Brad,
Thanks for your comments. Your point is well taken
about the potential for a hostile investigator to
corrupt the witness testimony. Unfortunately, in
this and many other cases, the investigator's
version is all we've got. If our default
assumption is that the AFOSI agents were so
predisposed against the existence of a genuine
unknown that they would deliberately skew or alter
testimony, then there isn't much point in
examining the documentation at all, in the absence
of some ironclad first-hand record like a
videotaped interview.
I have attached two images that are relevant to
the aircraft hypothesis (although they may get
stripped off before reaching you... I will try
CC'ing directly to your address). One shows a 1948
Luscombe 8A Sky Pal, the same type of aircraft
which reportedly departed the Coastway School of
Aeronautics (Tillamook Naval Air Station) at
~10:50 AM. The other image is a map of the area of
interest, including Tillamook, Hebo, and
McMinnville.
As you can see, the aircraft's skin is
silvery-metallic, almost chrome-like, quite
consistent with Leckington's description of
stainless steel-like reflection in the sunlight. I
must concede this doesn't seem like a wise choice
of finish with regard to potentially blinding
glare, but clearly it was not prohibited.
The cruise speed of this aircraft is 105 mph
(although the flight plan says 100 mph), with a
top speed of 115 mph. In principle it could have
been going considerably slower than that (the
stall speed is ~50 mph). The flight plan gives an
estimated time en route of 2 hrs, which, if
comprised of two straight line segments (first ~13
mi south to Hebo, then ~31 mi east to
McMinnville), yields an average speed of only ~22
mph, so obviously the actual flight path was more
complex than that, and/or the duration much less
than the flight plan estimate. The investigator
notes that at Hebo the aircraft "... turned to go
through low passes enroute to McMinnville". I must
admit this is somewhat ambiguous... does it mean
that the aircraft made some number of low altitude
passes in the vicinity of Hebo before heading to
McMinnville, or that the route between Hebo and
McMinnville consisted of negotiating a series of
low (mountain) passes?
In any case, if the aircraft had made it as far as
Hebo by the time of the sighting (which it easily
could have with a 10:50 AM takeoff), it would have
been less than 10 miles away from the witnesses in
Pleasant Valley, at an azimuth of ~195 deg
(slightly west of south). It could moreover have
been as much as ~1/4 of the way eastward
along the McMinnville leg without noticeable
change in range from the witnesses. At this range
the aircraft would subtend
at most ~0.04
deg (less than one-tenth of the full moon)...
certainly discernible, and easily noticed if
strongly reflective, but quite small nonetheless.
However, at this range, the aircraft altitude
(~37Kft) required for the claimed 35 deg elevation
of the object is not plausible.
This is where the profoundly inconsistent
estimates of angular size, absolute size,
elevation angle, and range throw the case into
disarray. Leckington (allegedly) claims that the
object was roughly one-half to three-quarters of a
mile away at an altitude of ~500 ft, which,
regardless of whether he meant ground range or
slant range, implies an elevation angle of at most
~11 deg, in distinct conflict with the claimed
elevation angle of ~35 deg. Even more confusing is
his claim that the object subtended the full span
of his open hand at arm's length, something on the
order of ~9-10 deg, which is absurdly inconsistent
with his other estimates for size (12-15 ft in
diameter, which would imply it was less than 100
ft away) and range (one-half to three-quarters of
a mile, which would imply a diameter of over 400
ft). By no means do I presume that the typical
observer is able to make accurate estimates of
these parameters, but faced with these disparities
there is no coherent way to incorporate them into
the account at all.
If, as you speculate, witness Smith's sighting may
have actually been coincident with the
Leckington's, then things become even more
incoherent. Their respective observation points
were less than 1/3-mi apart, yet Smith places the
object directly overhead, heading distinctly
northeast, with full moon angular width, whereas
the Leckingtons put it at ~35 deg elevation to the
southeast, with little or no perceptible motion,
and angular width some 20 times the full moon.
While reiterating my assumption that the AFOSI
investigator did not substantially misrepresent
the witness testimony, in the face of the above I
would have to agree with him that the known
presence of the distinctively shiny Luscombe
aircraft in the proximity of the sighting envelope
(on both 23 and 24 Jan) is a fairly compelling
coincidence.
