The story I’m using is from THE IRANIAN JET UFO CHASE reference early in the thread and appears to be written by someone named Bruce Maccabee (…) there has to be a lot more to those debriefs than what is here.
Puddle Duck seems to have missed the fact that there exists the Routing Slip (McKenzie) and the Memorandum-for-the Record (Mooy) and also the statements by Jafari (the pilot of the second F-4) – and MUCH more besides!
There is some good information in what Puddle Duck posts, but equally there is some plain old garbage! In other words it is “misinformation” at its worst. Good information mixed in with bad, opinion with fact, (all under the “expert” guise of an former F-4 pilot) - and no way to tell them apart without extensive refutation that might well run into many times the length of the original post! Ughh!
The whole narrative as far as the aircraft side is just, well, strange. And a lot wrong. I would love to listen to the tower tapes. They were in English if Iran at the time was part of ICAO, and I’m almost sure they were and still are. If either of the birds were talking to a military GCI site, it could be either in English or Farsi. I don’t know which. I have worked with Norwegian, Dutch, German and Italian GCI sites, and they were all in English. I would also love to see the scope film of the 2nd bird if it ever existed, to see what was going on with the radar.
We don’t have access to the “tower tapes” but there is an excellent analysis of the radar information here: (
http://www.narcap.org/reports/006/narcap_radcat_textwebsite_MShough_12-8-02.pdf) (pp. 125-149) May I suggest you read the article and I will look forward to you opinion then.
Using the DOC of the article that was referenced (Iranian Jet Case.doc) , Page 2. Henry who was at Shahroki Air Field stated that it was rare for jets to take off full speed at night with afterburner. WRONG! Shahroki is at 5600 feet elevation, a very high altitude fighter field and probably density altitudes of over 8,000 ft would be common in the summer. F-4s always use full burner and take off at “full speed”, whatever that means.. I only used a military power take off a couple of times and those were on FCFs (functional test flights) looking for something specific.
”When I talked to Henry in late 1982 he still remembered the night, 6 years before, when he was rudely awakened by the loud roar of jets taking off at full speed. At that time he lived close to the Shahroki Air Field in Hamadan, Iran. Jets taking off at full speed at night and “with afterburner” were a rarity, he said. Henry was an employee of the Westinghouse Corp. and he was in Iran to help maintain the avionics, including radar, in the F-4 Phantom jets that the Iranians had bought several years earlier. Although he did not know the reason for the high speed takeoffs at the time they occurred, he found out the next day: the jets chased a UFO. Several days after that, he and co-workers were allowed to examine the planes. They found that all the electronics were operating normally. This was surprising, considering what the pilots reported had happened during the chase!’
Now Puddle Duck is claiming something he is
entirely ignorant of - SOP at a foreign airfield. Besides, his statements on the matter are actually contradictory:
“F-4s always use full burner and take off at “full speed”, whatever that means.. I only used a military power take off a couple of times and those were on FCFs (functional test flights) looking for something specific.”
Beg ‘pardon? “Always” and then “only a couple of times”? and “…military power take off…”? …whatever that means…
Page 6, para 2. The statement of a beeper on 121.12 Mz looks like either a typo or some one writing that was ignorant of that item. Beepers xmit on 121.5 in VHF and 243.0 Mz in UHF. Every ICAO and FAA tower monitors these frequencies. Since the tower appeared to not have heard it, the beeper was away from it and in a radio shadow of the tower. Also, beepers don’t normally just fall out of planes. Possible, but ultra improbable. Pure conjecture;: some one was playing with a light plane beeper. In any case, I don’t see any connection.
There were THREE separate “beeper” sources in the incident. The first:
“ Pirouzi now knew that the strange object was real, but he didn’t do anything about it. He had normal aircraft control duties to occupy his time. There were no aircraft scheduled to land at this time, but during the next hour four aircraft flew through his control area. As these aircraft passed by the pilots reported receiving an emergency radio beacon signal at 121.12 MHz. The pilot of a civilian liner asked if there was a crashed aircraft in the vicinity. There was none. The onset of the beacon signals combined with the earlier reports and his own sighting of some strangely lighted object began to worry him. He decided to appeal to “higher powers.” He called the Imperial Iranian Air Force (IIAF).”
