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Early American Astronauts No Strangers to UFO Sightings
Townhall.com ^ | June 8, 2021 | Ryan Walters

Posted on 06/08/2021 4:59:59 AM PDT by Kaslin

Aliens and flying saucers have long fascinated Americans taken with the possibility that we might not be alone in the universe. Tales abound of UFO sightings, alien encounters, and even extraterrestrial kidnappings and experimentation. Hollywood has been in on the fun for decades, raking in tens of millions of dollars for every alien flick produced.

There have always been those who believed the sightings were real, who experienced them firsthand and investigated the phenomena, believing the government was covering up the evidence. Such people are usually derided as nuts and kooks.

But now the Pentagon is set to release a special report for Congress on recent sightings, essentially detailing what is known about what they term “unidentified aerial phenomena.” UFOs have taken on a whole new level of seriousness.

This new wave of interest began in 2017 when the New York Times broke a story on the Pentagon’s small, seemingly insignificant $22 million Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP). Its purpose: to study encounters with UFOs. Along with the story, the NYT broke videos taken by U.S. Navy pilots of their encounters with strange objects that seem to defy the laws of physics and are far more sophisticated than any known aircraft on earth. In April 2020, the Pentagon confirmed the videos were, in fact, real, and the craft unidentified.

A story released by the Daily Mail last week told of an incident where fourteen UFOs “swarmed” the USS Omaha in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego. One craft, after hovering over the water for a period of time, suddenly plunged into the sea, but nothing was ever found or recovered from the area.

These sightings, though, are nothing new. For years there have been reports of similar incidents all over the country, some with photographic evidence dating back decades.

Even early American astronauts reported seeing UFOs. The most notable among this group was Gordon Cooper, a member of NASA’s first group of astronauts, the Mercury Seven. Cooper, an experienced Air Force test pilot, flew the final Mercury mission in 1963, the longest U.S. spaceflight up to that time at twenty-two orbits of the earth, and Gemini 5 in 1965, also the longest space mission up to that time, coming in just shy of eight days in space.

Cooper contended that when he was in the Air Force, stationed in Germany in 1951, his squadron encountered and chased a fleet of flying saucers but were no match for their extraordinary capabilities. The encounter went on for several days, he said.

Cooper also claimed that a flying saucer landed at Edwards Air Force Base in California in the late 1950s, and that there was video evidence of it. The film was quickly, and quietly, whisked away to Washington, where it disappeared, never to be seen again. “I do believe UFOs exist and that the truly unexplained ones are from some other technologically advanced civilization” that are not of this earth.

Until his death in 2004, Cooper believed the U.S. government was covering up evidence of UFOs and extraterrestrial intelligence.

In 1975, Jim McDivitt, who commanded the Apollo 9 mission that tested the lunar module in earth orbit, reported having seen a UFO on the second day of his Gemini 4 flight ten years earlier.

“At the time I saw it, I said there was something out in front of me or outside the spacecraft that I couldn’t identify, and I never have been able to identify it, and I don’t think anybody ever will,” he said. “And it was rotating around, I noticed something out in front that was a white cylindrical shape with a white pole sticking out of one corner of it—it looked like a beer can with a smooth pencil sticking out. They checked NORAD records to see what they had up on radar, and there wasn’t anything within very close range of us.”

Although his crewmate, Ed White, was asleep at the time of the encounter, McDivitt did snap several photos. “I’ve seen the photos that were released” from the mission, he said. “I went back and went through each frame of all of the pictures that we took, and there wasn’t anything in there like what I had seen.” It was later explained away as debris from the launch of Gemini 4, though McDivitt, an experienced Air Force veteran who retired with the rank of brigadier general, refused to believe he could have made that kind of mistake.

Ed Mitchell, lunar module pilot on Apollo 14 and the sixth man to walk on the moon, grew up near Roswell, New Mexico, and he also believed in UFOs and alien encounters.

White Sands was a testing ground for atomic weapons—and that’s what the extraterrestrials were interested in… They wanted to know about our military capabilities. My own experience talking to people has made it clear the ETs had been attempting to keep us from going to war and help create peace on Earth.

Mitchell also told The Mirror that other military personnel had confided in him that alien spacecraft were responsible for disabling nuclear missiles and for shooting them down over the Pacific coast.

