The publication of Leslie Kean's book 'UFOs' in the UK coincided broadly with the US military's long-awaited release last week of the report into most recent 'unidentified aerial phenomena' as they are now called, and for the first time stated that all but one of the one hundred and forty-four sightings could not be explained.
This is belated progress, because from the 'foo fighters' of WW2 onward, UFOs have been dismissed in official corridors ~ publicly at least ~ as weather phenomenon or weather balloons or anything else that came to mind over a coffee.
Leslie Kean is the author behind 'Surviving Death', which most of you will know from the extraordinary Netflix series of the same name. Which is no coincidence, for whereas governments in the West in particular lean toward the scientific method in so far as nothing is to believed until proven, the majority of people don't.
Most people believe in taboos, primitive wisdom, sixth sense, hauntings, good and evil, the likelihood of surviving death and... UFOs. And for good reason, the way you meet few atheists in either a lifeboat or an airliner in a deathly dive. And so It has long been a case of what Margaret Thatcher would have called, 'Nanny knows best.'
The book invites the participation of people who most of us would regard as credible witnesses, including commercial and military pilots. And here again, the fact has long been that such sightings among this community are commonplace, backed as often as not by radar returns. From my own experience in airlines a great number of pilots had either seen, or else knew of someone who had seen, unexplained flying objects. I myself have, but just the once.
And far from being other worldly, it was altogether mundane. So waiting for a train on a platform at Clapham Junction circa 1980 on an afternoon with a perfect blue sky, up there was simply a flashing light source, which flashed for prolonged periods from the one spot and then reappeared in another far removed, but in an instant.
I had already learned to fly by that stage, and knew how conventional flying machines looked and moved, and this was not one of them. It was however an age without even video cameras, but above all no means of collating such reports or doing anything of use with them afterward. I mean, what is a policeman in Clapham supposed to do with an unworldly light-source and a pocket-notebook anyway?
This will undoubtably be why most pilots have not routinely reported such sightings anyway. The author says this is for fear of ridicule, whereas I know that it's more often a case of wanting to go home after a night's flying without filling out yet more forms.
Here's another from a colleague once flying the mail in a turbo-prop the length of the UK at night in the eastern airspace managed by military controllers. He (or rather he and his co-pilot) see a light appear in their twelve o'clock and steady, at a time when landing lights were confined to landing. He queries the controller, who says he has an unidentified target in their twelve o'clock at ten miles.
The light disappears, and Richard (as it was) asks what happened to it? The controller replies to say that it just popped up again, but around ten miles behind their aircraft. And what is interesting about the bulk of the reports in the book is that whenever the UFOs have been engaged as either a visual or real (!) target at close range, they've had the ability either to disengage very rapidly, or else close down weapons systems.
It's hard not to believe that there are superior life forms out there whenever you turn on the TV and listen to a politician, but like the weather it is by and large wallpaper that we can't do much to alter anyway. And in fact the inhabitants of UFOs appear more benign than natural phenomena, not pulling our legs off for instance as we do with spiders.
Taken in the 1970s above Costa Rica, the photo above which also appears in the book is one of my favourites, as it's an early example of photo-bombing. It's from an aerial reconnaissance mission, and got in the way.
As it's developer doubtless said at the time, 'Fuck, we'll have to do that one again...'.
