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60-year celebration of UFOs and Roswell
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 GLOBAL NEWS. If you hadn’t already realised it, this is the 60th anniversary not only of “flying saucers” (now referred to more accurately as unidentified flying objects, or UFOs) streaking into the headlines, but also the reported crash of an alien spacecraft at Roswell.
Despite reports in the 1990s that UFO groups were closing down because of a lack of sightings, unidentified aerial objects are back with a vengeance. And it’s a sighting by two British pilots of two “mile-long” UFOs over the Channel Islands that is exciting the most interest.
Captain Ray Bowyer, a pilot with the Aurigny airline, was flying from Southampton to Alderney on the island of Guernsey in April this year, when he sighted two huge bright yellow objects which appeared stationary in the sky. His sighting was first reported in the Guernsey press on 26 April and then interest abated until the encounter was reported as a “near miss” in Pilot Magazine.
Subsequent press reports made front-page headlines (with exaggerated illustrations of the encounter) and soon Captain Bowyer was being interviewed on primetime television, on Channel 4’s Richard and Judy show (above) and then on CNN news.
There have been conflicting reports about whether the objects were recorded on radar, with one account suggesting that stationary objects are not picked up by radar, but Captain Bowyer revealed there was convincing radar evidence that confirmed something was in the area at the time.
Another pilot, flying a different route, also reported seeing the objects and both pilots placed the UFOs in the same location. This helped Captain Bowyer to determine that instead of being twice the size of a jumbo jet, as he originally thought, they must have been a mile long.
 Sceptics have already argued that the pilots were simply looking at unusual and brightly lit cloud effects, but Captain Bowyer dismisses such explanations. He told the TV interviewers that the nearer object “didn’t look anything like a cloud”. He had examined it through binoculars and seen a grey area of what looked like its “fuselage”. He added: “In my view, there was a strange object in a controlled airspace which should not have been there.”
Investigations are continuing and Ray Bowyer intimated that there would soon be more to report.
It was another pilot, Kenneth Arnold, whose sighting of nine shining saucer-shaped objects over Mt Ranier, Washington, on 24 June 1947 gave us the name “flying saucers”. Early the following month there was a sensational report that a flying saucer had crashed at Roswell, New Mexico, and aliens – dead or alive – had been taken from the site.
This report was quickly disputed by the Air Force who claimed it was simple weather balloon radar reflector debris. Ever since, Roswell has been synonymous with “UFO cover-up” and enthusiasts will soon be celebrating (5-6 July) at “The 2007 Amazing Roswell UFO Festival and 60th Anniversary of the Roswell Incident” which will include an alien parade and costume contests.
 But there are Roswell residents who still recall the event vividly and claim to have been threatened with death if they ever talk about what they saw or were told. The man who many believe knew more than most about the Roswell crash was Major Jesse Marcel, the first military officer at one of two alleged crash sites.
For most of his life, he spoke little about what he saw that day in early July 1947, but his son – Jesse Marcel, Jr – has now revealed what he knows about it in a new book, The Roswell Legacy, published to coincide with the anniversary.
It will be reviewed on this site shortly. It has also just been revealed that another military man, Lt Walter Haut, who issued the first news release about Roswell on behalf of the Air Force, left a notarised affidavit before he died in 2005 revealing that he had seen a crash space craft and the bodies of its alien crew – click here for full story.
 Less than a month after the alleged Roswell incident – on 1 August 1947 (the day the Air Force separated from the Army) – the American Air Force suffered its first plane crash. A B25 Bomber crashed in a wooded area of Kelso, Washington, on a flight back to Hamilton Air Force Base, California, with a mysterious cargo. It was carrying what appeared to be black lava rock slag which was reported to have been ejected from a UFO hovering over Maury Island on 21 June 1947, three days before Kenneth Arnold’s famous sighting. An engine caught fire and both officers on board, who had interviewed witnesses of the sighting and collected physical evidence, were killed in the crash.
Earlier this year, the site of the crash was found and, remarkably, parts of the aircraft and what could be “an artifact from a UFO” were discovered in the thick undergrowth and are now on permanent display at the Seattle Museum of the Mysteries, along with a plaque to commemorate the men who perished.
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Posted on Friday, June 29, 2007
Category: UFOs
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