Formations libres

Ted BloecherBloecher, Ted: Ce livre a été reproduit (2005) par Jean Waskiewicz et Francis Ridge avec la permission exclusive de l'auteur et est présenté ici dans sa forme mise à jour en tant que projet en cours. Travaillant en collaboration étroite avec son auteur Ted Bloecher et Jan Aldrich du Projet 1947. Toutes informations ou corrections supplémentaires sont les bienvenues, dans le cadre de cette version mise à jour., 1967

Cas 34 - 24 juin, près de Lonejack (Missouri)

Le même après-midi où Kenneth Arnold signala avoir vu 9 disques à Washington, 7 ou 8 objets à forme de plateau furent vus volant en formation libre à environ 30 miles au sud-est de Kansas City.

Lester Swingleson et sa femme, Wilma, dont la maison était à 2 miles au nord de Lonejack sur la route U.S. 50, virent le groupe d'objets arriver en vue depuis le sud-est à grande vitesse et passer au-dessus d'eux en une question de s, proceeding in a steady course to the northwest that would have taken them over Kansas City. The Swinglesons described seeing white vapor trails streaming from each object. With them at the time were two young girls, the daughters of neighbor Harold Coy. At the time of the sighting, Swingleson was an electrician with the Sheffield Steel Corporation.

Cas 52 - 25 juin, Kansas City (Missouri)

Had this sighting been made less than 24 hours earlier it would have been an independent verification of the Swingleson report. If the newspaper accounts can be considered accurate, however, the sightings occurred on two consecutive days.

W.I. Davenport, of 4518 Madison Avenue, a carpenter, was working on the roof of a house at 82nd and Holmes Streets when, shortly after noon, he heard the faint sound of motors. Looking up he saw a loose formation of nine objects approach from the east. They were flying in a group, with one a little to one side, he reported. They were flying so fast that I barely had time to count them before they were gone. Davenport described them as aluminum-colored and as leaving vapor trails. In their flight westward, he said, they gave the appearance of being radio-controlled.

Cas 85: 27 juin, Woodland (Washington)

Two groups of loosely-bunched objects rocking back and forth as they flew over noiselessly, were reported seen over this small southwest Washington town during the afternoon. The report was phoned in to the Portland Oregon Journal late the same afternoon by the witness, Clyde Homan, manager of Tulips, Inc., a bulb-growing farm two miles south of Woodland, near the Columbia River.

Homan was sitting at his desk in the office when his eye was caught, by a bright flash through the window. He looked out at the sky and saw these things in 2 groups, pretty close together. I didn't get the exact count -- there were four or five in the first bunch, and the same number in the second, which was behind the first some 400 or 500 yards, he reported in his call.

Homan said it was difficult to distinguish the shapes because the objects were very bright, reflecting the sun like from metal -- not glass mirrors. He said the objects were very flat, very very thin, particularly when you saw them on edge as they were banking. He estimated that they were going about 2 times as fast as an ordinary airliner, maybe 600 miles an hour. There was no particular formation, except that they were bunched. The peculiar thing was the way they moved along -- tilting back and forth, tipping up and down, undulating --and every time they reached the right reflection angle the flashes came, he said. Homan was reminded by the Journal reporter that the day had been mostly cloudy, and he replied, It was partly cloudy here, with sunshine occasionally through the clouds. And, anyway, the clouds were high and these things weren't over 1,000 to 2,000 feet up and were flying under the clouds. By this estimate, the distance between the two groups was about the same distance above the ground.

Mr. Homan added, There wasn't a sound, not a trace of a vapor trail -- just these things sailing along. As soon as I saw them, I ran to the warehouse and called the foreman, and he got to the door just in time to see them. They came over the hill back of us here from the north, and were following straight along the Pacific Highway. Just south of here they veered sharply to the southeast. Then they disappeared from view.

Homan was puzzled by their silence. He supposed that they might be some novel type of jet aircraft, but he said he could not figure out why, if they were, there were no jet trails. I am not too excitable and I have good eyesight, and I know what I saw this afternoon, he told the Journal. I'm surprised, he added, you don't have reports from others seeing them today.

Cas 442 - 6 juillet, Greendale (Virginie)

Walter Broadwell, Jr., of Fordham Road, in the West End section of Richmond, was driving with his wife at 6:00 p.m. EST to visit relatives in Greendale, a town a few miles northwest of Richmond. They were discussing news reports of flying saucers when, according to Broadwell's account in the Richmond Times-Dispatch (7/7), Mrs. Broadwell suddenly exclaimed, There they are now!

I looked up, Broadwell reported, and there they were, ten or fifteen, and not more than a quarter of a mile away. They definitely could not have been airplanes, because I have taken flying lessons and I know what a plane looks like. Grouped in a loose formation, they were just below the clouds, flying north, and shining like aluminum. They looked like saucers, although much larger, and seemed to be undulating and flying on edge most of the time. The Broadwells reported that they heard of no other reports of the objects from that area.

Checked by Dr. McDonald, the newspaper report is essentially accurate, except that it failed to mention that with the Broadwells was their daughter Ann, then seven years old. She was the one who first spotted the objects, according to Broadwell's account to Dr. McDonald. Broadwell reported that he pulled the car off to the side of the road to watch the objects -- about a dozen in all. He was unable to make a firm estimate of height, but put it at about 500 to 600 feet. They heard no sound, saw no lights, no exhaust. The objects moved lazily along, strung out loosely in more or less of a line. They twisted and flipped in an undulatory manner, but very slowly, reflecting the sun from their aluminum surfaces at times.

Broadwell estimated their speed to be about that of a small aircraft. Their diameters were about 25 feet, and they moved along most of the time on edge, in the attitude of a wheel. He saw no markings of any kind. When first seen, they appeared to be several blocks away, which confirms the newspaper's reference to a quarter-mile distant. They moved in a northerly direction, towards Washington. They, disappeared by getting smaller and smaller as they moved off into the distance in no particular hurry, like a happy little group, as Broadwell put it. McDonald had a favorable impression of the witness.

Cas 732 - 8 juillet, Spokane (Washington)

A group of more than ten people in Spokane reported watching a loose formation of discs flying over the city about noon. The witnesses, including the J. P. Tracy family, of E. 365 Third, and Mrs. A. L. Blanc and her son Jerry, as well as other neighbors, watched one of the discs break loose from the formation and appear to be rolling through the air like a wheel. This object seemed to be black on one side and silver on the other, according to the witnesses, and at times appeared to be shaped like a football. The observation turned the Tracy family from skeptics to believers of flying saucers, they said.

For other reports of loose formations, see Case 831 (III-13), Case 841 (III-13), and Case 850 (III-14).