It was seen by thousands of eyewitnesses, including the legendary Snake Plisken himself.
But the Air Force says they were all wrong- is it possible that thousands of eyewitnesses
across the entire state of Arizona all misidentified a flight of A-10s in the world's largest UFO
sighting in history?
The incident was first reported at 7:55 PM Pacific time in Henderson, Nevada, just across
the border from Arizona.
A witness there spotted what appeared to be a large, dark v-shaped object traveling southeast
overhead.
The object was low enough in the sky that the witness reported not hearing the sound
of jet engines as would have been expected.
This flying anomaly had six large lights along its leading edge, and was estimated as being
as large as a Boeing 747.
Instead of jet engines though, he heard a sound described as rushing wind.
Next, a police officer in Paulden, Arizona spotted a cluster of five reddish/orangeish
lights as he was leaving his home.
The police officer reported the lights appearing as if four were flying together, with a fifth
trailing behind the formation.
However, unlike the witness across the border in Nevada, the police officer reported that
each light was in fact two separate, but close together sources of orange light.
Returning home, he grabbed a pair of binoculars and observed the lights continuing south for
about two minutes until they were out of sight- from his vantage point he reported hearing
no sound from the lights.
This would be the straw that broke the camel's back, as shortly after UFO reporting centers
across the country as well as local police departments and even Luke Air Force Base in
Arizona were flooded with telephone calls from eyewitnesses.
It seemed everybody north of Phoenix was watching the lights slowly drift by overhead.
Witnesses were reporting different things however, with some reporting the same type
and style of lights as the first two witnesses, and other reporting less, or even more than
the five or six lights originally observed.
The colors ranged from white to orange or reddish, and while many reported the lights
to be slowly gliding by overhead, some said that they witnessed them speeding by quickly.
Others said that they observed the lights come to a complete stop overhead.
The most commonly reported sighting however was of a large, wedge-shaped craft of some
kind with lights lining its ventral surface.
Three different groups of witnesses just north of Phoenix all reported the exact same object,
remarking that it made no noise as it seemed to glide by over head, adjusting its course
to fly between two mountain peaks.
It was low enough though that for all three groups it blocked out a significant amount
of the sky overhead as it passed by, indicating it was an object of massive proportions.
The next witnesses were a mother and her four daughters inside a northern Phoenix suburb,
who observed a wedge shaped object approach from over the mountains.
It stopped directly overhead them for an estimated five minutes as they stared in wonder, remarking
that it was big enough to cover between thirty or forty degrees of the sky overhead.
They also said that there appeared to be some sort of barely recognizable features along
the underside of the object, but due to it being nighttime, couldn't make them out.
The trailing edge of the object also seemed to be glowing slightly according to them.
Like other witnesses, they described a row of lights on the leading edge of the craft,
seven according to them.
Suddenly the object began to move south, firing what they described as a white beam at the
ground.
Simultaneously, the lights along the edge of the craft seemed to dim and disappear.
Then, the mystery object resumed its course south towards Sky Harbor International Airport.
On approach to the airport, it was witnessed by a civilian pilot on approach to the airport,
who called in six bright lights hanging stationary near the airport.
Air traffic control radioed back that they had nothing on their radar scopes, and the
pilot resumed landing as normal.
That pilot was actually film star Kurt Russel, who was flying to Phoenix on a private aircraft
to take his son to see his girlfriend.
Russel would later retell the story, saying that he had no idea until two years later
when his partner, Goldie Hawn, was watching a show on UFOs and it mentioned a civilian
pilot who had been the first to spot the lights in Phoenix itself.
According to Russel, the lights hung stationary in the sky, and though he and his son thought
it was odd, neither paid it much attention.
However, at the airport, two air traffic controllers and multiple pilots would also see the lights-
but here is where things get murky.
Witnesses in Scottsdale, Glendale, and Gilbert all reported seeing a similar, large object
as described previously, continuing an apparent southern route through the state of Arizona.