(
http://www.brumac.8k.com/IranJetCase/)
"We had no aircraft expected to land, although around this time several aircraft were due to cross into our flight information region. They started to report by radio that they could hear emergency sig¬nals coming from an automatic aircraft distress transmitter.
“The first report in was a BOAC airliner, who called and said, 'Do you have a crashed aircraft in your area? We are receiving an automatic signal on 121.12 megacycles.' We said we had no crashed aircraft or missing ones in our area nor had any made a forced landing.
"Then a Swissair, a Lufthansa and an Iran Airlines plane all reported hearing the emergency signal. I decided to report the whole thing to the air force base because by now I was getting really worried."
(
http://www.cohenufo.org/iran.htm)
And the second:
“Before he left the area the pilot reported receiving an emergency beacon signal, as had the earlier civilian aircraft.” This is in reference to the end of the first F-4’s UFO chase.”
(
http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/ufo/routing_slip_ufo_iran.pdf)
And third:
“During the daylight the F-4 crew was taken out to the area in a helicopter where the object apparently landed, nothing was noticed at the spot where they thought the object landed (a dry lake bed) but as they circled off to the west of the area they picked up a very noticeable beeper signal, at the point where the return was the loudest was a small house with a garden. They landed and asked the people if they had noticed anything strange last night. The people talked about a loud noise and a very bright light like lightning.”
(
http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/ufo/routing_slip_ufo_iran.pdf)
Now I don’t know much about beepers, but given all that occurred that night and given that (as Puddle Duck says) “beepers don’t normally just fall out of planes”, then the reasonable assumption would be that it had something to do with the UFO…
I don’t know how close the Elburz mtns are to Tehran; Babolsar at 85-90 miles away, would not have been able to paint anything over Tehran less than about 18k ft. MSL, Shaharoki at 135-140 miles away should be able to see something over about 4k ft. AGL with several caveats. I’m not any type of expert on this.
“I’m not any type of expert on this.”? Quite!
See an extensive radar analysis here: (
http://www.narcap.org/reports/006/narcap_radcat_textwebsite_MShough_12-8-02.pdf)
Moreover, the F-4s (at least the second one) obtained a radar lock on the object and would have been able to relay the data back to base. Note: to get a VC reading that last more than several seconds you must have good radar contact. An accidental reflection off a mountain or a ground object will not work for more than a few seconds. In his article Dr. Maccabee points out that the pilot had an initial radar lock at 27nm and then VC=150kts until the radar distance was 25nm would have required at least 48 seconds.
Now to F-4 #1.Pages 8-10
. The moon phase was an early waxing crescent with moonrise a little after 0100. The thin crescent of the moon had been only up for an hour when the interactions started so it was almost as dark as no moon.. The moon won’t be overhead until a little past 0700.The visibility at altitude over the desert should be unlimited. The only problem is that you can’t see anything in the dark. He launched at 0130 from Shahroki heading northeast to intercept 40 miles north ot Tehran, so he was traveling 150 miles. He was probably told this was an ID pass, he probably climbed to about 20k ft MSL till he got to within 50-40 miles of the bogey, then descended. He probable was traveling around 420 knots, since that is a good all round combat speed for an F-4. It gets you where you’re going fairly quickly without using too much fuel. It would take about 22 minutes at that speed to arrive. The story does not mention any of this of course.
So the moon was not a factor in visibility.
“The only problem is you can’t see anything in the dark”.
But you can see a “brightly lighted object” of “intense brilliance” and especially when it is alternating “blue, green, red and orange in color”! Moreover, according to the Routing Slip the pilots had “night visibility” capability.
“He was probably told this was an ID pass.”
Pure speculation. We have no idea WHAT “he” was told!
”… he probably climbed to about 20k ft MSL till he got to within 50-40 miles of the bogey, then descended.”
