Flying Saucer Review January-February 1979 [antikvár]

that is not just the difference between, say, a Boeing 747 Jumbo jet and a Cessna 182, but the difference between a BAG 1-11 and a Hawlier Siddeley Trident. Then there is equipment which can guide crowded streams of airliners to and fro across the Atlantic,* and elsewhere in the world. Also equipment which, even as long ago as 1944 could guide the RAF bombers to their target areas where the H2S radars, aiming downwards, would evoke responses which would mark ground features on the cathode ray tubes which, when aligned with a superimposed map", would indicate the precise moment for the bombing! to take place. All of which leads, 35 years later, to modem control of missiles of various ranges, and to the near-miraculous control of Moon landing craft from Earth. All these things, and many others besides, achieved be radar, or other narrojv beam marvels of the same electronic family.The point of all this is that radars, and their associated equipments, are honest workhorses put to scores of operations where accuracy and reliability are essential. These remarkable tools and their skilled and practised operators do not suddenly become "unreliable" as when a pilot of, say, 23 years' experience, claims a radar-visual encounter with a UFO. Likewise, air traffic controllers with 15 or 20 years' experience behind them do not suddenly risk their professional reputations by being taken in by"angels" or by misidentifying images on their scopes caused by anomalous propagation. It is our conviction that they can detect and recognise real signals whether they be stimulated by something solid, or by somthing having the attributes of solidity.We imagine that when the thousands of reports hitherto jealously guarded and hidden from the public gaze - are prised from the CIA treasure chest, as ordered by a United States Court following a successful action against the Agency, there will be egg on more than a few faces. We suspect too that more than a few reputations could be at stake. A reward for disservices rendered?Your Editor once had the pleasure of taking tea with the captain and first officer on the flight deck of a VC-10. At 40000 feet we watched a Boeing 747 which -indicated clearly by the VC-lO's radar - was 12 miles ahead and bumping its way at 33000 ft. Suddenly the 747 banked to the left and changed course. Our captain, feet up and enjoying his tea, indicated an instrument countdown and said we would have made the same manoeuvre by the time the countdown reached 0. At 2 we began to tilt to port, and by 0 we were turning on to the new course all of this completely automatically and controlled, I gathered, through the airliner's computer from Shannon, some 1500 miles ahead of us. Quite an ordinary happening, but for your Editor, a very impressive one.DEBUNKING RUNS WILDBut Ufologists make sure of a reasonable ending.Paul NormanThis late item which relates to the Australian TV film of UFOs, shot over New Zealand waters on December 31, 1978 (see FSR Vol. 24, No. 5) is taken from an Editorial article in Australia UFO Bulletin, published by the Victorian UFO Research Society (VUFORS) of P.O. Box 43, Moorabbin 3189, Victoria, Australia.gY this time most readers will be well aware of the press reports on the Radar-Visual-Photograph series of events in New Zealand.Perhaps the Cook Strait Flap has done more to make ufologists out of newsmen, and clowns out of scientists, than any other event in UFO history.No less than sixteen "explanations" have come from the scientific community. As usual, orthodox academics were snarling at ufologists for investigating and frowning on the press for printing news about mystery objects which they, the sceptics, could not recognize.Meanwhile, following close on the heels of the Bass Strait incident of the missing Cessna, the UFO were grinding the sacred cow of orthodox science into beefburger.One of the more amusing suggestions for an explanation came from an ornithologist. His offering was that theUFOs were "Mutton birds flying inland for mating." If true, it should have been a great day for students of omithology because it was the first recorded appearance of supersonic mutton birds which, - for some unknown reason, were in a great haste to get on with the job. Clocked at five miles per second, this powerful species of sea guU would surely have been equipped with asbestos feathers.Students of astronomy also were in line for a great discovery; the revelation came from none other than British astronomer Sir Bernard Lovell. Those speeding, manoeuvring and hovering objects were "meteorites which failed to bum up on entering the earth's atmosphere." Acceptance of this startling theory would probably depend on the extent of the mental blocks implanted in the minds of students.In Australia and New Zealand astro-nomers were insisting that the planets were responsible for this mass encounter vrith UFOs. Although these astronomers were closer to the scene of action than Sir Bemard, their knowledge of radar was millions of miles out of range.From Sydney, an amateur astronomer claimed he had made a discovery which would put the ufologists out of business. He said his line-scan analyser had picked up the largest moons of Jupiter. This "discovery" turned out to be about as accurate as a prediction from readings of tea leaves left in a cup Norwegian Aerospace expert Erik Tawdberg was sure that the thing that the TV film team most likely focussed their cameras on was simple ball lightning, but farmer John Acklan, near the Clarence River area, said thatCContinued on page iii)