated at 60. So it was twice the size.
00:37:04
Speaker
And a MiG-15 stalled at about 120 knots. So yes, OK, if the pilot had been nose up, tried to keep out with the stall, it could have done it. But then it would have been using quite a lot of fuel up as well. A MiG-15 carried about 450 gallons of fuel, even with the external tanks, the drop tanks, if you like, burned it at about five gallons a minute. So that was about 45 minutes endurance. So that's how much time it had in the air from takeoff to landing or falling out the sky, whichever came first.
00:37:35
Speaker
But this sighting lasted for 15 minutes. So you would have to, like a pilot would have to take off from China, would have to fly across the ocean, meet up with this aircraft, and then they said it rocketed off into the distance. It disappeared off from visual and also from the radar quite quickly. So you'd have burned quite a lot of fuel off that way. So that's not fuel efficient. And then even by the time you go back to base, given the distance and the time, you'd have been on fumes.
00:38:04
Speaker
if not falling in the sea. So it wasn't something that was realistic back then anyway and also those early aircraft didn't have onboard radar and the Chinese did not have radar to be able to guide planes back into landings. So some people have said in the past that this might have been a MiG-15 and clearly the intelligence people thought that might be what it was because they came out with that comparison.
00:38:30
Speaker
But when you look, when you drill down into the information and try and work out where such things feasible, it wasn't one of these. So question is, what was it? And that's the $64,000 question again. It's something that just can't be reconciled with anything back then. The funny thing that got me then is that you said that they had radar contact at about 12 nautical miles. Was that right? But then as they close to three or four, they lost it.
00:38:56
Speaker
That could be down in the vagaries of the kind of system involved. Or it could be spoofing. It could be anything. It could be a range of things while they lost contact. But they did also reestablish it because as it went away, they still had it on radar until it finally broke contract. So there's various things happening here. But yes, as you say, visual contact was maintained three or four miles away and radar contact was lost.
00:39:20
Speaker
but they were still able to actually see it visually. So whatever it was, was it jamming the aircraft? Was it spoofing the radar somehow? Or was it some other factor that meant that they'd lost it, was it intermittent glitch? It's not clear on the records, I'm afraid. But unfortunately, with the best will in the world, sometimes all you've got to go on is what they say at the time.
00:39:44
Speaker
And sometimes there are follow-up questions that the intelligence people, when they're interrogating the witnesses, or they come back to it later on, sometimes there's follow-up questions that go back to the squadron's concern, in this case not.
00:39:58
Speaker
Wow, fascinating case. And that's the thing that I just think that just it's not prosaic or the explanation is not prosaic. And you can't quite figure out what somebody in the chat says they're imitating our tech. And I mean, yeah, as a possible scenario that of course that's possible. We just don't know.
00:40:16
Speaker
But people talk about these missiles that have been seen in America that are flying near airliners. And some people are saying, well, they might just be imitating those. They wouldn't be testing missiles in a place next to commercial airliner routes. So anything's really possible.
00:40:34
Speaker
Amazing. We've got a few more questions here. Joss is the first one. So Graham, there was a case between 68 and 70 above the Atlantic of a commercial plane followed by a big yellow orb.
Audience Inquiry: Dutch Case
00:40:46
Speaker
It even made Dutch TV like panorama here in Holland, but I can't find anything. Are you familiar with that one?
00:40:52
Speaker
I'm not, I'm afraid, but it sounds intriguing. It does. I've made a mental note of it. Thank you, Josh. Yeah, you've got a little way to go before you hit the late 60s and early 70s. Yeah, but that doesn't stop me looking at things. True. Yeah, no, absolutely. So yeah, Josh, if you come across anything about that, please, please send it to me. Yeah, you know where I've got a question from Elena, but I might leave that one till towards the end because I think that's a really interesting one. So
00:41:21
Speaker
Let me just check. Yeah, let's move on to the next case. And this is one that I requested you to discuss because this is something I've been looking into, but only kind of touched upon recently.
1952 RAF Sighting: Swiney
00:41:33
Speaker
So I've got quite a lot more to dig in on this. So shall I bring the gentleman on the screen or do you want to start the story first? Yeah, put the gentleman on the screen. That's fine.
