| From
AboveTopSecret.com Thread:
The Kecksburg UFO Crash: December
9th, 1965
Posted by jkrog08, on September 8, 2009 at 22:56 GMT
The Kecksburg, Pennsylvania UFO crash of December 9th, 1965 Yes, most of us probably know at least some of the story, some probably know the entire available story. This case is also sometimes referred to as the “Great Lakes Fireball of 1965”. But even with ATS being as great of a ufological knowledge database as it is, this top ten UFO incident as not been covered to any detail it deserves. Thus I will documenting this crash in detail to add to the ATS archives for all to see and learn. This is a very in-depth case with investigations STILL going on, with the most recent breakthrough happening in 2003, with NASA releasing some records via the Freedom of Information Act due to a class action law suit filed by the Coalition of Freedom of Information against them. Unfortunately the 40 pages released added nothing to this case. In this case we have numerous witness reports of an “acorn shaped” UFO crash landing in the woods of Kecksburg, PA on the night of December 9th, 1965. We have numerous witness reports of USAF, US Army, NASA, and unknown government agents at the scene covering up the incident while recovering something—that much is known and admitted, what it was however is still disputed to this day, some 44 years later. We also have a town conflicted, with some residents not even talking to each other because they are so divided about what really happened that fateful night in 1965. This case is chalk full of accusations a United States government and NASA deflection/disinformation campaign and alien cover-ups, misidentifications, and inflation of mundane evidence. Some researchers consider this case the “second Roswell”, while some consider this nothing but a ‘conventional’ cover-up of a downed Soviet space probe. As usual it is up for you all to decide for yourselves what really crashed that night---Something truly unknown or something truly mundane? Chapter Summary: |
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1) The Incident
Shock waves were reported by pilots, and a seismograph near Detroit recorded a shock, wrote investigator Stan Gordon, of Pennsylvania Association for the Study of the Unexplained (PASU) in a recent journal article. The crash has been a pet project of the Greensburg man "since the night it happened," he said, noting he is still trying to obtain information on the incident. Although the military eventually labeled the object a meteor, as did the Associated Press account published in The Bulletin the day after the crash, Gordon says recent evidence, including the discovery of a man who saw the object, supports the idea that the object was a true UFO.
"It was definitely, unequivocally, positively, absolutely no aircraft, plane, helicopter or rocket, at least not to my knowledge. It was in an area that was part field and part woods and we went down to investigate," he said. "We found the object had crashed at a 30 to 40 degree angle, and had broken off numerous tree branches in its impact path. My initial reaction was 'This is no airplane.' I observed no shrapnel, no breaking up of the fuselage. It was one solid piece, no doors, no windows.
Now anyone familiar with this case (which I expect quite a few, being this IS ATS ;) ) would be familiar with the common theories (which I will get into in a bit) about what really crashed that night. Well here is an interesting eyewitness account of what was seen that night by some witnesses: John said the object was not broken, "not even cracked, just dented a bit. It did not give off smoke, steam or vapors, at least none that we could see."Now reportedly the state police and fire department went into the woods to search while Murphy was interviewing Kalp and her children. Whatever the police saw in the woods caused them to come back out stating they “you better get your information from the military.”Of course this did not stop other witnesses from walking into the woods and trying to see what crashed for themselves. Every witness (including firemen) that entered the woods and viewed the object reported it as being “acorn” or “cone” like, with “hieroglyphic-type” writing on a “fender-like bulge” at the base, as well as leaving a trench in the ground where it crashed. Here is some more information on the early part of the incident, according to what witnesses claim to have happened: Most witnesses thought they were observing a plane going down in flames. But in Kecksburg, where the objects arrived suddenly and made its spectacular landing, the earliest reported eyewitness, a seven year old boy playing outside with his sister, declared that it looked like "a star on fire." The children's mother later described, "a column of blue smoke rising through the trees, "from the woods about a mile away where the object landed, and another "brilliant object," hanging above the tree line and to the left of the smoke column. She described this second objects at resembling a "four-pointed star." There were other witnesses in different parts of the village who independently saw the object go down into the woods, and at that time, they heard no sound, but momentarily after it happened, they saw the dust rise and a blue column of smoke go up, and in a matter of minutes it dissipated. When they saw this thing coming in, by the descriptions, they were not just seeing a fireball or bright meteor. Some of them had seen this thing pass very close over their heads, it was slow moving, it was gliding in. . It appears to have been a