Then you have simply not understood the evidence (object descriptions and drawings).
Or maybe I have understood it.
UFO: Circular (Blimp; cigar shaped)
Circular was their interpretation of the shape of an object that presented in profile as circular (or nearly so) at first, and as an ellipse later. They both drew elliptical diagrams, with large differences between the aspect ratios.
Yes the UFO would have presented as elliptical but it came from the east (toward the observers) and departed to the south (away from the observers) so it turned in front of them and yet maintained a circular (elliptical) aspect throughout, something that a blimp turning through 90 degrees or so could NOT have done! (and yes, the turn WAS viewed by Mr C through the binoculars).
How do you know the turn was 90 degrees? And it didn't maintain the same aspect ratio, as the two drawings and the witness statements show. It did, however, maintain an elliptical aspect. The "circular disk" was
their interpretation.
UFO: 25-65ft (Blimp: 250ft)
There is a huge disparity in size here (UFO to blimp). The observers estimated the object was about a mile or so away. Now, if the object was actually further away, then yes it would have been larger than their estimated size, but then it also would have been moving faster than their estimated “speed of a jet plane” – and that is NOT a blimp! If the object was closer than estimated, then yes it would have been moving slower, but it also would have been smaller than estimated – again this is NOT a blimp! This is related to the following observed characteristic.
You keep saying that the estimates of distance and size are what are most prone to error, and then use a disparity in size and distance estimates as an argument?
UFO: Speed of a jet plane (Blimp: top speed 78mph)
How did they estimate the speed? And just what speed is the "speed of a jet plane"? What was the typical speed of a jet plane in 1949?
UFO: Silent (Blimp: noisy)
A sense of how “distinctive” the sound of the blimp was can be found here (
http://www.shorpy.com/Goodyear-Blimp). It has been pointed out that the SPL reaching the observers could have been as low as 40dB and that ambient noise levels in a rural environment are around that level also. However this does not account for frequency. Low frequencies (such as emitted from engines) can be heard at greater ranges and as more distinctly separate from ambient noise. The bottom line is that sound from a blimp would have been present and (particularly) over the observation period of a minute or two – should have been apparent to the observers.
We've been over this. And as for your "source" for the "distinctive" sound of a blimp, it's just a couple of people saying that it's a "distinctive" low drone. Hardly evidence on which to base any sort of conclusion.
UFO: 1 upper fin (Blimp: 4 fins)
Ah, so now you're admitting that the UFO has a fin. Well done.
If the observers could see one fin, how could they miss three others?
Well, let's see. Assuming it was a blimp then one of the fins would have been on the far side, and thus impossible to observe, a second would have been on the near side, along the mid-line of the blimp, presenting a very thin aspect to the observers, thus
almost impossible to observe. And you've been shown dozens of photos of blimps where the lower fin is fairly obscure, and hard to pick out of the background. So, umm, that's how.
Especially as the object turned through about 90 degrees and also travelled across the observers line of sight.
Again with the 90 degrees. That's an assumption made by you from the description made by the observers. How did
they know it was 90 degrees?
Blimps are also not constructed of material that would cause a specular “glare” (such as would obscure details)
You were shown a photo of a Goodyear blimp from that era with the logo largely obscured by specular glare from the Sun, so how you can continue to make this argument is beyond me.
and even if they were, because of the manoeuvres, any glare would have been momentary – that is it is implausible that such glare would have remained constantly obscuring throughout the objects manoeuvres. This is also relevant to the following characteristics.
I'll come back to this later.
UFO: No protuberances (Blimp: fins, gondola, engines, mooring ropes)
Ah, back to claiming a complete lack of fins I see.
UFO: flat underside (Blimp: curved underside, lots of protuberances)
Not in the diagrams they drew. That's their interpretation of an object that presented an elliptical aspect throughout. Or are you forgetting you own words from earlier in this post?
UFO: No markings (Blimp: large Goodyear logo emblazoned on both flanks)
That they could see.
This is a clincher. Fine surface details of the object were noticed (eg: “dirty” and “wrinkled”). If such fine detail could be observed it is utterly implausible that a huge Goodyear logo could have been missed.
