Yesterday, July second, was “World UFO Day” so for today’s “Throwback Thursday”, I thought I’d combine those two days with a personal revelation – I BELIEVE in UFOs and further I have actually flown on a UFO at least once. REALLY!! I have told a few people about this experience already but I thought that today would be a good day to finally “go public”. Back in the days when I was a B-52 crewmember, my crew was assigned to fly to a low level training route in Maine. This low level route was seldom used by our base but it provided a good learning experience especially because, unlike the training routes that we most often used that were in the middle of America, there was a transition from flying over ocean waters to rolling inland hills. In over 3,000 flying hours in a B-52, there were only 10 times that we flew over or near a crewmembers hometown but those times were exciting for all aboard because we felt it was like flying over OUR hometown. The night flight to Maine would mean that, planned carefully, we would be able to fly over Webster, Massachusetts, MY hometown and the town where my mother and mother-in-law lived only a few miles apart. I saw to it that we would fly directly over the town and would be able to control our timing to the minute – a few minutes after 11pm as I recall. I told my mothers the exact time we’d be flying over and the direction that they should look for us. On the night of the flight, the skies of New England were clear – PERFECT! As we approached Webster, Air Traffic Control allowed us to reduce our altitude to only 25,000 feet. I directed to plane to the area of my mother-in-law’s house. A few miles out, we turned on every available light on the aircraft including the “terrain clearance lights” which are like high beams and used when flying low-level in training only. We even put on the Bomb Bay lights (used on the ground when working in the Bomb Bay) and opened the Bomb Doors. We flew over the houses with our timing “to the second”! After we had passed by Webster, we shut down all but our navigation lights, ATC cleared us to climb to our normal cruising altitude and we began our turn towards the Atlantic. So where does the UFO part of the story begin? With our bomber all lit up, did some extraterrestrial craft out of curiosity or universal scientific interest, fly in formation with us or somehow beam us – or just me – aboard their ship? Well, as Paul Harvey would have said, “Now for the REST of the story.” About a week after, my mother sent a clipping from a Massachusetts newspaper. It stated that they had received numerous reports of sightings of a UFO with differing descriptions of the shape but commonly being said to have “Just disappeared” as it approached the Worcester Massachusetts area. All the sightings had been at a little after 11 pm and the date given was the night of our flight over Webster which is just south of the city of Worcester. The paper said that it had passed on the information to the FAA but had not as yet received a reply. Hmmmmmm…………
Posted on: Thu, 03 Jul 2014 13:16:24 +0000