Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Military Secrecy: Black Ops Modus Operandi

Topic: Operational Security and how the reality may differ from the super-spy movie version.

While there is no evidence to support it, the best real world suspect for military involvement in the Cash-Landrum UFO case seems to be Operation Honey Badger.  The hardware, techniques and mission are intriguingly similar to the helicopters witnessed in the UFO encounter.

While training for Honey Badger their operation was nearly exposed, but first it's necessary to provide some context on the mission and location. We'll be going South...




OH-6 Little Birds Go Black

The Black Ops mission of Honey Badger consisted of " the helicopters of Task Force 158, which included OH-6 Little Birds, UH-60 Black Hawks, and cargo-carrying and cargo-carrying Chinooks…" They were gathered to train for long range night missions using new night vision equipment, armament and extended-range fuel tanks.

In 1980, as part of Operation Honey Badger (an aborted 2nd mission to rescue American hostages held in Iran), OH-6 (Little Bird) Bell helicopters were secretly armed and modiifedArmy 160th SOAR History: "OH-6A scout helicopters (Little Birds) were chosen for the light assault role because of their small size and ease of transport. The Little Birds could carry only three soldiers and a single pilot, but they could land in the most restrictive locations." 

OH-6


Personnel at Fort Rucker, AL developed, tested and created armed AH-6 Little Bird gunships, and they were then transported to Gulfport, Mississippi for training flights, classified program called “Nine-Whiskey-Whiskey." 

Dressed to kill


This was a priority mission and was given "White House Special Clearance" and superseded all normal orders and procedures. All participants had to be cleared by the FBI, security was tight. The pilots selected to fly the OH-6A helicopters came from the 229th Attack Helicopter Battalion and were sent to the Mississippi Army National Guard's Army Aviation Support Facility (AASF) at Gulfport, Mississippi, for two weeks of qualification training in the aircraft. The Gulfport operation was led by Jim Burns, director of the MS AVCRAD (Aviation Classification Repair Activity Depot).


Security is Threatened

Snowbird/Honey Badger directive: Avoid exposure by the Media

Charlie Something from Such & Such News



Colonel John J. Stanko describes an incident in Gulfport about how operational security was in danger of exposure by the local media:
    So about two days into this [special project] Jim Burns calls and says, “Hey Colonel, there's this guy down here—Charlie Smith (or something) from such and such a newspaper… He's a newspaper reporter and he's out in the parking lot and he's checking every car, every car tag, looking over the fence, trying to see what's going on. And he's gotten word from somebody in Washington, DC that something's going on at the  Mississippi AVCRAD. He wants to take a look at it.”
      “How the hell that got out so quick, I don't know.”      
      "So Jim Burns tells me—he walks out to the parking lot and says, 
“Hey, 'Charlie Reporter,' how ya doing? Come on in here. Let me tell you what's going on here". 
     And so Jim Burns takes him by the arm and walks him waaaay up the parking ramp there to an OV-1 Mohawk airplane. Jim says to the reporter, “See that? That's a Mohawk.” And he starts describing the Mohawk to him and says, “See this is a rare airplane and it does intelligence and surveillance. That airplane is from the Georgia Army National Guard and when they can't fix that airplane, they send it down here to Mississippi and we fix it and we do the maintenance and we test fly it. Jim talks real, real slow and goes into a lot of detail regarding the nomenclature, horsepower, radios, blade lengths, etc about each of the aircraft he had shown the reporter.      
     Later that afternoon, the reporter goes back and writes up his story, convinced that maintenance is the real story and sends it in.

Jim Burns, using counterintelligence techniques learned from Huckleberry Hound and Foghorn Leghorn, was able to baffle the reporter and protect the secrecy of mission from the media. 


Speak slow… but do some fast talking!


Epilogue: Dark Desert Testing

When the Gulfport pilot training was completed, C-141 aircraft transported the aircraft and crews to Fort Huachuca, Arizona, for two weeks of mission training. The mission training consisted of loading onto C-130 transport aircraft which would then transport them to forward staging areas over night routes as long as 1,000 nautical miles (1,900 km). The armed OH-6 Little Birds aircraft from Fort Rucker joined the training program in the fall of 1980. Records indicate that there was little activity late  in the year as the mission was on hold.

Operation Honey Badger was canceled after the hostages were released on 20 January 1981, but the team was not dissolved. They became the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne), better known as the "Night Stalkers."





