In the initial years of the “Flying Saucer” phenomenon, we saw multiple times the government give illogical explanations as to what people were witnessing. And to a certain extent , this makes sense. The American public trusted the government.
So, when an individual or a group of people witnessed a UFO , the government and military didn’t have to be convincing nor creative as to what was being seen.
We saw this most notably with the Roswell crash of 1947 and also the Battle of LA a few years earlier. Many people witnessed these strange objects, and the government reaponded in both cases by saying it was a weather balloon.
On the evening of August 13, 1960 California Highway Patrol Officers Charles A. Carson and Stanley Scott were driving on Hoag Road, east of Corning, California. It was a calm and tranquil night, but that would soon change though. As the officders were driving they soon noticed something massive up in the sky. It looked like a massive airplane heading downward and about to crash. As they believed the plane was going to crash, the men hopped out of the car and watched from the side of the road. Soon, though they would quickly discover that this was no airplane. The object kept descending down to about 100 feet in complete silence and then quickly changed course and climbed up to around 500 feet.
As Carson would later state in his report: “It was surrounded by a glow making the round or oblong object visible. At each end, or each side of the object, there were definite red lights. At times about five white lights were visible between the red lights. As we watched the object move again and performed aerial feats that were actually unbelievable”
They continued to watch the ufo and twice it approached the car shining a huge red light down below. Officer Carson noted that it appeared they were sweeping the area below with the red light.
As it approached, the radio signal would go out with nothing but static. During this time, they radioed the the Tehama County Sheriff’s Office. They asked Officer Clarence Fry to contact the local Air Force radar station at Red Bluff to see if anything was visible on radar. Deputy Fry radioed back that the radar station verified that something they couldn’t identify was indeed visible.
The object then began to slowly move tothe east and the officers followed from a safe distance.
When the ufo reached the Vina Plains Fire Station, a second unidentified object hovered in from the south. It moved closer to the first object and both hovered seemingly communicating with red beams. After some time passed, the objects would vanish to the east. In total the officers had watched the objects for around 15 minutes.
Later they returned to the Sheriff’s Office, and they discovered others had seen the object. Officers Fry and Montgomery witnessed it, as well as the night jailer. Their reports of the object matched Carson and Scotts.
The following day, Carson and Scott drove to the Red Bluff Air Force Base to speak with the operator that had seen it on radar. However, The Air Force denied that the object had been seen on radar, of course, contradicting what Deputy Fry had been told.
An official explanation was then put out regarding the matter:
the Air Force said: The findings [are] that the individuals concerned witnessed a refraction of the planet Mars and the bright stars Aldebaran and Betelgeuse. . . [temperature inversions] contributed to the phenomena as the planet Mars was quite low in the skies and the inversion caused it to be projected upward.
In other words, the Air Forxe said that the officers were seeing some type of Mirage. Mirages are generally described as optical illusions where light passes through air of different temperatures. An inferior mirageoccurs when you have a dense layer of cold air sitting on above of your line of sight . This is your classic water in the desert image. The opposite is Superior Mirage where something appears higher than it should be. This is what the Air Force is suggesting happened.
They also said:
A contributing factor to the sightings could have been the layer of smoke which hung over the area in a thin stratiform layer. This smoke came from the forest fires in the area hung in layer due to the stable conditions associated with the inversions.
While the explanation on the surface is non-convincing and odd, research would soon reveal that it couldn’t even be accurate.
NICAP, the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, would point out that the aforemntioned stars couldn’t be seen at the time. The Air force
responded by changing the star to be Capella, which was slightly above the eastern horizon at the time of the sighting.
However, this doesn’t explajn the descent of the object witnessed that night. Cappela would have been rising and not falling. Furthermore it doesn’t explain the 2 objects meeting with one another.
In addition , weather condiitions that night don’t show any evidence of a temperature inversion which would lead one to see a mirage.
Officer Carson was told a number of things could have been the object including weather balloons, the northern lights and light refractions.
Carson had this to say about the sighting:
I served 4 years with the Air Force, I believe I am familiar with the Northern lights, also weather balloons…Both of us are aware of the tricks light can play on the eyes during darkness. We were aware of this at the time. Our observations and estimations of speed, size, etc. came from aligning the object with fixed objects on the horizon. I agree we find it difficult to believe what we were watching, but no one will ever convince us that we were witnessing a refraction of light.
It ahould also be mentioned that paratrooper Scott was a paratrooper during the Korean War.
So what can we conclude from this case?
It appears that unless all the officers were making this story up, the explanation given by the military doesn’t seem plausible. The officers followed the light which moved in various directions. This was witmessed in different locations as well. One other thing tk pint out is that the next night Officer Fry and others would spot these objects. They would be witnessed for several weeks.
Also, we can conclude that if the story was true, it pretty rules out any type of mirage or optical phenomena. Mirages wouldn’t be capable of ascending or descending.One final takeaway is that officers appear credible and don’t seem motivated by any sort of fame or financial compensation. We must remember back then, alleging to see a Flying Saucer, was a risky move, and could lead to ridicule and often put people’s career in jeopardy.
