A humanoid sighting is said to have occurred during the spring of 1955 in Loveland, Ohio. A businessman saw three short beings by the side of the road at 4 A.M., believed he lost consciousness, and found himself driving to the police station without remembering what had taken place. This odd incident was investigated by researchers Ted Bloecher and Leonard Stringfield. On July 3, near Stockton, Georgia, a woman was driving when she saw four beings near the road that looked similar to later descriptions of Grays. She said they were small, with thin arms, pointed chins, no visible mouths, and “bug eyes.” Two were turned away from her, while one was bent over with something like a stick in its hand; and the fourth one faced her with its right arm raised. In Bradford, England, on August 16, a man and his teenaged son claimed to see a four-foot-tall being in skin-tight black clothes. On its chest was a silver disc perforated with holes, and it seemed to walk by jumping. The witnesses were too amazed to follow it.156
The best-known humanoid sighting of the year occurred near Hopkinsville, Kentucky, by the Sutton family on the night of August 21-22. A man in his yard saw a “spaceship” in a nearby field and ran inside to tell the others. Within minutes, several creatures were roaming the area. They were about three feet high with a roundish head, elephantine ears, a slit-like mouth extending from ear to ear, no visible neck, long arms ending in clawed hands, and wore glowing silver clothing. Their eyes were huge and wide-set. When running, the beings dropped to all fours. When one of them approached the house, a man fired his shotgun through the screen door, scoring a direct hit. The creature was knocked over, but got back up and scuttled off. Another man walked out the door, and one of the creatures reached for his head. According to the family, this kind of activity continued for the greater part of the night, and included heavy gunfire at times. At one point, one of the entities was knocked down from the roof by a bullet and “floated down.” Running out of ammunition, the Suttons mustered enough courage to scramble into their car and head for the police station. They brought back the deputy sheriff, who saw a fast-moving lighted object in the sky, but nothing else unusual.
Not surprisingly, the story received nationwide ridicule, and many assumed it was a hoax. Still, later researchers found the family credible, and many were inclined to believe the story. Even the chief of police agreed that “something scared those people—something beyond reason—nothing ordinary.” Strange as it may seem, the Hopkinsville incident to this day has its defenders among UFO researchers.157
MILITARY UFO ENCOUNTERS AND THE U-2
On June 4, 1955, an RB-47 aircraft of the Air Force Special Security Service (the air arm of the NSA) tracked an unknown aircraft visually and by radar for nine minutes near Melville Sound, in the Canadian Northwest Territories. The crew chief described what he saw as “glistening silver metallic.” The crew obtained gun camera film, but of poor quality. Three days later, another RB-47 en route to Eielson AFB, Alaska, registered electronic contact southeast of Bank’s Island at thirty-five hundred yards. The plane’s radar was jammed, apparently by the UFO. This was a matter of serious concern, since the purpose of the RB-47 was quick penetration of Soviet airspace to trigger radar alerts and thereby determine operating frequencies.158
On July 12, a memorandum from Todos M. Odarenko, the CIA/OSI Chief of the Physics and Electronics Division, cited a radar-visual UFO report from Pepperell AFB, Newfoundland. According to the memo, the pilot maintained visual contact with the UFO and noted “direction changes [which] correlated exactly with those painted on scope by controller.” The object was “observed by radar, at least, for forty-nine minutes,” a rather long time. Odarenko sent the memo to the CIA’s acting assistant director for scientific intelligence. “It is reasonable to believe,” he wrote, “that more information will become available on this when complete report . . . is issued.”159
On August 6, 1955, the U-2 spy plane took its maiden flight, which occurred over the remote, and newly developed, region known as Area 51 in Nevada. In the debate over which organization was more powerful, the air force or the CIA, it is noteworthy here that the U-2 program was CIA all the way, despite the strong wishes of Air Force General and SAC Commander Curtis LeMay. Instead, the air force had to provide the muscle and equipment to serve on the agency’s latest and greatest black project.160
