CERTAINLY the folks at ATS are convinced it’s 100% hoax.
Linda Moulton Howe is convinced there’s some that are authentic etc. and she has met face to face with a number of folks reporting such and offering photos.
I had accepted that they were all hoaxed.
Now, I’m not 100% sure either way.
She can be overly new-agey, by far, for my comfort . . . however, she’s not, per se, a flake and is a very solid researcher who pins down tons of facts and get multiple verifications whenever possible—which is often a surprising amount of the time.
We shall see.
It's a pdf file--so you'll need to read it at the link.
Retyped intro:
These cases are special for several reasons. Training and experience make pilots and crews much more reliable witnesses than others. They are used to unusual meteorological phenomenons [sic] They have the added advantage of being able to approach the phenomenon. sometimes they can even overfly the object, observing it between themselves and the earth below. Military pilots are trained to estimate distances, shapes and speed of flying machines.
Sometimes, pilots' sightings are confirmed by radar detection, observers on the ground (control tower personnel, Ground Observer Corps, civilians,...) or other pilots in flight. In some cases electro-magnetic effects were noted (radios, radar, compasses, engines, ...). In a few rare cases the pilot or crew felt physical effects like heat, or blinding light.
This catalog contains 1305 cases: 606 Military aircraft cases, 444 Airliners cases, 193 private light planes (19 multiple aircraft, 43 cases with no mention of type of aircraft). Among the 1305 cases, 702 are North American.
A detailed study and a database of the 200 radar-cases in this catalog (about 15%) is currently under development at the French Space Agency (CNES) in France, as a SEPRA project led by Jean-Jacques Velasco. An initial evaluation of the most detailed radar-visual cases shows that the technical data indicated by radar (sizes, speeds, distances, maneuvers, locations) are quite close to those estimated by pilots.
Another study of the 57 cases involving electro-magnetic effects on the aircraft (about 4%) of this catalog is under development with Dr Richard F. Haines for the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena (NARCAP)2
2the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena (NARCAP), PO Box 140, Boulder Creek, California 95006. www.narcap.org
Dominique Weinstein
Paris, February 3, 2001
I realize that the naysayers will insist that:
...
1. 100% of the 1300+ pilots were ALL 100% UTIOSGACF (Under The Influence Of Swamp Gas And Cow Farts).
...
2. The metals on all the planes affected by the UFO's were transmorgified by Swamp Gas and Cow Farts and therefore not at all altered by any hint of any contact or proximity with any UFO's. ...
3. The blinding and heat effects by the BRIGHT lights from the UFO's was not at all from the UFO's bright lights but was instead from lightening bolts setting fire to clouds of swamp gas and cow farts.
...
4. The recorded radar contacts of the ground and plane based radars detecting and recording the detections and speeds of the UFO's did NOT AT ALL have ANYTHING to do with radar contacts with UFO's but instead were radar contacts with clouds of swamp gas and cow farts traveling in excess of 2000-4000 mph instantly from standing still (and stopping instantly on occasion from such speeds).
You see, clouds of swamp gas and cow farts don't have to be concerned even with sophisticated technologies dealing with inertial damping. Even though the clouds of swamp gas and cow farts are more substantial in mass than the collective brains of 100 average naysayers . . . that's still so miniscule as to not present a great inertial problem.
5. An alternate explanation of the radar records of UFO contacts is that the radar machines themselves were transmorgified by the clouds of swamp gas and cow farts into incoherent masses of metalic protoplasm such that they could only bubble and burp out incoherent and false data.
6. Of course, some naysayers insist that the radar operators themselves were drunk on swamp gas and cow farts. However, that would not explain the recordings on the radar tapes of bona fide contacts with UFO's.