Uh, no. They stated that it "appeared" to be dirty and "seemed" to be wrinkled. That's not describing fine detail, that's describing an impression. The two are very different.
Now the drawings. The drawings only resemble a blimp if you have a confirmation bias toward “blimp”.
And
only don't resemble a blimp if you have a confirmation bias towards "not blimp".
The drawings are a rather sophisticated representation of a 3-dimensional circular object on 2-dimensional surface.
Or, they are accurate representations of what they
thought they saw. That doesn't necessarily mean that that's what was actually there.
I have already described in detail how the draftsman who drew the object (most likely Mr C because the level of sophistication in the two drawings precludes a graphically “naïve” artist) represented the object on paper.
They were drawn by two different people. That's why there are two drawings. You can tell because the styles of the drawings a quite different.
It is a representation of a circular object, NOT a “cigar-shaped” object. You are simply being mislead because of your own obvious graphical naivety.
Actually, I am a fairly good artist, and well aware of how to represent objects three dimensionally. I'm not denying that that's what he intended to convey with his drawing. The drawings represent exactly what the believed they saw, which was a circular disk at an angle. But again, that doesn't mean that it actually was a circular disk at an angle, merely that they interpreted it to be a circular disk at an angle. The only view of it they saw presented an ellipse, so the disk interpretation is precisely that - an interpretation.
Why is that so difficult for you to grasp?
You see only the 2-dimensional “outline”, but fail to recognise the 3-dimensional perspective.
I recognize it perfectly. You fail to see how the circular disk interpretation could be the product of a misinterpretation.
Now let us consider the historical data. There is an extensive and documented history that rules out USN/USNR blimps but it can be summed up in the following:
““Following the war, all blimp squadrons decommissioned except two which included Santa Ana's ZP 31 renamed ZP-1. Santa Ana also became an aircraft storage facility in November 1945. Finally in August 1947, the Navy relocated ZP-1 to Weeksville, N. C. and all blimp operations on the West Coast ended on June 6, 1949, Santa Ana decommissioned becoming an OLF. For a time, the hangars were used by advertising blimps.”(
http://www.militarymuseum.org/MCASTustin.html)
It says "all blimp operations on the West Coast ended on June 6, 1949". That's a few weeks after the sighting. Tell me, if there were no blimps at all on the West coast then how could there have been any blimp operations? Think about it.
That leaves the Goodyear blimps. Did Goodyear travel to Rogue River? Circumstantially yes:
1947 Goodyear West Coast Blimp Tour
1949-1982 Lumber Planing Mills
1952-1953 USAF Balloon Testing 1958 Balloon Launching (Cosmic Ray Research)
1963 & 1979 Coast-To-Coast Launching Point
1981-1991 Cyclocrane Development
1984 Short Take-Off & Landing Experiments
1984-Present Various Blimp Developments
1989 Government Aerostat Testing
1990 Trans-World Balloon Testing
1992-Present Aircraft Museum (Hangar B)
1994 USAF Tethered Radar Balloon Testing (
http://www.nastillamook.org/faqs/hangars/use.htm)
But note that Goodyear
only did so in 1947! If they had done so in other years then the citation would have included a
span of years (just as the two following table entry’s do).
Oh good lord, not that again. This only states that Tillamook took part in the Goodyear West coast tour in 1947. So what? Does that mean that Goodyear had no blimps anywhere except Tillamook in 1947? Does it mean that the Goodyear blimps were absent from the West coast in 1946, 1948, 1949, 1950.....? Of course not. That's a list of "Novel Projects" that Tillamook was involved in at the time. It says nothing about regular operations. The Goodyear blimps could easily have used Tillamook as an overnight mooring station for regular operations, and that wouldn't be mentioned in a list of "Novel Projects".
So what are we left with? Clearly based on the evidence a blimp is an implausible explanation for the sighting.
You know, my PhD supervisor once gave me a very good piece of advice. He said, "never say that something is clear. If it's clear you don't need to say it, and if it isn't clear then you're saying something untrue." Well, I'm sorry Rramjet, but it isn't "clear" at all.