00:41:45
Speaker
I'll put the aircraft up first, which I was, no, no, that's fine. So the guy on the right is called Swiney. It's the way it's spelled. We're not very sure when it's Swiney or Swiney because it's spelled with one N. It's presumed it's Swiney. So he's Flight Lieutenant MJE Swiney. And he's an instructor with the Central Flying School, which are based in England, at RAF Little Rissington, which is actually in Gloucestershire. So it's down the southwest of England.
00:42:14
Speaker
And really, the only kind of reference to this case is buried away in the National Archives in London. And you have to find it within what's called the operational record books. That's a kind of like a diary, if you like. It's an official diary for the central flying school themselves. Most RAF squadrons, flights or operational training units, et cetera, actually have what they call an ORB, which is an operational record book. It's a day-to-day breakdown of missions, flights,
00:42:42
Speaker
and other information to do with the unit. And this particular reference comes up for the 21st of October 1952. And what it says is, Flight Lieutenant MJ E Swiney, instructor and Lieutenant D Crofts, RN Royal Navy, student,
00:43:03
Speaker
sighted three mysterious saucer-shaped objects traveling at high speed at about 35,000 feet whilst on a high-level navigation exercise in a meteor seven. Later, ATCC Gloucester reported radar plots to confirm this but Air Ministry discounted any possibility of extraterrestrial objects.
00:43:24
Speaker
So that's in the ORB. So that's an official document. And that's actually an RAF document as well. So a lot of the time when you see RAF UFO reports, they don't appear in the ORBs. But in this particular case, it does. So it was quite noticeable.
00:43:40
Speaker
just to go back to what some of the terminology is. So we're looking at ATCC, which is air traffic, you know, the control center. So it was actually a grand radar or series of grand radar sites that sort of picked this object or objects up as well. Now, as you say, have you found anywhere else that this appears in?
00:44:05
Speaker
Not yet, no. Okay. I've had some, I've had a few conversations so I'm gonna keep digging. So you can find extra information regarding this case in a book by somebody called Peter Horsley. It's his autobiography. Now he was a former wartime mosquito pilot and he became extra-equiry, it's kind of like an aid if you like, to her Royal Highness Prince Elizabeth and then he also, and also to his Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Philip.
00:44:33
Speaker
and that was in 1953 became the Duke's full-time equity. So he was quite close to the Duke of Edinburgh and of course Prince Philip actually had an interest in UFOs as most people actually are aware of and therefore Peter Horsley had conversations with him on the subject UFOs.
00:44:52
Speaker
Now Hoseley in his book about his life and not Prince Philip's life but about his own life actually mentions this and he talks about a little risking incident and this is a quote from the book. An instructor and his pupil instructor were carrying out a series of high level sorties in a tandem seat meteor, the pupil in the front seat, the instructor in the rear.
00:45:13
Speaker
The front pilot observed a circular flying object some distance away, dead ahead, filling about three inches of the swing screen, which was approximately two feet across. He had no previous knowledge of or interest in UFOs.
00:45:27
Speaker
The object was so strange that he immediately assumed that he had an oxygen failure and informed his instructor who took over control and turned the aircraft through 45 degrees. That would presumably be to see whether it was some kind of cockpit reflection because that would be standard practice if you saw something that you weren't entirely sure. You moved the aircraft to a different heading and then looked in the same position again just to see whether it was a reflection of a dial or something in the cockpit.
00:45:52
Speaker
He then saw the object and the two pilots confirmed its description to each other, so they checked that they were seeing exactly the same thing. The instructor immediately reported the incident to Little Rissington Air Traffic Control, who were not aware of any traffic in the vicinity of the meteor, and instructed him to approach closer.
00:46:10
Speaker
The crew turned again towards the object, opening up to full power. At Mach 0.8, so you're looking at about 500 miles an hour or so, they gained quite rapidly. But when the circular object filled half their windscreen, it suddenly turned on its side, like a plate that was their words, and climbed away out of sight at great speed. It was not possible to estimate its size because they didn't know its distance.
00:46:39
Speaker
Their description was similar to other reports, circular and emitting an incandescent light around its edges.
Potential Follow-Up Research
00:46:49
Speaker
So Horsley only mentions one object in this book of his, but actually, according to the ORB records, there were three that the pilot and instructor saw. And at first, Michael Swiney actually thought that there might be parachutes coming down from some unseen aircraft above them, which might have been in trouble or might have been dropping something.
00:47:12
Speaker
Now David Croft, who was the pupil in the front seat, he described them as being elliptical shaped and looking like circular pieces of glass reflecting in the sun.
