From: Brad Sparks
Subject: June 18, 1982; Gong Heui, Hebei, China
To: CE List, NICAP
| Brad Sparks wrote: For the theory to work that this
Chinese military pilot EM case was a mere
sighting of a Soviet satellite launch, the
satellite over Central Russia would have had to
be visible a great distance away in North
Eastern China. The satellite would have
had to be launched to a height of around 1,000
to 9,000 miles in order to be seen from that far
away in NE China -- not the 200 miles or so
altitude of the low earth orbit Soviet spy
satellite launch.
It wasn't Kosmos
1310 either, which was not even launched in 1982
but in 1981 (Sept 23). Apparently, someone
has confused an approximate time of civilian
sightings (of no direct bearing on the military
aircraft encounters anyway), with the Kosmos
satellite numbering!
The closest
launch was a Zenith-6 type recon spy satellite,
which was Kosmos 1381 not "Kosmos-1310."
It was launched
at 1300 GMT / UTC on June 18, 1982.
The ATS webpage
presents the theory that the 2157 time was
Beijing Time (I have no way to check sources to
see if that is true). If so, then 2157
Beijing Standard Time was still almost
one hour too late for the
Soviet launch, which was at 2100 Beijing
Standard Time (1300 GMT).
Could they have
been on Daylight Saving Time then? Online
sources state that Beijing was not on DST in
1982 and did not start observing DST until 1986.
See:
But let's
suppose there was a mistake on when Beijing
started following DST and for some reason it was
in fact being observed in 1982 and the Chinese
pilots were using Beijing DST.
The times would
come closer. Maybe 3-5-minute
errors in Chinese military time reporting is
possible but it still would not make the Soviet
satellite visible, it would still have been far
below the earth's horizon.
As I have noted,
the killer problem with this theory is the fact
that the approximately 2,500 to 5,000-mile
distance would put the Soviet launch from
Baikonur / Tyuratam Cosmodrome well below
the earth's horizon. The
Kosmos 1381 spy sat was launched into a
naturally very low earth orbit of
about 123 x 232 miles to get good pictures, a
near-polar orbit of 70 degs inclination, so it
didn't come down to Manchuria or the Kamchatka
Peninsula but flew into the Arctic Circle before
coming down to North America.
Again, for the satellite to have been
visible at those great distances it would have
had to have been launched to a height of around
1,000 to 9,000 miles -- not 200 miles or so.
I have
checked the NARCAP website and the only
sources given are Timothy Good's Above
Top Secret, which has to be used very
cautiously, and behind Good or separately is
a 1993 book by a Chinese UFOlogist Shi Bo,
now living in France, called L'Empire
du Milieu troublé par les OVNIS [The
Middle Kingdom (=China) troubled with the
UFO's].
I have no way
to get Shi Bo's book to check whether it has
been accurately reported and translated.
I should
mention, IF the location is
totally wrong and it was
really in the NW China (Xinjiang autonomous
region), not NE China, then the Kosmos 1381
launch theory might have a fighting chance, as
it would get the distance down to under 1,000
miles and a satellite launch at 100-200 miles
altitude might be visible low on their Western
horizon. But we still do not know
what direction they saw their UFO.
But it would require that the
Chinese pilots use Beijing Time when they were
nowhere near Beijing. And they would be
flying in daylight not nighttime, which might
be a deal-killer for visibility in bright
sunshine unless they were flying high enough
and the atmosphere was clear enough.
Chinese sources reproduced in Good's
book (p. 471) show outlandish drawings of the
jet fighter encounter that seem to be depicted
as nighttime.
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