Additional sources 


Tuesday, April 22, 2014

UFO Debunking 1953: Review of Flying Saucers by Donald H. Menzel

Here's a review of one of the earliest books on UFOs, Flying Saucers, a skeptical look at the topic by a prominent astronomer. It's an interesting look into the state of things while the field was barely its infancy.


Discovery: The magazine of Scientific Progress 
November 1953, Mr. William E. Dick, editor




Flying Saucers by Donald H. Menzel (London, Putnam & Co., 1953 , 319 pp., 21s.) 
 The 'flying saucerscare of 1947 was not the first of its kindbut no previous epidemic of this type of mass hallucination ever spread so far; 1947 provided a proof that modern mass media of communication can spread rumours as fast as they can spread true facts. Another reason for the difference was that in 1947 few scientists gave public utterance to what they knew to be the true facts of the case. In addition, the general public seemed to be rather more gullible in 1947 than on previous occasions; their their smattering of knowledge about aeronautical progress seems to have been associated with an attitude of mind which provided fertile ground for the pseudo-scientific belief in space travel, and even for the remote idea that the saucers were interplanetary space ships. Culmination of the affair was the report — a complete hoax which, however, many found quite plausible — that a wrecked saucer made of some unearthly metal had been found, and that this contained bodies of dwarf astronauts from Venus— described as "midgets wearing 1890 clothes" made of some untearable fabric!
There were, of course, some real flying saucers that gave rise to the fantastic rumours. As the author of this book says, these were as real as rainbows.

Dr. Menzel, astrophysics professor at Harvard, here provides full explanations of the different types of optical tricks which the atmosphere and its contents can play on human eyes and describes the optical phenomena which account for the flying saucers of 1947.  His account of these matters is excellent though he is far more entertaining when he is disposing of the various fanciful interpretations which people gave of those phenomena  He shoots to pieces the American book Behind the Flying Saucers [by Frank Scully] which was serialised in Britain and which did so much to propagate the hoax about the midgets from Venus.

Wednesday, April 9, 2014

UFO Case Review presents: the Cash-Landrum Incident, 1980

UFO Case Review has been releasing a series of Youtube videos presenting excellent entry-level mini-documentaries on famous UFO events. Recently the creator discussed covering the Cash-Landrum case, and now it's finished it ready for viewing. As he posted online:

"I'm very proud to be keeping up with my goal of releasing one video every month, and uploading my review of the Cash-Landrum Case of 1980. Big thanks to ufologist Curtis Collins for reviewing my script and ensuring it was as accurate as could be!"
From the video description:
"Too often, the UFO phenomenon is dismissed for its supposed exclusive reliance on eyewitness testimony. However, there are numerous examples of UFO encounters that have left tangible traces of their presence in the physical environment, or on the witnesses themselves. The so-called Cash-Landrum Case of 1980 is a notable example of the latter, having left all three of its witnesses with symptoms of severe radiation poisoning following a late-night encounter with an unidentified object. It is one case, at least, that cannot possibly be dismissed as a fabrication, a misidentification, or a hallucination, and one that points to a possible connection between the UFO phenomenon and the U.S. government."



The video does a very good job of sticking to the original details of the case, and provides just the kind of background needed to draw attention to it and promote further study.

Be sure to check out the videos on other cases and share them with others- a great educational resource:




Sunday, March 30, 2014

UFO or Secret Terrestrial Vehicle? Comparisons to IFOs

If the UFO in the Cash-Landrum case was a secret terrestrial vehicle, what was it?
No vehicle similar to it has been declassified or discovered, and the only (known) things remotely similar were built several years later after the incident.

The Galaxy Invader   Moviecraft Entertainment  

The UFO

The Cash-Landrum UFO's size is not precisely known, but we do have estimates from the witnesses. It was compared in size to the tank of a water tower, but their guesses of figures varied:

Early sketch approved by the witnesses.

Vickie Landrum: Height: 25 ft Diameter: 12ft (1981)
Betty Cash:         Height: 50 ft Diameter: 25ft (1981)
Colby Landrum: Height: 100 ft Diameter: 50ft (2013)

To try reaching a better understanding of the size, mass and flight characteristics of the UFO, below are a few estimates of identified flying objects for caparison, not to suggest them as suspects.

The Space Shuttle

The US Space Shuttle

(Columbia weighed 178,000 pounds.)

The Space Shuttle must be launched by a booster or another craft, and is not capable of independent vertical flight. It provides the best example of 1980 technology to produce a space vehicle.