00:47:23
Speaker
Now he subsequently learned that Fighter Command had scrambled jet fighters to intercept the objects, but of course that's never been confirmed in the official records. It just merely mentions that they actually saw these circular objects. Now I guess if you look at other fighter squadrons,
00:47:43
Speaker
you might actually find records of a scramble but again you might not because things like that are not necessarily recorded. Now that could be a little job for somebody or myself to go through those records and you would have to work out
00:47:58
Speaker
what fight squadrons were near enough to let through to that part of Gloucestershire that they could have got a jet into the air and you know scrambled to try and intercept and there would be this there would be bases around London and on the south coast of England which would be well within range of there so that was you know theoretically possible but here's the other thing that again this is another radar visual case because
00:48:24
Speaker
The Air Ministry investigators reckon that they'd been in communication with every country in the world that was likely to have that kind of aircraft that certainly drew a blank. But the pilots were later told, and I'm not entirely sure who it's clear, who told them.
00:48:41
Speaker
but the craft had been picked up by radar sites at a place called Box and also a place called Sopley. Now, funnily enough, Box later became known as RF Riddler Manor and if anybody in the chat or listening to this is, ears are pricked up at that name, then well, do you know Vinny what the significance of Riddler Manor is? I've heard it come up so many times. Is there a certain
00:49:07
Speaker
Importance to it at that era, or do you mean in general? No, much later. So it was the place where what they call the flying complaints flight was held, was based. But it was also an alleged centre for investigating UFO reports in the UK, under the auspices of the flying complaints flight. It's never really kind of improved.
00:49:27
Speaker
But it was always rumor, wasn't it? Back in the 80s and early 90s, it was one of those places that featured in a lot of UFO books. So, you know, if you didn't get stories about Area 51 or things like that, then, you know, RF Riddler Manet would come up and Tim Good used to write about it and other people did as well.
00:49:46
Speaker
Wasn't there some connections to aerospace companies as well to Rudlow Manor? Wasn't there some space? I can't remember who they were. Maybe I'm just going off on a tangent. There are certainly stories about underground tunnels and all sorts of weird, wonderful things there. But again, these kind of stories that people come out with and you have to take a little pinch of salt sort of thing.
00:50:05
Speaker
Absolutely yeah and shall I just jump on because I think that's the last yeah so that's the type of aircraft that's a Meteor T7 so it's a two-seat Meteor this is the the first type of jet fighter that saw service with the RAF and this was the two-seat trainer version and these aircraft were still like even though they were quite long in the tooth by by the sort of earlier mid-50s they were still in service
00:50:27
Speaker
They were bringing out later versions of this, but this aircraft would have been a service for the sight of a flying school. And this is not too dissimilar to the aircraft that the two were flying the day they saw the UFOs. It's so amazing because that line where he says, you know, it appeared to fill half the windshield, turned on its side and then shot off at great speed. I mean, that's mind boggling stuff, isn't it? And I will just highlight here that you have actually written about it.
00:50:55
Speaker
here on the UAP media website, which this article is linked below this video. It's also pulled from the book as well. So that's based on pretty much what I wrote in the book with a few bits like missed out. But yeah. And then this comment here, our very own Dave Clark interviewed, says Spiney, but I mean Swiney before he died.
00:51:18
Speaker
That's from Giles. Good to see you, Giles. And yeah, I actually spoke with David a couple of days ago about the case. And he's going to send me the audio of that interview with Swiney in about a week's time because David's on holiday at the moment. So I'm going to be doing more digging. And the one thing that I like is listening to these interviews to hear the tone of voice when they're discussing them, because I did that with the Lake and Heath case. And you just
00:51:43
Speaker
I don't know, there's just something about hearing it from the horse's mouth that it just is fascinating. If you look on YouTube, there are interviews, like news kind of broadcasts, interviews with some British pilots from about that time as well, so in the early to mid 50s. So you get a kind of flavour about how they saw these kind of incidents and how they reacted.
00:52:06
Speaker
they're quite kind of stilted and stiff up a lip kind of broadcasts as was the the kind of thing from the time but as you say it's a really good insight into how they they saw it and how they what they think about it.
Historical Context of UFO Sightings
00:52:19
Speaker
One of the cases is the airliner off Labrador that in like 53 54 time that the crew saw these you know strange object that could change shape
00:52:31
Speaker
It was a main object with little ones next to it, but the main one changed shape three times. Now that's actually, you can see the newsreel, news item that was done, the interview, the pilot at Heathrow, or London Airport rather, back then, some days afterwards. And these are fascinating interviews. So yeah, you can find things like that as well.