One of the witnesses south of Phoenix was a former airline pilot with over 13,000 hours
of flight time, who spotted the object making an abrupt turn as it approached his position.
According to him and other witnesses, the lights were bright at a distance, but seemed
to dim significantly as the object approached, perhaps explaining the various number and
colors of lights reported throughout the two to three hour event.
The large object continued south and over the mountains until it was spotted again along
Interstate 10 near Casa Grande.
A family of five driving north to Phoenix said that the object was so large that when
they looked out their car windows, one wingtip was clearly visible out one side of the car,
and the other out the other side.
The object passed by overhead as they were driving north at about 80 miles per hour,
and claim that the object was so massive that they remained under it for about a full minute
as it moved south- if their speed was correct, then the object was roughly an impressive
1.3 miles long, or even bigger as it was moving south as they moved north.
However, without a speed estimate for the object itself, it's impossible to know- but
the size is still significant.
All throughout the Phoenix area, the one massive object seemed to be trailing a flurry of other
unidentified aerial phenomenon.
For hours after the main object had passed over the state, witnesses reported seeing
clusters of lights and other random flying craft.
One group of witnesses reported a large disc streaking west over Phoenix at extreme speeds.
Many others reported orange fire balls which hovered in the sky.
The entire case's most intriguing witness may have been a young man claiming to be a
US Air Force airman.
According to him, he was stationed at Luke Air Force Base, west of Phoenix.
He called the National UFO Reporting Center at 3:20 am, and reported that two F-15 fighters
had been scrambled by the base and intercepted one of the unidentified flying objects that
seemed to linger behind.
Investigators would dive into his report but were unable to verify the presence of F-15s
in Luke Air Force base at the time.
However, he provided a great deal of very detailed information regarding the alleged
intercept which would later be verified by other witnesses over the coming weeks and
months as investigators made the rounds across the Phoenix basin.
Unfortunately, the airman would call in two days after his first phone call to report
that he had been informed he was being immediately transferred to a new assignment in frozen
Greenland- that witness has never been heard from again and investigators have been unable
to track him down.
What the incident is best remembered for however is a long string of lights observed by thousands
directly over the city of Phoenix.
These lights hung stationary before slowly disappearing, and they are what the entire
incident is best known for.
However, they are also the weakest part of the entire case.
When first contacted, the Luke Air Force Base Public Affairs Office claimed that there were
no aircraft in the sky at the time of the incident.
Later however they said that there was actually a flight of A-10 aircraft training at the
time, and their training included dropping flares.
The slowly falling flares dangle from parachutes, and as they disappeared behind the mountains
would have given the appearance of dimming out.
Many found this explanation troubling, and there are problems on both ends for this explanation.
However, all can agree that this doesn't explain the massive craft spotted by hundreds, if
not thousands of witnesses across the state.
One witness claims that he observed the alleged massive craft with a telescope and found it
to be nothing more than a group of aircraft flying closely together.
This goes in line with the official Air Force explanation that said at the time they were
undertaking Operation Snowbird, a training exercise with the air national guard that
involved flights of A-10s working together.
The first incident of a large flying triangle or wedge shaped craft was at 8 PM local time,
and was due to five A-10s.
The flight was using steady formation lights rather than the typical blinking collision
lights because FAA rules on the matter don't apply to military aircraft.
The formation of A-10s flew over Pheonix to Tucson and landed at Davis-Monthan Air Force
Base at 8:45 PM.
The stationary lights filmed and photographed by many hovering over Phoenix were explained
as a different flight of A-10s dropping illumination flares.
Due to the heat of the flares working on their parachute and creating a hot balloon-like
effect, the flare's rate of descent was dramatically slower than might be expected, giving the
appearance of the lights either gaining in altitude or hovering still in mid-air.
