Although no one else picked up the story, Keyhoe was onto it quickly. He tried to get an air force comment. No luck. Ryan failed to return Keyhoe’s messages, and the CAA was silent. The incident faded away for a year, until Keyhoe obtained a copy of the CAA report with a statement from Ryan in which he admitted to seeing an object but “did not deviate” from his course “at any time.” Keyhoe’s conclusion: Ryan had been forced to lie. After more CAA stonewalling, he contacted the
But was it? The answer would have remained unknown had Keyhoe not then received a taped recording of an interview with Ryan and Neff from April 16, 1956, a week after the encounter, on the show
asked us our next point of landing and to identify the aircraft. I told them Syracuse and identified the flight number. Then they told us: “Abandon that next landing temporarily. Maintain your course and altitude. We’re sending two jets to intercept the object.”
Of the UFO, Ryan said, “This was absolutely real. I’m convinced there was something fantastic up there.” The ensuing detail given by the two pilots left no doubt. Keyhoe believed that “if the Ryan story were played up, the air force could be accused of deliberately exposing the Convair passengers and crew” to danger. Keyhoe later tried to use the incident as a wedge to open congressional investigations on UFOs, but ultimately the case fizzled out.175
Reports continued to trickle out showing ongoing navy interest in the matter of UFOs. A June 26, 1956, article from the
UFO sightings picked up slightly during the summer. On July 19, in Hutchinson, Kansas, a naval air station tracked “a moving unidentified object” on radar. The state police observed it visually as a teardrop-shaped light source. The object moved horizontally and vertically over much of the sky. A humanoid sighting was reported from Panorama City, California, on July 20, by three independent witnesses who claimed to see ordinary-looking humans with long blond hair and tight green suits. The beings were near a large ball-shaped object. Two days later, Air Force Major Mervin Stenvers was flying at sixteen thousand feet over Pixley, California. Before he was silenced by the military, he told reporters that his C-131-D was suddenly staggered and knocked to the right by a terrific blow of some sort. He radioed that his plane had been “struck by a flying saucer,” and made an emergency landing at the Bakersfield Airport.177
On August 13, 1956, one of the best-documented encounters between the military and UFOs took place at the NATO bases of Bentwaters and Lakenheath in England. At 9:30 P.M., radar personnel at Bentwaters picked up an object moving toward them at the astonishing speed of between 4,000 and 9,000 mph. It moved in a straight line to a position about fifteen miles northwest of Bentwaters. Within a few minutes, about a dozen normal targets were spotted eight miles southwest of Bentwaters, moving northeast at about 100 mph. In front of the targets were three objects in a triangular formation, about one thousand feet apart. Something odd then occurred: all the targets appeared to converge into one extremely large target, which then remained stationary for almost fifteen minutes. It resumed moving to the northeast, then stopped for a few minutes, then resumed, and was lost to radar. The entire sighting up to this point took twenty-five minutes.
Five minutes later, another solid target appeared, flying at 4,000 mph, or more, and vanished when it moved out of range. At 10:55 P.M., another target was picked up thirty miles to the east, traveling west at 2,000 to 4,000 mph. It passed directly overhead and was seen visually by both air and ground observers. Bentwaters notified Lakenheath AFB of what was going on, and Lakenheath personnel saw a luminous object stop, then zoom off to the east. Apparently, two white lights were seen joining from different directions, which were tracked on two radar screens at Lakenheath.