The witness descriptions in NO way “resemble” a blimp
Yes, they do. If you take in to account the possible confounding factors in the observations.
and the historical evidence also rules them, out.
No, it doesn't.
So why do the UFO debunkers keep insisting that it was a blimp?
Nobody is insisting it
was a blimp. We merely point out that the possibility can't be entirely ruled out.
Well, that is what UFO debunkers DO. They simply ignore the evidence in order to maintain their own belief system.
No, we examine the evidence critically, taking all factors in to account.
When forced to confront the evidence they come back with things like:
But of course this ignores the fact that the use of binoculars resolved much detail about the object,
No, at the very least they made the object larger, but optical aberrations can actually obscure details. Did you ever look up optical aberrations? I'll bet you didn't.
so clearly whatever the condition of the binoculars, they aided the observation
To a degree, yes, but the question is, how large a degree?
and that a “little” rocking of the boat on a wide, flat, tidal section of river could cause such major observational errors (especially with the aid of binoculars) is implausible
On its own it probably wouldn't, but I'll come back to that in a bit.
and for a “bit of glare” to obscure all the details necessary to maintain the UFO debunker’s position over the period of observation time is utterly implausible. The UFO debunkers grasp at such straws because they know their case for a blimp is weak (to say the least) and anything they can throw at the case to “muddy” the waters they consider can only benefit them.
Again, I'll come back to this later.
Failing all that they make an appeal to science:
You're the one who claims to approach this scientifically. I'm just obliging.
Of course the UFO debunkers are relying on the essentially conservative nature of science to slip their argument through a theoretical loophole. Science can never prove anything beyond doubt. There is always a (theoretical) possibility that things are not as they seem. And so they pounce on this mere possibility.
It's not just about possibility, it's about the whole approach. Again, I'll come back to this.
See, they say, science tells us that we could possibly be right! However, what the UFO debunkers totally ignore is that science actually works on a preponderance of evidence. Theoretically anything is possible, but the simple fact remains that the weight of evidence in this case is against them. Sure a “blimp” might be possible in the sense that we cannot scientifically rule it out, but as an explanation in the real world is it likely or plausible as an explanation. Of course it is not.
Utter nonsense. Science can quite categorically rule out all sorts of things. In fact, that's how science works. You produce a hypothesis, and then test it. If the hypothesis fails the test then it is categorically ruled out. That's how science progresses. That's how it homes in on the truth.
Then of course there is the old UFO debunker trick of making false claims about what their opponents did or did not claim or do in a particular instance. I was never “incredulous” when the concept of measurement error was introduced into the (White Sands) argument and of course the possibility of error is always present in my mind when examining cases (as I have pointed out many times).
I apologise, incredulous was the wrong word. You were however surprised that I would question the validity of the measurement on the basis of a lack of error. You kept on insisting that no reputable scientist would produce a result where the error measurement was so large as to make the data unreliable. This is of course, completely untrue. I can give you several examples of published data with very large errors.
In the White Sands case I merely noted (and as you concede) that the analysts, being professional mathematician scientists, would have reported their results conservatively and would have positively accounted for any error in their summary analysis.
No, I conceded that they would have probably given an error in their official report, and hopefully they would have accounted for all sources of error, but you demonstrated quite ably that you have no idea what the error sources might be, and there's no knowing how conservative it was, or how conservative they would have been.
We can be pretty sure that they would NOT have reported results where the margin of error precluded such reporting.
How large an error precludes reporting? Would they really want to go back to their army bosses and admit total failure? I can see it now - "Hi, General, sorry, we couldn't get any reliable data. What was that? Why, yes, we are experts at triangulation. Well, yes, but we had a lot of problems. Well General, I really don't think there's any need for language like that . . . . . He hung up!"
Seriously, they were reporting to the army, an organisation not well known for its tolerance of failure.
They were professionals usually engaged in calculating trajectories of test rockets – it would have been more than their jobs were worth to have reported error filled data – especially on such a controversial subject.