00:52:56
Speaker
Absolutely and what I forgot I saw a comment earlier saying you know it's kind of pointless discussing these kind of cases or you're making mountains out of molefills I think was the comment the thing is we're not trying to solve these cases we're simply highlighting that these happened they were reported there are data points in there that make no sense that were investigated and they could not figure out what these things were
00:53:19
Speaker
And I think comparing old cases like this and bringing it back into the modern times, comparing it, seeing similarities with modern cases, I think it's important to sort of put little pieces of the puzzle together. It may not lead anywhere, but it might. It doesn't hurt. So that's kind of my... I think when you look at it, you see today, you'll see a lot of explanations. Oh, they're Russian or Chinese.
00:53:39
Speaker
but you can't apply that kind of logic back then. So it's useful to know the history of the subject because, as you say, you can see parallels, but you can also see differences and you can see a direction of travel, but also they just build up a picture. And yes, as you say, we're never going to solve these cases because there's just not enough information, but they're unique. They all have their own unique little piece to them.
00:54:06
Speaker
Yeah, fascinating. And if you just if you read enough of them, then it's an overwhelming kind of weight of evidence. And for people who are only coming into the subject quite recently, and for all, you know, all they know are the Nimitz encounters and the 2015 sightings and the US Navy, the things that crowded the shifts and all the rest of it, then there's actually this huge, rich back catalogue of things that
Value of Old UFO Cases
00:54:31
Speaker
happened.
00:54:31
Speaker
that people are really unaware of. And yet some of them are absolutely fascinating. They're riveting stories. And some of them are actually quite unbelievable. If you look at the cover of Flying Souls of Fever, you'll see the B-36 aircraft, the huge bomb that flew around, the peacemaker. And the story of the UFO that you see there actually sat between the tail plane and the rear-facing propellers.
00:55:00
Speaker
you know, sort of thing. So that's not something that you can just go, oh, you know, there's no point in knowing about that. That's a kind of, well, where have you ever heard of a story like that before?
00:55:11
Speaker
And the thing is about that case. I'll just quickly take a minute. So this was the only part of the official file that the intelligence officer wrote about this case is the bit from the ground. And yet the intelligence officer himself, who saw it on the ground, wrote the file. And he says out of the 70 odd pages in the file, there's not that many left. So where are all these other pages, which presumably are from the crew?
00:55:39
Speaker
Because there'll be 15 crew members on that aircraft. It wasn't a small aircraft. There were 15 crew on a boat. And those maybe half a dozen observation blisters, never mind the kind of cockpit and the other windows on the aircraft, where they could see this thing. And actually, you can't quite, you can almost make it out on that drawing by Dan and Olaf, that there were observation blisters right next to where that thing was sitting.
00:56:04
Speaker
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah my goodness wow imagine seeing that thing just like yeah feet away from you that's incredible and they presumably would have had cameras on board the aircraft i.e camera um you know so maybe there was pictures taken we just don't know um because that part that portion of the file
00:56:28
Speaker
you know, isn't there. It's never been made public. Whether it's gone missing or something's happened to it, who knows? But the actual publicly available portion of the file is to do with the intelligence officer and somebody else who was standing on the ground at the air base and they were looking up and they saw it and they saw it. And that thing was sitting in between the tail and the wings. And there was another one nearby. That's unbelievable. Fascinating. Fascinating stuff.
00:56:52
Speaker
I've got a couple more questions here. First one is from my good friend, Mr Ashley Cowie.
WWII Aircraft and UAP Sightings
00:56:59
Speaker
Has Graham's research identified any particular type of World War II aircraft or radar system associated with UAP more than others? Yeah, so the World War II kind of thing, well you have to look at the way they were. So there was basically two types of aircraft that the Americans were operating
00:57:14
Speaker
that were in close contact with the Foo Fighters, and that's the Bristol Bow Fighter. So that was a British type that was supplied the Americans because they didn't have a night fighter of their own when they were getting the squadrons together to do that role. And then the P61 Black Widow, which you saw at the beginning of the program, the picture that Vinnie showed.