Pure speculation again… but we KNOW from the routing slip that the FIRST F-4 got to within 25nm of the object when he
“lost all instrumentation and communication (UHF and intercom)” whereupon he “broke off” and returned to base. But also:
We know more about the second F-4:
“The Air Force message continues, “The crew descended from their altitude of 26,000 ft to 15,000 ft and continued to observe and mark the object’s position. (…) According to Pirouzi, the General ordered the pilot to descend to 6,000 ft, halfway between the primary object above and the ground below…”
“He probable was traveling around 420 knots, since that is a good all round combat speed for an F-4. It gets you where you’re going fairly quickly without using too much fuel. It would take about 22 minutes at that speed to arrive. The story does not mention any of this of course.”
Pure speculation again… and interestingly (F-4) Cruise speed: 506 kn (585 mph, 940 km/h) (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-4_Phantom_II) Morover:
“According to the pilot, as he approached at more than the speed of sound the object sped up to stay ahead.”
And we DO know more about the second F-4:
The SECOND F-4 launched and got a radar lock on the object at 27nm (apparent size of a 707 tanker) and his “rate of closure” was “150nmph”. When the F-4 got to 25nm the object then stayed ahead of him at that range.
“The pilot put the “pedal to the metal” and reached a speed of about Mach 2 (1,500 mph or 25 miles per minute) and still couldn’t catch it.”
And then we have the disparate statements from Puddle Duck:
“It appeared to now be as high as 12,000 ft”
Was this from the aircrew or from the tower chief? If the aircrew, the bogey would be at 12k MSL, if from the tower, it would be at 16k MSL and a wild guess at best.
That was from the tower. But as we have noted, the second F-4 DID have a good radar lock on the UFO and would have been able to give a good height estimate, (otherwise the General would not have subsequently ordered the F-4 to 6000ft – which was halfway between the ground and the UFO.
“he could see it from 70 miles away”
On a dark night like this, I see no problem seeing a light at that distance over a desert, especially if it is aimed in his direction and at altitude. The only thing that would cut visibility short of an inversion layer, would be light pollution and airborne crud in the vicinity of the city.
We have already noted the “intense brilliance” of the object…so “seeing” it was certainly not a problem.
[/I]“he approached at more than the speed of sound”[/I]
Why? This was just an ID pass. There was no critical time factor.
This is PURE speculation. We have only the evidence presented us to go on. The question may be asked, but given the circumstances, I suspect they would have wanted to find as much about the object as quickly as possible. They would not have wanted to waste time just cruising around! After all, an unknown object had invaded controlled airspace and they felt sufficiently alarmed to scramble two F-4s!
“the object sped up to stay ahead”
How far was he from the bogey when it did this? How far ahead did it stay? What direction did they go? Did they stay at 12k feet or change altitude?
We DO have the data on this. See above.
“while the jet was about 150 miles from Tehran, the object appeared over the city again, having beaten the jet back to the city”
Well apparently they climbed out, then went east about 200 miles and turned around. The time for this would be around a minimum of 50 minutes up to about an hour. The bogey is able to do 10,000 knots down in a thick atmosphere or can teleport itself?
Actually the F-4 headed northeast from Shahroki (Hamadan)
“and proceeded to a point 40nm north of Tehran” (Routing Slip). The above statement maybe a simple mistake… the point 40nm north of Tehran is 150nm from
Shahrokhi…but where you get “200miles” from is anybody’s guess (150 nm = 172m). At Mach 1 (717mph) that would take the F-4 about 14 minutes. At 500mph (just above your cruising speed of 420kn) that would be 20 minutes.
Besides you have obviously read nothing about UFOs. This is a trademark feature of MANY UFO reports (the ability to get from A to B “instantaneously” – or at least unbelievably quickly). There is nothing unusual about this if you had taken the time to understand the literature on UFOs. This is relatively NORMAL UFO behaviour. Besides we know from the second F-4 that he had trouble getting a lock on it because it was changing location so rapidly.
“…his engines were working normally, the lights on the instrument panel were working but all his navigation aids were out…”, when he got to a range of about 25 nautical miles, he “lost all instrumentation and communications (UHF radio and intercom).”