Harrier V/STOL Aircraft

Harrier Jet

Wingspan: 30 feet 4 inches
Length: 46 feet 4 inches
Height: 11 feet 8 inches
Weight: 31,000 pounds
A Harrier is designed to fly horizontally, but can take off and land vertically and hover for for brief periods.

Hot Air Balloon




A typical hot air balloon is 63 feet in height and 55 feet in diameter. 
The weight is 214 pounds for the envelope and 450 pounds for the entire system including fuel and passengers.

Hot air balloons lift off vertically, but horizontal flight depends on reaching a favorable wind current in the desired direction. 


DC-X, The McDonnell Douglas Delta Clipper


The McDonnell Douglas Delta Clipper


For comparison, here are the specifications on the Delta Clipper:
DC-XA; Delta Clipper-Experimental; Delta Clipper Experimental; SX-1; Clipper Graham. 
Status: Retired 1996. 
Gross mass: 16,320 kg (35,970 lb). 
Height: 14.00 m (45.00 ft). 
Diameter: 3.05 m (10.00 ft). 
Span: 4.10 m (13.40 ft). 
Thrust: 223.00 kN (50,132 lbf). 
Apogee: 3.00 km (1.80 mi). 
First Launch: 1993.08.18. 
Last Launch: 1995.07.07. 



The DC-X came many years too late to be a plausible candidate, but provides an interesting comparison because it is a close match to the average of the sizes reported and should approximate the mass of the UFO. If it was something the size of the Delta Clipper, that reduces the chances of it being a manned craft to near zero.

The DC-X film below provides an interesting visualization of what a real craft might have looked like in flight.





If the UFO was a man-made secret US military project as the witness believed, it is unlike anything produced at the time or since. That takes us back to the big question:


What was it, and just where did it came from?



Wednesday, March 26, 2014

The 4th Witness, Betty Cash's Car

The Absence of Evidence…


A case file on "missing witness," the car involved in the Cash-Landrum UFO encounter, Betty Cash's 1980 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme

1980 Oldsmobile Cutlass (2-door)
Length: 5022 mm / 197.7 in
Width: 1826 mm / 71.9 in
Height: 1350 mm / 53.1 in
Turning circle btw. walls: 11.4 m / 37.4 ft
http://www.automobile-catalog.com/auta_details1.php

Betty's 1980 Oldsmobile Cutlass


Similar Cutlass


Betty's Cutlass, Feb 22, 1981



“Betty Cash’s 1980 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme was a Christmas gift, and is still under warranty.”

“After the sighting, it began to run roughly and miss. The clock and radio now fail...”

“A lens cover appeared to have been affected by heat was removed for further testing.”

Hendry FUFOR Report 4/81
(There's no further mention of the lens cover anywhere in case literature.) 


The Dashboard

One of the strange things reported was the impression of Vickie's handprints to the dashboard during the incident.

Sample interior of a 1980 Cutlass supreme

"[Vickie] screamed for me to stop, and right where she put her hands, her fingerprints are still on my dash, it melted my dash in the car with her fingerprints imbedded."Betty Cash in Bergstrom AFB interview 8/17/1981

The image conjured by the description is often along the lines of handprints left in sand or cement.


Jimmy stewart's handprints at Grauman's Chinese Theatre
As depicted on "Close Encounters" 
 "...inside the car it was so hot til my handprint is yet in the dashboard of Betty’s car."Vickie Landrum, UFOs: What's Going On?” September 10, 1985

Photographs of the genuine impressions are a bit less dramatic
Photo by Schuessler of Vickie's impression on the dash
The interior of Betty's car as shown in 1985 HBO documentary.

Betty demonstrating the placement of the handprints.

John Schuessler had his own version of how the handprints were made:
“As Vickie leaned forward to peer out of the front window, her hands grabbed the padded  dash area which molded into the shape of her fingers. The imprints are still there."                   -J. Schuessler, CUFOS symposium, Sept.1981
The emphasis placed on the handprints by the witnesses is significant. It may yield valuable insight into how the reality of the event differed from their emotionally charged memories of it.


The dashboard plays another small role in the story, it provided cover for Colby Landrum to view the object after retreating into he car. Vickie Landrum speculated that it provided him a better view of the object, allowing him to describe a shape for it.

It was from below the dashboard that Colby watched the object.

Electromagnetic Effects?


In John Schuessler's original report, he stated that
“When the group met the UFO they stopped the car - it did not fail on its own.”

