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The sketches on the following pages were April 25, 1970, by the primary witness, G.E.B., during interview with S. Nixon. The sketch below was drawn by Mr. Nixon in an attempt to show were the UFO was visible in the cockpit window.
From Bill Pitts Item from Maj. Dewey Fournet’s “brief case”
UNCLASSIFIED OPERATION INTERLOPER – RECENT REPOERTS
INCIDENT #26
Source: Lt. George P. Williams, USN, Class IX, Naval Intelligence School
Lt. Williams reports the following personal experience which happened to him about 0300 on the night of 21 February 1951, while he was piloting a Navy Fleet Logistics Air Wing plane:
'"We had taken off from Keflavic airport, Iceland, about three hours earlier, and had climbed to cruise at 10,000 feet, heading toward Newfoundland. It was one of those beautiful nights with a large, almost full moon and a thin layer of broken cumulus below us with tops about 3,000 feet. As we cruised along, I glanced idly about and noticed an unusually bright light through the clouds ahead. At first thinking it was a ship, I called the co-pilot forward. He was in the next compartment talking with other members of the crew. "We along with others in the 9 man crew watched the light. It rose up from beneath the clouds and approached us at a terrific closing rate. We froze in wonder. It veered to our port side and hovered momentarily as if to examine us. It then rose at an amazingly rapid rate, and disappeared off our port quarter. "The object was difficult to judge as far as size, but our general estimate was that it was a minimum of 200 feet in diameter (and probably larger). It was flat elliptical or cigar-shaped by side view, and seemed to be spewing a ring of red-orange exhaust all along the periphery. No cockpit-type enclosure was noted. Its speed was so great that we could not comprehend its coming from earth. The one main outstanding feature other than the "fire around the edge" was its large size—larger than an R5D. The question is: Where could such a large object be hangared on earth and be kept a secret?” Lt. Williams says the sighting occurred at approximately Latitude 60° N, Longitude 33° W. The object was in sight for about five minutes.
INCIDENT #27
Source: Frank Edwards, Mutual News commentator, Spring, 1951 A South African Airways Constellation had left Nairobi, Kenya, on a flight from London to Johannesburg. As it passed over the crater of an extinct volcano near the Tanganyike-Kenya border, the pilots noticed a silvery disc deep in the bowels of the great mountain. They orbitted their ship over the crater, until suddenly the disc took off at a high rare of speed, and shot straight up into the air. It disappeared in the skies high above the Constellation. Two passengers on board the plane managed to take motion pictures of the disc.
From: Bob Durant <70232.17@compuserve.com> To: Mark Rodeghier <MARKROD@xsite.net> Date: Thursday, October 22, 1998 11;53 AM Subject: Bethune Report
Mark,
The report is written by me, but in an attempt to make it just a teeny bit folksy in tone, like Bethune speaks. That is the provenance of the report.
A little more detail: Graham Bethune is 78 years old, lives in Toms River, NJ, about an hour and a half from me. He is one of the New Jersey UFO "regulars," and I see him from time to time at a crazy monthly saucer group. Graham has become a fixture on the New Age lecture circuit with his tale of the 1951 UFO sighting. Very much of the gentleman of the old school type of person, but when he got serious about telling the world about this sighting, he took up with the wrong company. Graham has soaked up all of the really crazy stuff that is out there, and his lectures are marred by the intrusion of "information" from various channelers, etc.
Anyhow, in March of this year he took me aside and said that for various reasons he wanted to put his story on paper. Mainly, people keep asking him about it and he had no reliable text to give them. (The most recent intense interest in this case comes from Steven Greer.) Bethune asked me if I could help him to write something suitable. I agreed, thinking I could handle it with a couple of taped telephone interviews. Silly me. What you have is probably the sixth or seventh draft, and I don't think it is the last. Bethune keeps remembering new bits and pieces, or wanting to add this and that. I feel that having gone this far, I must continue.
The manuscript you have will be supplemented by five or six illustrations and by the 17 pages of the Project Twinkle report.
Working with Bethune is a reminder of the Roswell problem, where these ancient memories are vague and then one must wonder about the veracity of the fragments that reappear.
Perhaps the final version can be boiled down into an 1UR article or 10/22/98 something like that. The full version will weigh in at 45 or 46 pages. Bethune will have some copies made, or so the current plan goes.
What you have is an interesting UFO report very heavily padded with irrelevant autobiographical information, anecdotes, etc. That's what the old boy wanted, so that's what I gave him. You may not believe this, but I have had to fight long and hard to keep it from blossoming into something really vast and incoherent. In Bethune's view, the current text is bare bones.
From: Bob Durant <70232.17@compuserve.com> To: Mark Rodeghier <MARKROD@xsite.net> Date: Tuesday, October 27, 1998 6:16 AM Subject: Bethune
Mark,
While I wait to see the Keyhoe material on Bethune, here is the letter I spoke about. It was hand written, and I transcribed it, thinking it important because it was the first contact between Bethune and Keyhoe, meaning the first time the civilian UFO world was aware of the Bethune sighting. It is a small glimpse into the world of the upper levels of the Navy, and their interest in UFOs. Obviously a private interest rather than anything official. The letter is written by Captain James Taylor, a senior officer in the Navy engineering department. Bethune worked for Taylor as a test pilot and program manager, and told Taylor about the UFO sighting. Per Bethune, one day they were talking about a proposal for anti-gravity research that the Navy had received, and Taylor said something like, "I think that is how those things fly," which Bethune took to mean flying saucers. With that opening, Bethune told Wilson about his sighting. Bethune thinks Taylor went to Fahrney, who went to Keyhoe with the story. Or so I recall. Trouble is, Bethune tends to mix all this stuff up and then mix it with statements like, "but of course the Pleidian ships use time warp propulsion." This he has picked up not from his Navy colleagues but from the fringe crowd he has hung out with for 20 years. As a writer trying to put the 1951 UFO sighting on paper in a way that will make sense, this sort of rambling and interpolation of crazy stuff makes life difficult. Please pass this to Frank. Pasted below is my text:
I received the following letter dated May 13, 1960 from my old boss, Captain Jim Taylor.
Dear Graham:
I appreciated your and Lou's Christmas card. Also 1 enjoyed the phone conversations with you, and am glad you like your TAR duty. You remember Major Don Keyhoe? He is one of the people who have written books, reports, analyses, etc. on "flying saucers." He got in the Air Force's hair a few years back and they more or less closed the door on him. He was connected with some civilian committee whose object was to get the facts to the public. I told him, or rather told Rear Admiral Del Fahrney (Ret.) about your sighting and Adm. Fahrney relayed it to Keyhoe. I am enclosing Keyhoe's letter to me. (I guess he's writing another book.) You can reply to Keyhoe if you choose. I told him where you are stationed.
He came out to Detroit at the invitation of some engineering society while I was there. His biggest beef at that time was that the Air Force wouldn't tell him anything.
I am on my way to the Far East again. We did too good a job out there last year and got invited back this year.
Best regards to all our old friends.
With best personal regards, Sincerely, Jim Taylor |