So the bogey is keeping him 25 miles or better, and if he gets closer he gets jammed With respect to the engines, there should be no problem with their working, as the fuel tanks have hydraulic pumps as well as electrical, and the throttle connections are mechanical. Think of a diesel engine
Finally, a statement by Puddle Duck about which he is actually qualified to comment on! Well done. It took a long time to produce, but there we have it. The contention is within his qualified experience and thus we cannot reasonably dispute it.
I find this quite amusing. So far Puddle Duck (and in much of what follows) has been recalling and commenting on events from over 30 years ago in which he was not involved using
“arguments from ignorance” – the very things the “skeptics” berate me for – yet when Puddle duck DOES this, his claims are suddenly “golden” and he is congratulated for making them!
“Youssefi ordered him to close again to get a better view”
Now the bogey loiters around Tehran for about a half hour until #1 gets back? I’m thinking that #2 got to play for a while, but I don’t know. There is some time missing.
This is about the right time for him to declare bingo and go home. He has been mucking around at fairly high powers setting for roughly an hour-40 to two hours. The big chase must have been fairly high to get over the mountains around Tehran, so he was probably above 20k altitude. If he had been down low, he would have had to recover at Mehrebad, and sucking fumes. #2 was on station by now.
Why loiters? The second F-4 is now merely minutes away! (given that, according to the Routing Slip, it was scrambled just ten minutes after the first - and if the UFO is now over Tehran - he has less distance to travel than the first F-4).
“The jet-UFO chase just described occurred over a period of about 10 minutes”
Whoa Nelly, how does an hour and a half +, get compressed to about 10 minutes, since there was a long distance chase? If it was 10 minutes, the long distance chase didn’t happen.
Well the key word here is “chase” …but you are radically extending the time frames by underestimating the speeds and overestimating the distances involved!
The first F-4 flies out to meet the UFO, plays around with it for some (obviously short) time before the UFO then beats him back to the city. Meanwhile the second F-4 will have made a good distance toward both in that time but:
“According to Pirouzi the pilot reported that he couldn’t easily follow the track of the object because it would change its position very fast, appearing at one location and then suddenly at another location, the same sort of saltatory (jumping) motion that Pirouzi had seen when he first saw the object.”
So actually, by the time the second F-4 closes on the object we can deduce where he was in relation to Tehran from the following statements:
“The pursuing F-4 continued on a course to the South of Tehran”
(Routing Slip)
”The pilot put the “pedal to the metal” and reached a speed of about Mach 2 (1,500 mph or 25 miles per minute) and still couldn’t catch it. He was flying toward the Afghanistan border, about 500 miles east of Tehran.”
Remember the first F-4 was to the NORTH of Tehran and the UFO beat him back to Tehran (meaning the UFO was heading south generally back toward the second F-4). So the second F-4 obviously finally locked onto the UFO somewhere to the south of Tehran, and was by then heading east (toward the Afghan border).
and so to F-4 #2 Pages 10-13
After #1 was airborne for 10 minutes, the General launched #2, so he got off the ground about 0150, when #1 is first getting entangled with the bogey. Why is a Colonel sitting alert? Colonels don’t sit alert. He should be pushing mountains of paper, unless he has to fill a square once a year or something.
Huh? Oh… of course … invasions of controlled Iranian airspace by unknown flying objects are just humdrum events to colonels!
#2 heads toward Tehran. #2 and #1 had to be talking to each other as well as to the tower. Meanwhile #1 is chasing the bogey east at about the same speed and is about 125 miles ahead of #2. #2 gets a little beyond Tehran (probably SE of town) about the time the bogey and #1 turn around, and is about 50-70 miles east of there when the bogey magically appears back over Tehran. So what does he do until #1 gets back to Tehran in about 20-25 minutes, gets jammed and goes home? The narration doesn’t say. It immediately jumps into #2’s playtime as though #1 wasn’t around.. The bogey starts jinking around and they both end up in a circle chase (this implies a distance of less than about two miles, probably less than one mile). This is apparently south of Tehran. Then the bogey extends? #2 gets a lock at about 25 miles with a positive delta V, so the bogey speeds up until they are back to 25 miles. It seems that the bogey is comfortable beyond 25 miles but gets really shy inside that. The writer seems amazed that the lock held for 48 secs. (Barring countermeasures, the radar will hold lock on a target as long as the target stays in front and within the radar’s limits, and does not get lost in any clutter.) They then turn east and push up the speed. Before this they were maybe close enough to Tehran to see the shape against the background city lights, but now it gets dark again..
