Americans are nervous and demanding explanations over increasing reports of what they assume are drone sightings. Dr Norm Sanders recounts his own ‘encounters’ with the night sky.
THE MEDIA IS buzzing with drone stories all over the Northeastern U.S. as residents report sightings over New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Politicians are getting publicity with wild claims.
The Pentagon recently shut down speculation the drones may originate from a foreign entity or adversary. The denial came hours after Jeff Van Drew, a New Jersey Republican, told Fox News the drones were from “a mothership” from Iran that is “off the East Coast of the United States of America”.
Many of the sightings are over military installations and a drone was even spotted over Donald Trump’s golf course at Bedminster. (Beam him up, Scotty!)
Local officials are demanding answers, but the Biden Administration doesn’t have many.
Said White House national security coordinator John F Kirby:
‘We have no evidence at this time that the reported drone sightings pose a national security or a public safety threat, or have a foreign nexus.’
He said that images and videos of the drones that authorities and state and local law enforcement have reviewed, appear to show that many of ‘the reported sightings are actually manned aircraft that are being operated lawfully’.
Some people have described the drones as the size of bicycles or small cars.
As reported on CNN:
‘While visiting family in New Jersey, travel content creator Katie Caf, 29, said she spotted five drones the size of bicycles on Saturday, moving in a “zigzag pattern” across the sky.’
Some of these sightings might have been “drone shows”, which can create amazing spectacles in the heavens.
Untrained observer’s stories are generally unreliable, especially at night. In addition, it is very difficult to judge the size of anything in the air without other known objects nearby.
I was flying over California early one morning and saw what I thought was an aeroplane at the same altitude heading right for me. It was just a dot in the sky, but dots in the sky can become aeroplanes very quickly. I changed course and eventually realised that the “plane” was a massive hot air balloon… miles away!
So what are people seeing? Government officials suggest the reports are often planes, especially at night when navigation lights are most noticeable. Interestingly, there are none of the usual explanations of weather balloons.
My guess is that many are hobby drones. They are cheap, easy to fly and readily available. No big deal. The panic most likely shows the increasing collective paranoia and angst brought about by the impending Trump presidency. (And all the other disasters around the world.)
I bet those kids with the drones are having a big giggle — and the conspiracy theorists are rolling in it. Most of the sightings are easily explained. But maybe, just maybe, there is something really happening here.
Some observers spotted drones moving in lines across the sky. This sounds very similar to the famous Lubbock Lights, which occurred in the town of Lubbock, Texas, in the early 1950s.
As reported by writer Kat Miller:
The first “official” sighting that started this series of events off occurred on 25 August 1951. Three professors from Texas Technical College (now Texas Tech University) were in the backyard of one of their houses and having a discussion about micro meteors when they saw “a fast-moving, semicircular formation of 20 to 30 lights”.
These lights were described as blue-green in colour, as bright as stars but bigger and silent. The lights moved across the sky, northeast to southwest, in seconds. The professors knew that these lights were not any kind of meteor and as they were discussing what they had just seen, a second formation of lights appeared — the same as the first and travelling in the same direction.
Photographs taken at this event also show V-shaped formations in addition to the pattern seen by the professors.
At this time, I was a university student in Los Angeles and very apprehensive about being drafted into the army to fight in the Korean War. (Thirty-six thousand U.S. servicemen died in Korea.)
To stay out of the army, I joined the Air National Guard. After a brief period of basic training, our unit was activated and sent to Moody Air Force Base, Valdosta, Georgia.
Georgia residents were still angry about losing the Civil War 100 years earlier and would later become avid Trump supporters. Also sent to the base were Air National Guard units from Montana, Idaho and North Dakota. They were all combined into the 146th Fighter Group, Strategic Air Command at Moody Air Force Base.
One of the North Dakota pilots was George F Gormon, a name very familiar to UFO fans. He was a WW2 veteran and a very experienced pilot.
According to this article by Colin Bertram, one unexplained incident:
… involved a 27-minute air encounter between a veteran World War II fighter pilot named George F Gorman and a mysterious white orb at high altitude above Fargo, North Dakota. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Gorman told a local newspaper following the 1 October 1948 event. “If anyone else had reported such a thing I would have thought they were crazy.
On that October night, Gorman was a 25-year-old pilot flying an F-51 Mustang fighter over town. The night was cloudless and the only other aircraft in the vicinity was a little yellow Piper Cub.
Writes Bertram about Gorman’s description of the orb:
‘“It was about six to eight inches in diameter, clear white and completely without fuzz at the edges,” he said of the object in his report. “It was blinking on and off. As I approached, however, the light suddenly became steady and pulled into a sharp left bank. I thought it was making a pass at the tower.”’
Gorman continued to dogfight the orb, following it all over the sky. At one stage, apparently, it came straight at him and passed close by. Eventually the orb shot into the air in a steep climb and disappeared.
Some said he was chasing the lights of a baseball field reflecting in his canopy, which he firmly denied. No satisfactory explanation has ever been given.
I was assigned to Moody Base Operations as an aircraft dispatcher, which involved briefing pilots and sending flight plans to their destinations. I was in constant contact with all the military bases in the Southeastern U.S.
During one night shift, I went outside to look at the stars. What I saw was a line of about a dozen white lights moving rapidly and silently across the sky from north to south. They were arranged slightly out of line, with each one a small distance above the next. When they were gone, I went inside and got on the interstate communication system. I asked if anyone had any aircraft in my area. Nobody did.
A few weeks later, I helped the pilot of a Douglas C-47 transport plane file a flight plan for a night navigation exercise to Savannah, Georgia —160 miles to the east, a one-hour flight each way. About an hour after they left, I got a phone call from an irate citizen of nearby Adel, Georgia, complaining about a plane with a bright light passing over his house at a low altitude. I told him we had nothing in the vicinity at that time.
When the C-47 crew got back they talked excitedly about the bright light which flew over them near Savannah. It was heading west at high speed. A very high speed, as it covered the distance in a few minutes. A rough calculation gives a result of 1,800 miles per hour, far beyond the capability of jets of the period.
The fact is that these things have been around for a long time and none of these “objects” have ever dropped bombs on anybody — except in the movies. But, people are nervous and demand explanations and action.
They may succeed in getting hobby drones banned, but for the rest of the sightings, the mystery remains…
Dr Norm Sanders is a former commercial pilot, flight instructor, university professor, Tasmanian State MP and Federal Senator.
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