controlled reentry vehicle of some type. . It appears that it was purposely trying not to hit the edge of the ridges, to guide itself around those ridges, and was trying to gain altitude.Some more witness reports... Report By Doug Yurchey It was a warm December night in 1965. I was 14 years old and my cousin John was 12 years old as we left my house to sneak a few cigarettes down the alley. We lived in the suburban community of Bridgeville; 12 miles southwest of downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We came to this lithographic building which had a loading dock in the back. It was the perfect place to sit and smoke in secret. We knew we had to leave soon. The time was getting late into the evening. But, before we made our way back to my house:John Murphy reportedly managed to take several rolls of film of the crash site, as well make an audio recording of what he saw. Unfortunately he could not exit the area before the United States Army arrived to secure the crash site. They are reported to have confiscated all but one roll of film and his audio files. Murphy reportedly (according to his wife) showed one image to his wife: “It was very dark and it was with a lot of trees around and everything. And I don’t know how far away from the site he was. But I did see a picture of a sort of a cone-like thing. It’s the only time I ever saw it.” ufoin.com...The remaining roll of film and audio recorder data Murphy had is thought to have been taken during a reported later encounter with two reported Men in Black shortly after the event, thus no pictures or data recorded from him exist. Murphy was heavily investigating the crash and intending to come out with an in-depth documentary with pictures and such, obviously after the MIB event the interview was highly edited and nothing new came to light in it, in fact Murphy refused to talk of the incident again. It is also noteworthy to add that John Murphy was killed in a “hit and run” four years later while in California. Apparently the local fire department got within 200 feet of the object before being turned away by the military: After some investigation they found out that the fire service had come within 200ft of the object before being turned away by the military. They reported seeing blue flashing lights, and noticing that the tops of several of the trees nearby were broken as if an object had come crashing through. www.ufologie.net...There were many witnesses that claim to have either seen the conical shaped craft itself or the heavy military presence in the area shortly afterwards. However there is also an equally strong amount of witnesses in Kecksburg who claim there was no more than a small team (Oakdale radar unit) in the area. Current theories by many ufologist do lead to a much heavier military presence- including NASA, however. Summation of Events
The official military explanation from 1965 to 2005 was that “nothing but a meteor had crashed that night”.... Example of conflicting witness accounts: The meeting — an “historic” event, said Greensburg UFO investigator Stan Gordon — was organized and filmed by the cable channel as part of an investigative documentary titled, “The New Roswell: Kecksburg Exposed.” The two-hour special, produced by MPH Entertainment, Inc., and hosted by Gumbel, is scheduled to air 9 p.m. Oct. 17. After a brief on-camera introduction, Gumbel turned his attention to Chuck Hilland, Jr., whose family has long maintained nothing happened that night.More witness accounts of some strange events at Kecksburg that night... Michael Slater, then 14 and living in Kecksburg, was outside with his brother that evening when a military jeep pulled up. The two boys were asked to assist with “crowd control.” If anyone asked for directions to the crash site, they were to give them the wrong directions. “We had fun sending people all over the place,” he said, adding the men in the jeep told them they were “doing a service for your country.” Slater said he and his brother later saw a flat-bed truck emerge from the woods, carrying an object covered by a tarp.Now one must seriously question exactly what was of such a high priority for the following to take place (according to witnesses): "They drove us out. It was late at night when we finally got back to the fire hall and it had been completely taken over by the military. They were carrying in large pieces of equipment, radios and such, and they had armed guards posted outside so nobody could get in or out. The firemen were thrown out. We weren't even allowed in to use the bathroom. "The military had control of the whole operation," John recalled. "After a while we saw a flat bed truck come by with some other military equipment, a crane or something. |
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2) The Investigation