Pure misinformation! Ughh! The distances are all wrong. The timing is all wrong. See above and DO a little accurate research.
“The pilot put the “pedal to the metal” and reached a speed of about Mach 2.2 (1,500 mph or 25 miles per minute) and still couldn’t catch it”
“pedal to the metal - (not an aviating term; the writer is using his creative writing)
Mach 2? MACH 2??? I call major B.S. This can’t be done! Remember the external fuel tanks? With them and the ordnance hanging in the breeze, and at 25-30k ft. straight & level, even a great D model might get M-1.3 and an E model about .1 more. The drag of the tanks is the major limiting factor. Someone is dreaming.
Top speed?
“Despite the imposing dimensions and a maximum takeoff weight of over 60,000 lb (27,000 kg), the F-4 had a top speed of Mach 2.23 and an initial climb of over 41,000 ft/min (210 m/s). Shortly after its introduction, the Phantom set 15 world records, including an absolute speed record of 1,606.342 mph (2,585.086 km/h), and an absolute altitude record of 98,557 ft (30,040 m). Although set in 1959–1962, five of the speed records were not broken until 1975 when the F-15 Eagle came into service.”
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-4_Phantom_II)
Who’s dreaming now? Are you really a former F-4 pilot?
“Youssefi ordered him to return to Tehran if he couldn’t catch it, so he turned and headed back eastward. The object also reversed direction and began to chase the plane.”
Perhaps he meant westward. It seemed that they were heading east at the time. There is not enough info to be sure though.
There IS enough info and YES, it should have been westward.
“ Jafari reported “something is coming at me from behind. It is 15 miles away…now ten miles…now five miles…It is level now…I think it is going to crash into me…It has just passed me by…missing me narrowly..”
There are a lot of ellipsi. What is missing?
What’s missing? Perhaps the “ellipsi” merely denote time passing between the pilot’s statements? So nothing missing at all. Assuming a conspiracy here are we?
They are still out east of Tehran…
Actually… southeast.
…and in the dark, only a thin crescent moon. He is saying that the bogey is chasing him and he is giving ranges every 5 miles from 15. The only way he can see the bogey is by the supposed lights on it. He can’t see an unlit object at all. Even under a full moon, he would have to be within a mile or so to see a shape. To be able to put an eyeball on it assuming it is about co-altitude, he has to turn enough to put it at his 5 or 7 o’clock. There is no depth perception out that far, he can’t radar paint it and he has absolutely no idea how far away it is. (An aside- since most of the chases were out to the east, why didn’t the General have Babolsar scramble one or two? They were a lot closer to the action. I assume that he was keeping a close eye on all this.}
The UFO was “intensely bright”, so seeing it would have presented no problem at all! And remember also there was a “backseater” whose job in an F-4 is to do exactly that… to keep an eye out and to track ”bogeys”. I would have thought a former F-4 pilot would have known that much at least… are you really a former F-4 pilot? Or just saying so to get our attention?
You mean the F-4 is radar “blind” in all directions except directly in front? I find that hard to believe.
How do you know there were any jets that COULD be scrambled from Babolsar on the night in question?
They apparently get back to somewhere near town and south of it, where he turns into the bogey. At this time, he has been airborne over an hour at fairly high power settings and has been using burner for at least 5 min..maybe as much as 15 during his chase. He is not going to punch off his tanks unless he has permission from the General, and there is nothing in the narration that says that he did. By this time he is starting to get low on fuel.