However, one question that continues to nag me is,
who contacted the Tillamook radio station with
the report of a "flying disc" in the Pleasant
Valley area? The Coastway aeronautical
school allegedly received a call from the radio
station in the 11:00-11:15 AM timeframe
referencing such a report. If the Leckingtons made
the initial report to the station, it would have
to have been fairly promptly after their sighting,
leaving time for the station to subsequently call
the school. Curiously, the AFOSI investigator
makes note of the station's call to the school,
but does not attribute or otherwise associate the
initial report to the station with the
Leckingtons. But surely he realized that, if the
Leckingtons (or even Smith) did not make the
report, then there must be other witness(es)
involved! Bit of a loose end there...
Regards-
Mike
On 9/13/2015 10:50 PM, Brad Sparks
wrote:
Fran &
Mike,
As usual lately, no attachments to
C-E List postings are coming through,
they're apparently stripped off.
Without Mike's enhanced Grudge/BB
document it's a little difficult
reading.
From what I can see we have a
problem that the AFOSI agent was
investigating nearly 3 months after
the event, AFOSI at some level was
reluctant and had to be dragged into
it via Wash DC and the agent was not a
happy camper. Maybe he didn't
like driving across the State of
Washington and down the coast of
Oregon. He seemed to be trying
to snipe at the witnesses with bogus
or questionable "gotchas" and I am not
buying it. This is an example of
an investigation that may have created
error in the witness recollections
using the uncertainty in memory
introduced by the needless and
gratuitous 3-month delay and a hostile
investigator.
Maybe UFO witnesses need defense
attorneys as well as private PhD
scientist consultants to protect
themselves from abusive debunker
investigators. Debunkers set
witnesses up as strawmen to be knocked
down, pretending that the witness has
PhD knowledge and training so that
when they fail, as they must because
they are not in fact PhD's in most
cases, every scientific deficiency is
then held against the witness instead
of the debunker. "Anything you
say can and will be held against in a
court of debunking." The AFOSI
agent dragged out a bogus "gotcha"
that father-in-law Smith supposedly
contradicted himself (insinuated by
saying "however") by saying the UFO
was at a 45 degree "angle" (does that
mean the disc shape was tilted at
45 degs or was it 45 degs above the
horizon?) and "however, also states
that it flew directly over his head."
In fact it is not a
contradiction at all but I won't
belabor it here.
The agent also insinuates that the
father-in-law was old and doddering
(about 65-70) and was hoaxing his
confirmatory sighting to help his
daughter and son-in-law with alleged
ridicule over their sighting -- but
got the wrong date, Jan 24 instead of
23 (not actually commented on by the
agent, just implied). There is
no evidence whatsoever of any
"ridicule" hence no such motive for
hoaxing, and the date error recalled 3
months after-the-fact may simply be
due to the fact the Portland
Oregonian article was
published on Jan 24, so maybe the
father-in-law had saved the paper and
used that for reference and saw the
"Jan. 24" date on the paper when the
agent interviewed him on April 11.
Competent investigation would
have explored that instead of trashing
the witness (no comment was made about
a date discrepancy, the two dates were
reported without comment, so did the
AFOSI agent know this alleged
discrepancy would not hold up so he
didn't want to call too much attention
to it?).
Interesting that the father-in-law
wasn't so doddering as to
simplistically copycat the sighting
details printed in the paper -- he
didn't. In fact, he seemingly
(ONLY seemingly)
contradicted his daughter who said she
could "not tell whether it was moving"
whereas her dad later told the agent
it was moving at about 30-35 mph (it
is not an actual contradiction, except
to debunkers, because she was in a
moving car that would have made it
difficult to detect motion in a
slow-moving object in the sky, unlike
her dad who was on solid ground at
home in the back yard).
The AFOSI agent also implies that
the father-in-law might have seen the
same plane on the next date, Jan. 24,
when it was in flight in the morning.
So the agent wants to have it
both ways -- it's a hoax of seeing
what was not actually seen AND the
same IFO airplane but actually seen
(not lied about) the next day!