"It had writing on it, not like your average writing, but more like ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. It had sort of a bumper on it, like a ribbon about six to 10 inches wide, and it stood out. It was elliptical the whole way around and the writing was on this bumper. It's nothing like I've ever seen, and I'm an avid reader. I read a lot of books on Egypt, the Incas, Peruvians, Russians and I've never to this day come across anything that looked like that." www.ufocasebook.com...After the Unsolved Mysteries documentary aired two important witnesses came forward in the investigation. Both were military, here is the information gathered by the witness testimony: After the television show ran, two new witnesses came forward. One was a USAF officer at Lockbourne AFB (near Columbus, Ohio). In the early hours of December 10, a truck arrived by the little used back gate of the base and he was ordered to patrol it. It was a flat-bed with a large tarpaulin on the surface covering a conical object. He was told to shoot anyone who tried to get too close. He was advised the truck was bound for Wright Patterson AFB, which is the reputed home of other crashed saucers.There were high hopes for this case being totally explained in the early part of this century, as a law suit was filed against NASA in December of 2003: A researcher backed by cable television's Sci Fi Channel plans to sue NASA for records she contends the agency has of a UFO that reportedly crash landed and was recovered by government workers in southwestern Pennsylvania in 1965. The Associated Press obtained an advance copy of the lawsuit to be filed Tuesday in federal court in Washington, D.C., on behalf of Leslie Kean, a San Rafael, Calif., investigative reporter backed by the cable channel and a group called the Coalition for Freedom of Information.They were asking for any and all information pertinent to Kecksburg be released. The lawsuit was sponsored by the SyFy Channel and the Coalition for Freedom of Information ended with NASA, in November of 2003, releasing 40 pages of documents pertaining to the incident. The released documents were of absolutely NO HELP to the investigation and mostly contained references to other works on Kecksburg. NASA claimed that “two other boxes went missing” and could not be found. You can explore the FOIA files yourself below, if you wish: This from a SyFy channel official (remember they were backing this whole law suit) : The lawsuit contends NASA has thwarted Kean's efforts to retrieve official files on the incident by sending her irrelevant information or nothing in response to Freedom of Information Act requests. "Despite our serious effort to uncover the facts, NASA still refuses to provide the public with any information," said Sci Fi Channel president Bonnie Hammer. "We are hopeful that our legal system will help us find out what really happened in the woods outside Kecksburg."I can personally state that NASA, the USAF, and any other branch of the government are near impossible to attempt to gain information on Kecksburg from. This summer I was personally trying to gain access to FOIA records and was met with many ‘brick walls’ by all agencies, sometimes with sarcastic comments such as “we are not a repository for UFO knowledge”. So for the moment I have given up on any FOIA related Kecksburg requests as you really are ran in circles for nothing. After this ordeal the SyFy channel released a long documentary hosted by Bryant Gumble in October of 2003. This did bring further attention to the Kecksburg incident but unfortunately yielded no now evidence other than new interviews with witnesses of the incident. This was not the end of the NASA lawsuit however, as it still continues today with the request being for NASA to attempt to search for the reported lost records: In December 2005, a lawsuit was filed to get NASA to search more diligently for the alleged lost records. On October 26, 2007, NASA agreed to search for those records after being ordered by the court.[11][12] The judge, who had tried to move NASA along for more than 3 years, angrily referred to NASA's previous search efforts as a "ball of yarn" that never fully answered the request, adding, "I can sense the plaintiff's frustration because I'm frustrated."[13]The History Channel series, UFO Hunters, went out to the Kecksburg site for a February 2009 episode, but nothing conclusive was found. Alternate Explanations A Meteor This was the USAF and official explanation for 40 years until NASA stated the object was debris from Cosmos 96. Many skeptics still think this is true, since the Cosmos theory has been destroyed by NASA itself. In 1967 the Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (JRASC) published their findings on the fireball and came to the conclusion it was in deed a meteor. The conclusions was that the fireball was falling at a steep angle, moving southwest to the northeast, and likely impacted on the northwestern shore of Lake Erie near Windsor, Ontario. However, newer and further analysis of available photographs and the calculations seem to show that may have been a hasty conclusion by the astronomers: The triangulation base used by the astronomers in their calculations was very narrow. As a result, even very small errors in determination of directions could result in a very different triangulated trajectory. It was found that measurement errors of slightly more than one-half degree would make possible a straight-line trajectory towards the Kecksburg area and a much shallower angle of descent than reported in the JRASC article. It was also pointed out that the photos used actually show the fireball trail becoming progressively thinner, indicating motion away from the cameras or in the direction of Pennsylvania. Had the trajectory been sideways to the cameras, as contended in the JRASC article, the trail would have remained constant in thickness. Thus, the contention that the JRASC article conclusively ruled out any connection between the fireball and the Kecksburg events is now open to question. en.wikipedia.org...Here is a link to another report on the JRASC findings, followed by the disputing research (a lot of trig here guys): Cosmos 96 In addition to all that, I mean SERIOUSLY, all that activity for a meteor, which NASA has already stated is Cosmos debris—WHICH we now know is false..
