Classic Ufo Sightings

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Why would you apply the term 'Classic' to a Ufo report? The simple answer is that there are several reports which are regarded as the basis or core of Ufology.

These 'classic' cases have been examined many times through the years,and it would be fair to say they have stood up well to this microscopic inspection.

So here are some of these 'Classic' reports, all in there own way unique, but overall an insight into the anomalous craft that are in our skies.

Heflin UFO Photos Santa Ana, California August 3, 1965

Rex Heflin worked for the Orange county as a highway inspector.

Part of his job was to examine and record any roadside defects, including signs or obstructions.

It was this reason that Mr Heflin carried a Polaroid land camera as part of his equipment. It was while he was about to take a photo of trees obstructing a railway sign that he saw a Flat top ufo.

Grabbing his camera he took four photographs of the craft.

Three of the craft itself and a fourth of a smoke ring apparently left behind when the craft departed.

These photos over the years have been studied in great depth by scientist and professional photographic institutions using sophisticated equipment.

And to date it is still one of the greatest 'classic' ufo reports

Photo 1 As the craft crossed from left to right, across the road

Photo 2 From the side window

Photo 3 Also from the side window

Enlarged image of craft.

1950 The Trent photographs, McMinnville, Oregon

On the 11th of May 1950 Mrs Evelyn Trent was going about her work on the farm she shared with her husband.

It was while she was feeding the farm rabbits that Mrs Trent first noticed an object in the sky and called her husband. Mr Paul Trent quickly got his camera and managed to take two photographs that are now know as the 'Trent Photos'

It would be fair to say these photos over the years have been the subject of intense scrutiny, subjected to every kind of scientific analysis, and remain as much of an enigma now, as when they first appeared in the local newspaper the 'Telephone Register'

1942 Los Angeles Sighting.

One of the lesser know classic UFO cases was the 1942 Mass sighting in Los Angeles.

Six people were alleged to have died when the US military opened up with Antiaircraft batteries on a very large stationary object that was spotlighted by searchlights over Culver City, and Santa Monica.

The Alleged deaths were not caused by the object, but were the result of some of the shells that rained down on the terrified populace from antiaircraft guns, and from traffic accidents and heart attacks, caused by the ensuing panic.

Very little was reported about the incident at the time,with only scant news coverage in the Los Angeles Times, with the now familiar 'Blimp' and 'Balloon' descriptions of the object.

This event took place two weeks after Pearl Harbor when the USA was 'Gripped' by the possibility of a Japanese attack,and would partially explain the news blackout of this event.

Here is a report from that night from 'Katie' an Air Raid Warden who was asked to verify if an object was in the vicinity.

She walked to a window and looked up. "It was huge! It was just enormous! And it was practically right over my house. I had never seen anything like it in my life!" she said. "It was just hovering there in the sky and hardly moving at all."

With the city blacked out, Katie, and hundreds of thousands of others, were able to see the eerie visitor with spectacular clarity. "It was a lovely pale orange and about the most beautiful thing you've ever seen. I could see it perfectly because it was very close. It was big!" The U.S. Army antiaircraft searchlights by this time had the object completely covered.

"They sent fighter planes up (the Army denied any of its fighters were in action) and I watched them in groups approach it and then turn away. There were shooting at it but it didn't seem to matter."

Katie is insistent about the use of planes in the attack on the object. The planes were apparently called off after several minutes and then the ground cannon opened up. "It was like the Fourth of July but much louder. They were firing like crazy but they couldn't touch it."

The attack on the object lasted over half an hour before the visitor eventually disappeared from sight. Many eyewitnesses talked of numerous "direct hits" on the big craft but no damage was seen done to it. "I'll never forget what a magnificent sight it was. Just marvelous. And what a gorgeous color!", said Katie.

The famous Kenneth Arnold 1947 Sighting

UFOs have been around for more than half a century, if not many centuries, but the “Age of Flying Saucers” did not start until 1947.

On the afternoon of June 24 that year, an Idaho businessman and private pilot named Kenneth Arnold was flying in his single-engine plane near Mount Rainier in the state of Washington when he saw nine strange objects flying through the sky.

They were at about the same altitude as he was, 9,500 feet, perhaps twenty to twenty-five miles away. Every few seconds, he said, “Two or three of them… would dip or change their course slightly, just enough for the sun to strike them at an angle that reflected brightly on my plane.”

It was the flashes of sunlight that caught his attention. At first, Arnold assumed they were military jets because of their speed, which, judging the distance between two peaks and noting time it took for them to pass from one to the other, he calculated as more than 1,500 miles an hour. But they were weird looking, somewhat like flat pie pans and did not seem to have tails.

They were so strange that after landing he told some pilot friends about them. Then he went to an FBI office to report what he’d seen, but the office was closed. So he went to a newspaper office, where he told a reporter what he had seen and reportedly said the objects “flew like a saucer would if you skipped it across the water.”

That phrase was included in a story that was sent out over the wires of the Associated Press, and within two days the nation’s press was talking about “flying saucers” and the Age of Flying Saucers began. Life was never the same again for Arnold. Very soon he began getting phone calls from all over the country. He was ridiculed in the press and was the butt of some bad jokes.

However, many people took him seriously, including pilots who had seen similarly unexplained craft.