It can't be both. Why
isn't THAT held against the AFOSI
agent as HIS self-contradiction?
The flight from Tillamook Airport
on Jan 23, 1949, had a flight plan to
take off at 10:50 AM to fly to
McMinnville and back. AFOSI
found out the pilot flew S to Hebo
first then headed E to McMinnville.
This would mean that the civil
aircraft would have been about 20
miles ESE of the witnesses at the time
of the sighting about 11:05 AM and
would have presented only about 20
feet to view from that angle and would
have been less than 1 arcminute in
angular size, thus unresolvable to the
naked eye. This is an enormous
distance. If you think it's easy
try an experiment the next time you
land or take off in an airliner in the
daytime -- see if you can even see a
20-foot truck from 20 miles. You
won't even be able to see the road let
alone the truck (I do this experiment
every time I fly). This is the
Mantell Phenomenon again -- a known
IFO in roughly the right direction at
the right time but several times too
distant to even be seen by the unaided
eye and certainly not of such
prominence as to catch anyone's
attention. The Tillamook
airplane would have been a tiny barely
visible speck in the sky even if twice
as close. The solar phase angle
would have been bad for lighting up
the airplane, with the sun behind the
aircraft (off to one side not directly
behind), in effect being shadowed by
the wings and fuselage to the
witnesses. Aircraft are not
built to have mirror-like surfaces to
blind pilots' eyes. Leckington
said the object had the brilliance of
sunlight reflecting off of stainless
steel (like a mirror).
The aircraft would not have had
visibility problems if it had been at
the distances estimated or computable
from witness data, i.e., less than a
mile (and over 1 Full Moon in angular
size). But then it would have
the opposite problem of being too
close and too large in angular size,
and would have easily been seen to be
civil aircraft. It would have
been to the SW instead of the SE
reported by the witnesses.
Traveling at about 120 mph
cruising speed or about 2 miles per
minute, it would have taken about 15
minutes to disappear due to distance
to the naked eye on its S-then-E
dogleg path, not the 2-1/2 to 3
minutes reported. Leckington
would have had plenty of time to
retrieve his binoculars and follow the
aircraft (if that is what it was) all
the way to McMinnville and it would
have never disappeared in the
binoculars in the cloudless clear blue
sky.
Brad
-----Original Message-----
Date: Sun, 13 Sep
2015 14:43:25 -0700
Subject: Re: BB docs
sought / 490123tillamook
Fran,
See attached BB docs
you were
seeking for the
Tillamook 1949 case. This
is about the largest
file size that
I would feel
comfortable attaching
without a prior
heads-up, it's actually
pretty severely
compressed.
This was derived
from Fold3 downloads, with a
fair amount of
brightness/contrast
fiddling. The corresponding
unredacted
documents at
the Blue Book
Archive site are far too
low-res/washed-out to be
usable.
However, they do
allow recovery of the names of
the main characters,
namely:
First witness pair:
C. K. Leckington, and his wife,
Rose
Leckington
Additional witness:
Burt J. Smith
I think a review of
these
documents will
convince you that the case
summary at your link
below needs a
major re-write. The
current summary
gives the
tantalizing impression that this
case involves
independent
witnesses viewing
the same object from independent
locations, when
in
fact this case
consists of two separate
sightings, the
first by the
Leckingtons on 23
Jan, and the second by Mr. Smith
on 24 Jan. Mr.
Smith,
it turns out, is
Mrs. Leckington's father, at
that time living in a
house immediately
adjacent to the Leckingtons.
In my opinion, it's
a
stretch to label
this as a BBU, even for
unofficial, in-house
purposes.
Moreover, I think
this is an instance
where the BB
explanation (a bright
silver aircraft
heading south out of
Tillamook) is
probably correct,
notwithstanding the
conflict with some
of Leckington's
testimony, which itself
is rather
self-contradictory.
Mike
On 9/11/2015 1:25
PM, fran ridge
wrote:
>
>
_______________________________________________
Post mailing list
Post@host250.hostmonster.com
http://host250.hostmonster.com/mailman/listinfo/post_currentencounterslist.com
