updated: 2012 0907
Fran Ridge:
September, 1964; Big Sur, California
USAF Lt. Robert Jacobs was Officer-in-charge of Photo-Optical Instrumentation for the 1369th Photographic Squadron at Vandenberg AFB. He disclosed his crew's filming of an Atlas missile launch where a UFO allegedly caused the ICBM's warhead malfunction. At the time of the filming apparently no one knew anything about a UFO. But the next morning Jacobs was ordered to report to the office of Maj. Florenz Mansmann, First STRAT AD, his commanding officer where he was shown the film and was told to forget it ever happened. Kingston George, the project engineer for the experiments, and who probably never saw the film, "identified" the object as "nothing to do with UFOs" in an article by the Skeptical Enquirer (Winter of 1993). Before Mansmann's death, and 40 years after the actual event, the major confirmed the UFO incident in writing. The controversey centers around opinions of some serious researchers on our team, who suggest that the telescope imaging system was not adequate enough to produce the results described by Jacobs and Mannsman. However, several other researchers have shown that, with the seeing conditions at the height of the equipment used, and the imaging systems operating at that shoot, what was reported could have actually occurred. So, the question remains, however, was this a UFO incident or a cover-up about an important warhead test?

Detailed reports and documents
Shot_Across_Bow [pdf] (IUR-31, Robert Hastings)
reports/Analysis of Big Sur [pdf] (Mark Rodeghier, CUFOS)
reports/Analysis of Big Sur [pdf] (John Waskiewicz)
reports/Analysis of Big Sur [html] (Fran Ridge/The Lunascan Project)