From Journalist Leslie Kean wins lawsuit with NASA to disclose Kecksburg! - www.abovetopsecret.com/ In 2005 NASA claimed that the examined debris from the object in Kecksburg showed that it was indeed from the failed Soviet craft, Cosmos 96 and NOT a meteor as the USAF had previously claimed. However one of NASAs own and best scientists in the field of orbital mechanics and debris, Dr. Nicholas L. Johnson has stated that there is no way what crashed in Kecksburg was a Russian probe, its debris, or anything manmade in space at the time. Here is some more information: Chief Scientist for Orbital Debris at the NASA Johnson Space Center, Nicholas L. Johnson, who is recognized internationally as an authority on orbital debris and foreign space systems, has determined that Cosmos 96, the Russian Venera probe that has been considered a possible explanation for the Kecksburg object for decades, did not land in Pennsylvania on the afternoon of December 9, 1965. Furthermore, he states that no other man-made object from any country came down that day. Debris from Cosmos 96 has been a leading contender as an explanation for the Kecksburg object, due to the fact that it came down early that morning over Canada. Perhaps part ended up in Pennsylvania later, the theory went. The Air Force stated at the time that no space debris entered the atmosphere that day, and that all aircraft and missiles were accounted for.Here is some interesting information from Dr. Johnson who states that there is a very slim chance that what crashed was anything currently known to have been flying in orbit at the time: Even more intriguing, Johnson’s data shows that no man-made object from any country entered our atmosphere and landed in Pennsylvania on the afternoon of December 9. Cosmos 96 was the only catalogued object that came down at all that day. He says that anything not catalogued would have been so small that it would not have survived reentry. “I cannot absolutely confirm that it was not some completely unreported event, but the chances of that are virtually nil,” said Johnson. “You can't launch something without somebody seeing it. By 1965 the US and Soviets were both reporting their launches.” www.freedomofinfo.org...Credentials of Dr. Johnson: Dr. Nicholas Johnson, NASA A US Spy Satellite Film Canister
The possibility of a US reconnaissance satellite dropping a large film canister on that day has also been ruled out. These capsules were dropped following secret missions over the Soviet Union. Data on these flights was recently declassified. By checking launch and retrieval times, these capsules can also been eliminated as a possible explanation for what landed in Kecksburg. www.freedomofinfo.org...Aside from that professional statement from NASAs leading orbital debris scientists, we can clearly see that although the shape and color do match the Kecksburg object the size is WAY off for any known or practical satellite film canister. A US or Soviet Nuclear Warhead
The Mark 6 was designed to be shot into space. The MK 6 RV, manufactured by General Electric, was built to sit on top the Titan II ICBM and carry the W-53 multi-megaton warhead. The MK 6 was 122.27 inches long, 57.27 inches in diameter at its base, and weighed 2,076 pounds. The spherical-nose of the RV was composed primarily of aluminum honeycomb internal structure to which was bonded an ablative phenolic heat shield. www.nuclearmuseum.org...This would surely be of enough concern for a massive military build up in the area which would make sense to involve multiple branches and NASA, as well the secrecy, even today. This, to me, seems like possibly the most likely alternate explanation to the Kecksburg incident. Although there are no records showing that anything remotely similar to this fell from orbit that day it still seems like a plausible explanation. Now even though the size of the RV does not match the reported size of the Kecksburg object I think it is important to remember that SDI was also working on a multiple warhead delivery system, which is exactly what the object that fell could have been. This theory deserves more attention in my opinion. Here is a related thread I found: Now there is other theories, such as the Kecksburg object being a crashed object similar to the rumored NAZI Bell, and there is some credence to the popossibilityn my opinion. But in an effort not to postulate a theory upon a theory I will not discuss any other theories in greater detail as any decent evidence is still lacking for them. A related link on the Bell theory: |
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3) Official Conclusions and My Conclusions The official conclusions of this case come from NASA, which states that the object at Kecksburg was the crashed Cosmos 96 probe. Of course one of NASAs own said this is impossible but this is the only official response that exists to this day. The following are relevant links confirming NASAs stance: My Conclusions This is a great and now well known case. But even rehashing this as I just have is lengthy because there is so much information but so little absolutes. What we can say for sure in my opinion is that what crashed that evening in Kecksburg was NOT the following:
 
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Library of Professor Richard A. Macksey in Baltimore
Friday, March 9, 2012
The Kecksburg UFO Crash: December 9th, 1965
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