Ten years after the incident, Lt. Colonel Ed Jones, a Maryland air national guard pilot,
confirmed that he was one of the pilots in the four-ship formation that had dropped the
mistaken flares.
Immediately after the incident, as calls for investigation reached state government, Arizona
Governor and former US Air Force pilot Fife Symington held what would become the most
infamous press conference in UFO history.
In the press conference, governor Symington displayed his chief of staff in handcuffs
and dressed like an alien, claiming that everybody was “entirely too serious” about the whole
incident.
However, people did not find this funny at all, and the stunt provoked thousands of angry
phone calls and letters.
Even more shockingly, ten years after that press conference, the former governor admitted
in an interview that he himself had seen the craft spotted by thousands.
According to former governor Symington, the craft he witnessed along with another family
was bigger than an aircraft carrier and had the same recessed lights reported by others.
It glided by on a southerly course, completely silent as it passed overhead.
He chose however not to talk about it, likely because given his role as state governor he
didn't want to create panic- but even more likely, because of the culture of ridicule
that persists to this day regarding UFOs.
The official Air Force investigation does explain part of the phenomenon- it's very
likely that the lights witnessed hovering stationary over Phoenix were in fact nothing
more than flares dropped by A-10s.
The astronomer who explained the moving formation of lights as aircraft flying closely together
is also probably correct, as he likely observed A-10s flying together with solid formation
lights on rather than traditional blinking collision warning lights.
However, nobody has yet to satisfactorily explain the single, massive craft reported
by thousands of witnesses- including the governor of Arizona himself.
While skeptics have explained this away as aircraft flying in formation, many of these
witnesses- again, including the governor who was a trained Air Force pilot- specifically
saw a single, solid object, and were close enough to it to remark that it made little
to no noise as it passed overhead.
A-10s are notoriously loud aircraft- a member of the Infographics Show team told us as he
was once within very close proximity of a two-ship formation dropping cluster munitions
and making gun runs on targets.
Skeptics have so far only been able to point at the flight of A-10s observed by some witnesses
as explanation for the single, large craft- but this completely ignores the thousands
of eyewitnesses ranging from Nevada to New Mexico who spotted the craft for themselves.
The skeptical explanation seems to rely on observations of the A-10s to explain this
craft away, but ignores the possibility that both a flight of A-10s and a single, large
craft could have been flying over Arizona at the same time.
It's also incredibly intellectually dishonest to simply disregard the testimony of thousands
of eyewitnesses, including some extremely high profile witnesses like the state's own
governor.
A skeptical explanation thus rests on the only possibility being that every single witness
to the large craft is either incompetent, a liar, or crazy.
However, the skeptical explanation makes one further major error.
First, it takes the word of a single astronomer who said he observed multiple aircraft flying
in close formation with his telescope- and yet it completely ignores the thousands of
witnesses to the single, solid craft.
That astronomer didn't take a photo of the formation of aircraft with his telescope,
he has no proof that he actually made this observation- but skeptics accept his account
without questioning it, while ignoring the tidal wave of countering accounts, because
this is a conclusion the skeptic likes.
This isn't skepticism, this is intellectual dishonesty for the sake of preserving one's
own naturalistic world view.
True skepticism would accept that while some accounts were no doubt mistaking the flight
of A-10s as one object, other accounts are much more difficult to explain and are worthy
of their own investigation- like those accounts who were close enough to visually confirm
the single object, and where well outside of the known flight path of the A-10s in question.
What's a fact is that this isn't the only such sighting, as massive UFOs have been commonly
reported around the world.
During the Cold War, Soviet citizens reported massive UFOs overhead on numerous occasions.
During the Belgium UFO flap, hundreds of witnesses spotted massive craft overhead in the sky,
prompting fears of a Russian attack.
And the sightings continue to this day, with mysterious lights appearing over San Diego
and prompting what many would end up calling the Phoenix Lights 2.0.
Now it's time to prepare for the end and watch How to Defend Earth Against an Alien Invasion,
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