This is all “argument from ignorance”. Unfounded supposition. Besides your timing does not match the facts of the case! This is pure garbage in other words.
“The object and the pursuing F-4 continued a course that was south of Tehran when another brightly lighted object estimated to be 1/2 to 1/3 the apparent size of the moon, came out of the original object.
This second object headed straight toward the F-4 at a very fast pace. The pilot attempted to fire an AIM-9 (heat seeking) missile at the object but at that instant his weapons control panel went off and he lost all communications (UHS and intercom). At this point the pilot initiated a turn and a negative G dive to get away. As he turned the object fell in trail at what appeared to be about 3-4 nm. As he continued in his turn away from the primary object the second object went to the inside of his turn and then returned to the primary object for a perfect rejoin”
OK, the bogey shoots what appears to be a missile, but the size estimation is extremely iffy as there is not much moonlight and the description of lit sounds like a propulsion device . How far away was the bogey at this time? He had to be very close to see the launch, but had to be at a long range for the missile to fall into trail at 3-4 miles. It appears that he is somewhere around the magic 25 mile difference, but at that distance, he won’t see a launch. He turns away and pushes over? He has to be far enough away to attempt to get the missile to his beam so as to dodge it, but then he pushes over. That would just solve the firing solution for the missile, because he just straightened out his flight path. . As he turns away, he should be inverted and pulling to break the solution, not doing a push over.
From the Routing Slip:
”The object and the pursuing F-4 continued on a course to the south of Tehran when another brightly lighted object, estimated to be one half to one third the apparent size of the moon, came out of the original object. This second object headed straight toward the F-4 at a very fast rate of speed…”
We KNOW he was at about 25nm from the UFO and quite obviously a “launch” WAS apparent!
The pilot tried to fire an AIM-9 missile but at that instant he lost instrumentation.
[INDENT”At this point the pilot initiated a turn and negative G dive to get away…”[/INDENT]
Why? His solution was to avoid confrontation. Remember he had just lost ALL instrumentation including communications – so what do YOU want him to do? YOU want him to act as if he had all his instrumentation still working perfectly and continue to engage! No thanks! (Says the pilot).
“The pilot reported to Pirouzi that the secondary object started heading toward the airplane. At this time the pilot was approaching the airport and Pirouzi and the others at the control tower saw this happening. According to Pirouzi, “I saw this light for the first time, though only for a few seconds” after it first appeared. As the plane went “screaming” over the airport Pirouzi and the others saw a dark rectangular form almost “sitting” on top of the jet. It was at about this time that the communications were lost, cut off in mid-sentence. The plane then went into a diving turn and it wasn’t until the plane and object were over Saveh, about 15 miles south of the airport, that communications were re-established. Then the pilot reported to Pirouzi that the second object had broken off the chase and was traveling within a few meters of the first. Then he reported that they had rejoined, as described above.”
“Now according to the tower, this happened directly over the tower and that the missile chasing #2 was within about a hundred feet of the plane. But the pilot reports it is 3-4 miles behind him. The pilot then reports that the missile goes back to the bogey and formates within a few meters of it. To see this, #2 has to be within about a couple thousand feet of the bogey if they are still over the city, and if away from the city, within about two hundred feet. Remember there is only a sliver moon (probably about 30-40 degrees or so up by now, and it is still dark out away from the city lights. Did the bogey haul up close to #2? Previously, the bogey had been keeping both birds at about 25 miles. How high were they above the field, a thousand feet or so or around 20k ft area? For the tower to see both machines they had to be low but in the next event that immediately followed, they were at 26k feet. More high power maneuvering. By this time they had to be sucking fumes.
This is all just nonsense supposition! Arguments from ignorance!