Far worse to come back with absolutely no data than to report data with a large error.
Indeed the positive evidence for this can be noted when they refused to report data on a second triangulation (even though it was obtained) because of the mere possibility that because there was more than one object sighted at the time, then it was possible that the two observation posts were sighting a different object – even though all the objects were in relative proximity.
Even more interesting that it was the first attempt that gave such a result, and the second (and last) attempt that gave a measurement with no error.
So after all of that (my reply to Wollery above), all the UFO debunkers have left is to make false claims about my position. I have NEVER made claims about the relative likelihood of aliens versus blimps. Indeed I have NEVER claimed the Rogue River object to be anything other than a UFO. I merely note, based on the weight of evidence, that “blimp” is an implausible and thus unlikely explanation. I make NO claims regarding aliens at Rogue River.
Says the man who constantly misrepresents his opponents by claiming that we think that all UFOs are definitely mundane.
Okay, back to all those points that I said I'd return to. You keep on taking each of these items about the possible sources of trouble with the observations separately - the binoculars can't have been so bad that they would have made the observations that much worse and they obviously helped the observations, the boat wouldn't have been moving that much, blimps can't possibly produce specular glare and even if they could it wouldn't have been present throughout the observation period....
The problem with this approach is that it doesn't take in to account the fact that all of these things were happening at the same time. In order to assess the possible impact of these factors it is necessary to take them in combination.
This means that we have observers in a boat, which is an inherently unstable platform. Was it moving a lot? Well we can't know exactly how much it was moving, but it's very unlikely that it was completely still, so although it's true that by itself it wouldn't have been a big problem it would have added to any other problems they might have had in observing the object.
Next, we have the binoculars. Now these were navy
type binoculars, not navy issue. Is this a problem in and of itself? Probably not, but it does mean that we don't actually know what quality they were. We can assume that they were reasonably good quality for the time when they were bought, but we don't know how old they were or what state they were in at the time of the observation. Were they properly collimated? Slight uncollimation wouldn't hamper simple observation that much, but if you need to observe fine detail it would create problems, such as chromatic aberration and spherical aberration, both of which would smear out any details which might be there to be observed. There's also the possibility that the binoculars could have been damp inside. That's something that can happen quite easily in a boat, and would also affect the observations.
Heat haze. Yes, I know what you think about heat haze, but there is actually another factor to consider that related to heat haze, and that's seeing. Seeing is an astronomy term, and it relates to the movement of pockets of hot and cold air. Because these pockets of air have different densities they refract any light passing through them. The result is that light from distant object gets a little bit smeared. On the late afternoon of a warm day at sea level the seeing probably wouldn't be very good. It's not a huge effect, but it does exist, and would add to any problems.
Now we come to specular glare. As you correctly point out, if the object was turning then it wouldn't produce specular glare the whole time, but as the photo earlier in the thread showed, specular glare can occur with a blimp of that era, and would obscure the logo, at least partially. So let's examine this a little closer. Let's assume for a moment that the object was a blimp. When the blimp is moving towards them it doesn't matter if there's any glare, because the logo wouldn't be visible anyway. Once the blimp has turned it would be presenting its side, and the logo would be visible. However, the blimp is now side on to them, with the Sun at their backs, which is when it's most likely to produce any specular glare. So the time when they are most likely to be able to see the logo is also the time when its most likely to be obscured by any glare!
There's also the strong possibility of some haze from pollen. It was, after all, a warm summer day.
So, putting all that together, what do we have?
We have observers using binoculars that could well make observation of fine detail more difficult, at a time of day when the air itself could smear out detail, at a time of year when there would probably be pollen haze in the air, from a platform which would make keeping the binoculars aimed at the target more difficult, making observations of an object that (even with the binoculars) is quite small, and at the point in time when they are most likely to see the most obvious detail is exactly the same time that that detail is most likely to be obscured by the glare of specular reflection.
Now you can object to how much effect each of those factors would have on an individual basis, and independently none of them would make the observations that difficult, but they aren't independent. The result of combining several small effects is that as you add each one to the pile the observations become more and more difficult.