00:57:31
Speaker
So those are the two aircraft that were in the European theory or operations at least that were quite closely associated with the Foo Fighters. But then there was all different types of aircraft from the RF and from other air forces that were seeing things that they couldn't explain. So you know Lancaster bombers, Halifax bombers, Wellington's, all this kind of thing. And probably some German aircraft, all those I've been at pains to point out over the years, you know Luftwaffe records are quite non-existent so we just don't know from that side.
00:57:59
Speaker
Yeah fascinating. So and then I wanted to say this one because I think this is a great question.
Graham's Introduction to Ufology
00:58:06
Speaker
Hi faves, how did you get your start in the field of ufology Graham?
00:58:11
Speaker
OK, I think I've told the story before, but some people probably haven't done it. So when I was sort of seven or eight year old, I was quite interested in science fiction. I was reading Isaac Asimov books when I was eight year old. And if anybody's ever seen the paperback versions of these books, they have some really, really good artwork on them that, you know, sort of drawings of spaceships and all this kind of thing. And they were done by a certain number of artists back in the 70s, people like Chris Foss and some other people who people might know their artwork. It's certainly famous.
00:58:41
Speaker
Anyway, so I was quite into these books and I had quite a collection, you know, 20 or 30 of these titles, and the mother, bless her, she's long gone, but bless her, she bought me a book from a shop that she thought was another one in the series, and it had a nice picture of a spaceship on the front, but it turned out to be a book called Mysterious Visitors by Brinsley the Power Trench, who actually was the Earl of Clancarty, and he was a
00:59:05
Speaker
he was a government or a government minister or part of the House of Lords rather and he was involved in the House of Lords debates in the 1970s about UFOs and he'd written this book he'd written other books in the 60s as well and it was a mishmash of kind of biblical UFOs and things a bit more up to date from the sort of 40s and 50s and the contactee people you know Damsky and all this kind of stuff and then some more modern Falat time events as well so it
00:59:34
Speaker
Looking back on it, it's not the best of books, but for me and being eight or nine year old, whatever it was, it was catnip. It was fascinating. And I just went, whoa.
00:59:47
Speaker
It did blow my mind because previously I've been reading books about, you know, fiction characters. I want to start with the first, you know, the original version of Star Trek on BBC One in Britain in the mid-70s. And of course that was just like, you know, make-believe. But here was somebody saying, well, actually, no, some of this stuff's true. You know, there are like
01:00:07
Speaker
things from other worlds coming to visit us and they're taking some of us away for you know for whatever reason all the rest of it and experimenting and then dropping them back in fields and all this kind of thing and it was I think was some reference to the Men in Black as well and some other stuff so it was all kind of just it just got me thinking and of course you know I wanted to read everything I could after that so you know I read all the books in the library in the local library I could find I was getting books given Christmas birthdays and all the rest of it just went from there.
01:00:34
Speaker
So, yeah, thanks. I guess my follow up is when did you discover the UFO community? Ah, right. OK, so that was much later. I knew one existed and there was one existed back then. But obviously, because that was well before social media, it was all done with.
01:00:50
Speaker
you know sort of personal contact with conventions and there weren't that many in Britain or you would write letters to people because that's when people put stamps on envelopes or there was or there were some newsletters you know a flying saucer review in Britain and those others in America of course so that was a way a community formed whereas like the kind of online community
01:01:11
Speaker
then that was kicking off in the late 90s. So I was part of an online community through what they called chat groups back then. They were Usenet boards, Usenet groups, which was when you had a dial-up connection. I'm talking mid-90s, late 90s here. And there was quite a healthy UFO community then.
01:01:34
Speaker
but you had your equal number of trolls and spurn and kind of kooks and and just people who wanted just to you know sort of cause mayhem and then a small core of people who genuinely wanted to pass information around or find things out and all the rest of it so it's a kind of like a small microcosm of once like now on ufo twitter so yeah there we go awesome that's fantastic well i'm just going to bring up this image again for for the book cover because
01:02:05
Speaker
Yeah, there we go. I mean, guys, I've read the first one, the Foo Fighter book.