“The Air Force message continues, “The crew descended from their altitude of 26,000 ft to 15,000 ft and continued to observe and mark the object’s position. They had some difficulty in adjusting their night visibility for landing. “ [Note: this could be evidence of the great brightness of the object; their night vision problem would be like looking at the bright full moon for many seconds or a minute and then trying to see stars in the dark sky at a distance away from the moon.] “So, after orbiting Mehrebad a few times they went out for a straight-in landing. There was a lot of interference in the UHF and each time they passed through a magnetic bearing of 150 deg from Mehrebad they lost their communications (UHF and intercom) and the INS [inertial navigation system] fluctuated from 30 to 50 degrees. The one civil airliner that was approaching Mehrebad during this same time experienced communications failure in the same vicinity (Kilo Zulu) but did not report seeing anything.”
We now have the third gizmo drop to the ground and illuminate the area. This was close to the refinery. There is no indication of what was found the next day on the helicopter trip for either the flare or the beeper.. They then had some comm problems on the 150 radial that appeared to be at the reporting point KZ although it doesn’t actually say, and had problems with the INS platform. That indicates something on the ground in a hole jamming both the UHF and VHF frequencies. The INS? No idea. Was there a huge magnet? Probably not. (If the platform got dumped, then the show was over & they would immediately land if possible.) The description of the INS fluctuation 30-50 decrees does not state in which axis.
Then Routing Slip states the area where the third object went down was a dry lake bed and it “cast a very bright light over an area of about 2-3 kilometers”.
The FACT that the INS fluctuated is of significance by itself.
It does not mention what color the lights were but all aircraft flying at night carry nav lights on the tips of the wings that are green and red, with a white light on the tail. There is also a red rotating beacon on the fuselage. By seeing this from below in the city light glare, it could look like the description, with the wings appearing to be a cylinder, the beacon in the center and the nav lights at the ends. It would have been about 6k ft above them. The aircrew should have known that it was another bird though.
From the Routing Slip:
“…While the F-4 was on a long final approach the crew noticed another cylinder shaped object (about the size of a T-bird at 10m) with bright steady lights on each end and a flasher in the middle. When queried the tower stated there was no other known traffic in the area.”
Bolding mine. Rr.
Besides, I have NEVER seen an aircraft at night with “wings appearing to be a cylinder” (and the rest of your description) and I live under a flight path in an urban area where we get up to 20 planes per hour going over at night (of all shapes and varieties)! Who ARE you anyway… you obviously are not familiar with how planes look at night!
<snip a lot of irrelevant information about electrical systems>
My take on this is that apparently something odd happened, but the story is so garbled and error riddled that it can’t be used for anything.. It also seems that there is a lot missing from this story. Someone is spoofing someone?
“Something odd happened.” You think?
“Something missing from the story” Yes, we don’t have a lot of information that it would be useful to have. There is no doubt about that. But the information we DO have is rather startling in the story that it tells.
I have gotten another link from a post in the thread, from Wickipedia org
/wiki/1976_Tehran_UFO_incident
I’ll use this for a few more comments, but I’m not going back & editing.
It is always dangerous to rely on Wikipedia in such matters. For example:
“So at this time, Jafari was not a Col. but a Lt. Considering that he was a new guy…”
Jafari states:
“At the time I was squadron commander.” (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJydT3AZ370). It hardly needs pointing out that a “squadron commander” is NOT a “new guy”! Again your arguments from ignorance are simply appalling!
My take still stands. Due to the munged information on the aircraft side, I’m guessing that the rest would be just as bad, and I think that it would be useless as proof of anything.
“munged information”? No, there are clear statements as to what occurred. Many people have put a lot of research into this event. If you choose to ignore that research and have not yourself even conducted the necessary basic research into this case to be familiar with it then you are in NO position to comment.
I have shown in the above the fallacy of your “arguments from ignorance”. You have simply made use of wild and unfounded speculation. Even getting the basics such as the top speed of an F-4 wrong! And this from a supposed former pilot of them! You have misrepresented the times, speeds, distances and directions involved. The ONLY thing that you got right was the fact that the F-4 can fly without its avionics – but that is common knowledge and we do not need a “former pilot” to tell us that.
Your assessment is simply speculative misinformation and has now been shown to be so. Next time you should at least do some basic research into the subject, perhaps then you will not have to rely on unfounded speculation and misapprehensions about the facts in the case.