Experienced military aviators. Nuclear weapons officers with top security clearances. Trailblazing astronauts. Such distinguished Americans are certainly not kooks or nutcases, nor are they motivated to lie about alien encounters. And now with modern videos and evidence in hand, it is probable the government knows much more about UFOs than they have previously disclosed. We can only hope the soon-to-be released Pentagon report clears the air once and for all.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: astronauts; ufos
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To: OKSooner

21 posted on 06/08/2021 6:00:56 AM PDT by FreedomPoster (Islam delenda est)
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To: a fool in paradise

Something strange and exotic landing at Edwards ... gee, Gordo, could it be a test aircraft about which you had no knowledge? Occam’s razor. Just sayin’.

I have long contended that a more likely source of these “visitors” would be anthropologists from our distant future. It makes sense that they would be interested in the early space program. Besides, we can take solace if this contention is really real that at least Erf has a distant future. I would love to see a correlation of these “visitors” with past events that proved to be seminal from a historical perspective.

Love, Cole


22 posted on 06/08/2021 6:02:08 AM PDT by NonValueAdded (Claiming Racism, the antidote to personal responsibility)
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To: FreedomPoster

:)


23 posted on 06/08/2021 6:02:47 AM PDT by OKSooner ("...but only after the fair trial, of course.")
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To: dinodino

Naw. Smart people don’t rush to judgment...and they don’t assume UFO’s are driven by aliens unless the other possibilities have been eliminated.


24 posted on 06/08/2021 6:02:49 AM PDT by RoosterRedux
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To: RoosterRedux

Tell that to the “E.T.” folks on these threads, whom can’t imagine that any of the 183 mundane explanations for these “sightings” are valid...


25 posted on 06/08/2021 6:06:54 AM PDT by dinodino ( )
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To: Kaslin
Early American Astronauts

For some reason I keep picturing tri-corner helmets and black powder thrusters.
26 posted on 06/08/2021 6:07:48 AM PDT by posterchild
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To: dinodino
Well, people are welcome to their opinions, just like you and I are.

And in the end, they may be right or they may be wrong.

The way I understand it, the Pentagon has said that what these pilots and ships (and others) have seen is not ours and it is not Chinese or Russian.

Of course, the Pentagon may be hiding the truth for obvious reasons, but we'll just have to wait until this matter plays out.

27 posted on 06/08/2021 6:13:27 AM PDT by RoosterRedux
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To: dinodino

Who forced you to read it?


28 posted on 06/08/2021 6:22:46 AM PDT by vigilante2
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To: Kaslin

I've been tryin' to tell you folks!


29 posted on 06/08/2021 6:23:06 AM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: Flick Lives

Ah; the old “The universe is big; therefore...” reasoning.


30 posted on 06/08/2021 6:24:07 AM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: RoosterRedux
I guarantee that if the Pentagon claims they are alien spaceships, that they are most definitely not alien spaceships.
31 posted on 06/08/2021 6:24:36 AM PDT by dinodino ( )
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To: a fool in paradise

According to Wikipedia:

“In 1955 BCE demonstrated a broadcast-quality color recorder that operated at 100 inches per second and CBS ordered three of them.”

So it’s possible.


32 posted on 06/08/2021 6:25:05 AM PDT by SoCal Pubbie
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To: vigilante2

Nobody. I come to these threads to watch all the kooks and wingnuts come flying out of the shadows...


33 posted on 06/08/2021 6:25:23 AM PDT by dinodino ( )
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To: RoosterRedux

34 posted on 06/08/2021 6:26:56 AM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: Stevenfo

Same with Bigfoot.


35 posted on 06/08/2021 6:29:04 AM PDT by Labyrinthos
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To: dinodino
I agree. But I don't think the Pentagon is going to make that announcement. It's too big for them.

If that were the announcement, every camera-hogging politician in the country---in the world--will want to get in on the act.

36 posted on 06/08/2021 6:34:13 AM PDT by RoosterRedux
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To: dinodino

You’re here to disrupt


37 posted on 06/08/2021 6:35:55 AM PDT by vigilante2
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To: vigilante2

Not at all—carry on! Tell us more about the alien spaceships.


38 posted on 06/08/2021 6:41:12 AM PDT by dinodino ( )
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To: posterchild
Here are some of the early Americans witnessing a UAP:


39 posted on 06/08/2021 6:42:48 AM PDT by DeFault User
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To: z3n

Earth isn’t likely on an interstellar bi-way.

Actually Earth is on the fly by route taken by most advanced civilizations fleeing the spreading Machine take over of the core of this galaxy.


40 posted on 06/08/2021 6:48:11 AM PDT by PIF (They came for me and mine ... now its your turn)
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