Advice on Reading Order
01:02:09
Speaker
I've still not got around to reading this one, but I can guarantee they're going to be incredible deep dives and I highly recommend checking out Graham's work. Would you say Graham, there is an order they should read them in? Does it matter if it's in chronological? Strictly speaking, it doesn't matter. I mean, if you want just to pick one of them at random and start reading it, it doesn't, you know, you're not going to
01:02:31
Speaker
lose anything by doing that. But if you want to do it in strict chronological order, then the Foo Fighters book comes first. And then you can see how the phenomenon develops, I guess. So you'll see the wartime stuff from, say, 40 right through to 45. And then if you buy the, if you get a hold of the Door of the Flying Sauces book, then you'll see the pre-cannibal stuff because there is some
01:02:54
Speaker
things that happened between the end of the war and Ken Varnell's sighting in June 1947. There's not many, but there are some. And then interwoven with the kind of 47, 48, 49 sightings, I've told the story of Project Sign and Project Grudge, which were the first two official US Air Force investigations into UFOs. So they kind of blend quite nicely. So you can see the kind of cases,
01:03:19
Speaker
or the aerial cases rather, because these are all pilot and air crew cases. There's no kind of, you know, for once on the ground, people seeing things on the ground. But you'll see how those sightings, you know, sort of caused reactions within the intelligence community in the US Air Force and what they were trying to do to try and catch up, if you like, and try to find out what was going on. So it tells quite a nice story.
01:03:44
Speaker
in some detail but I don't go it's not a huge deep dive but there's enough information there hopefully to satisfy people who want you know a little bit more information but for the people who are just coming to it quite casually then it tells a decent story for them as well.
01:03:59
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I'll bring that back up. So this one is 50 to 52 forward by Luis Elizondo, which is a really good, really good forward. I have read that. And then if we just go back to this one, so this is 46 to 49 Dawn of the Flying Sauces forward by George Knapp. There is a link below this video to Amazon where you can go and check them all out, order them. They are available on
01:04:23
Speaker
Kindle. Kindle, that's the word as well. So we've had four words from Sean Cahill, Lou Elizondo and George Knapp. So what can you tell us about the next book?
01:04:35
Speaker
So the next one is going to be from 53 to 54. So again, it's a period of time when there were quite a lot of things still happening. Some people seem to think that after the July weekends in 1952, when there was the Washington sightings over Washington DC, the things fell off a cliff. Well, they did in the public sphere because the press basically went, oh yeah, the American Air Force are telling us that nothing's happening. Oh yeah, and they just went away.
01:05:03
Speaker
But actually, the phenomenon never went away. And reporting didn't really go away either, even the press or elsewhere. So but there are quite a lot of interesting events in those two years as well. Now, rather than going and approaching some famous name, and I'm grateful to to Sean and to Lewis and to George, this time for this book, I wanted something a bit closer to home in terms of the people that are friends and people who are kind of fellow travelers in terms of looking at your documents.
01:05:30
Speaker
but also in understanding and appreciating the value of cases like this. So there are two people this time for forwards, and those of you who sort of see the kind of podcasts that we end up on may know who they are, but that's all I'm going to say. Fair enough, yeah.
01:05:51
Speaker
Let it be a surprise when it comes out. Do we have a rough day when that might come out? Well, the book's finished. It's been finished quite a long time, actually. I've just had it put away. And then because Dawn the Flound sources only came out in June, I didn't want to rush another book out straight away. So it may well be Christmas, kind of just before Christmas when it comes out. And then that's a nice marketing strategy.
01:06:20
Speaker
Full transparency. But yeah, it'll come out then. I'm waiting on one of the forwards. I've got one already. I'm waiting for the second one. And when I get that, then, you know, we'll see what happens then. And will we be seeing another Dan Zettestrom Ooloff-Rockner collaboration? Oh, I hope so. I wouldn't want to go to anybody else. It just wouldn't look right. It wouldn't sit right on the shelf.
01:06:43
Speaker
No, not at all. Well, it would hate me. Yeah. Now, I'm sure if Dan or Ula for watching this, I'm sure they've already bounced ideas off of each other, probably when they were in Sweden last weekend. I'm sure there was some good conversations.
Ongoing Historic UFO Discussions
01:06:59
Speaker
Well Graham listen thank you so much for doing this, I really appreciate it, fascinating cases and like I said at the beginning I'd love to do this on a you know maybe every six weeks on a rough thing like that and just dig back into these cases that are heavily featured in the books so yeah that'd be amazing. So I just want to say thank you to everybody in the live chat for having a great cordial
01:07:21
Speaker
Time asking great questions. And I'm going to be back. Where are we today? Sunday. I'm going to be back on Wednesday with Diana Pasulka. So I'm really looking forward to that one. If anybody has any questions for Diana, you can head over to my social media accounts and just hit me up there with some questions. But for now, guys, thank you again. Graham, thank you. And I'll see you on the flip side. Bye.