But controversy arose when Betty Cash started saying otherwise:
Allan Hendry interview FUFOR 4/2/1981 talking about the motor stalling:
BC: “It just quit on its own

"I had not killed the motor on the car, I had put it park. The radio was
playing on low, but the car completely went dead. I mean, it was like somebody
had turned a switch off on it." BC in Bergstrom AFB interview 8/17/1981

This discrepancy was not addressed in Schuessler's reports, but he deftly sidestepped the issue in 1982:

“It is not clear whether Betty turned the car engine off, or whether it just died."
The Unexplained (UK) Orbis Publishing Limited, Vol 9, Issue 107

By the time of his book. He repeats testimony given by Betty Cash describing the motor stalling in the presence of the UFO and includes it in his narrative:
“But for the first time she realized the engine on the Cutlass had died.”
(JS narration of the scene following the UFO’s exit,) CLUFOI pg 13

The electromagnetic effects in the case would be a major point of interest, but due to the the initial report stating the witness stopped the car's engine, it can not be regarded as anything but an unsubstantiated later claim. When combined with a huge brilliant ovoid UFO, it certainly is reminiscent of the 1957 Levelland incidents in Texas, though. 

Vehicle stopped by UFO in Stephen Spielberg's  "Close Encounters"

No Escape 

“As Betty glanced to the side and then looked through the rear window, seeking some way to escape, but the highway was narrow and she was afraid of getting stuck in the muddy ditches if she tried to turn around.“Vickie, I can’t even see the sides of the road!”, she shouted, “I can’t turn around and I don’t dare back up.” The Cash-Landrum UFO Incident by John F. Schuessler page 78


Part of the reason for not turning the car around was that the shoulders were wet from rain earlier in the day. As seen in the auto's specifications, it had a huge turning circumference, and the road was approximately 18 to 20 feet wide. No mention was made of trying to restart the car to escape.




Another interesting detail is the height of the car, 53.1 inches. Vickie supposedly burned her hand from laying it on top of the car. She was short, five feet tall (60 inches). Unless she was standing on the threshold of the open door, it seems unlikely she could reach up to lay the back of her hand on the car's top. Even so, it would seem to be an uncomfortable position, more so that she was said to also be restraining and comforting young Colby during this time.

Getting Out of the Car

The sequence of events following the car stopping has been explained and second-guessed, as to who got out and for what reason.
“Then Betty got out of the car and started walking toward the object. It was as big as a water tank and about a half-mile up in the sky. It started getting real hot in the car, so I rolled the window down and stuck my head out to look at it."  Vickie Landrum Weekly World News March 24, 1981
“ they opened the car doors to stand beside the car and watch.”MUFON Journal April 1981 (Richard Hall’s case summary)
"The car heated rapidly, forcing them out into the open where the heat seared their skin and caused their eyes to burn."Schuessler, J. F. (1996). UFO-Related Human Physiological Effects

After interviewing Betty Cash for the for the first time in Feb. 22,1981, John Schuessler then examined her automobile:
"The car was a 1980 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme with Texas license number VAS 217. I examined it for obvious damage and found it to be clean and in good condition. The exterior paint and plastic parts were all found to be in good condition. The tires were like new. The only visible anomaly was some very clear hand-shaped imprints in the padded dashboard on the passenger (right)side. A geiger counter was passed over every part of the vehicle,but no readings above background radiation level were found.Also, no unusual strong magnetic fields were found by using a hand-held compass as a detector. When started up, the engine did run a little rough."

Betty later claimed that two unidentified military men tried to purchase the vehicle. Vickie told a similar Men-in-Black story that they approached Betty offering to replace the car's interior. Two other bits of trivia, the car's plastic steering wheel crumbled, leaving only the metal frame. Supposedly Betty saved the pieces for study, but nothing further is known. More dramatically, in the mid-80s while the legal efforts were churning, Betty was in the Houston area with her car for a recreation for Mitch Duncan of KHOU. When the spotlight lit the car, it shattered the windshield, something it should not have done. Fragments of the glass were saved for study. It could be that glass and plastic fragments lay forgotten among the belongings of Betty Cash.


Sadly, the car was not retained as evidence, and Betty drove it for many years afterwards. Ken Storch located the car in the late 90s, somewhere in south Mississippi, but was unable to obtain funding to investigate further. Chances are, no further information could be retrieved, but still, what a relic!


Another lost Cutlass