The most ambitious project to study a UFO sank into oblivion. They tried to forget about him. Scientists were frightened of the results of the study, and ufologists did not want to stay unnecessary if science seriously took up the matter.
Epicenter of activity
In late February and March 1973, the neighborhood of the town of Pidmont in Missouri was covered by a wave of UFO sightings. Machines were rendered immobile, when fireballs appeared in the sky or a ray of light fell from somewhere above. The inhabitants of Pidmont continually complained of tele-interference.
Harley Rutledge
When the TV screens covered solid ripple strips, people went out onto the street and saw UFO flying overhead.One of the townspeople ran outside when his house suddenly shook. Somewhere from above there was a rumble.The man looked up and saw an egg-shaped object hanging over the roof of the house.
Dean of the Faculty of Physics, Southeast University, Professor Harley Rutledge (Harley Rutledge) invited the teacher of astronomy Milton Ueleka himself to go to Pidmont and watch the sky. The trip shocked the scientists.They saw in the sky a lot of strange lights.
"The lights turn on and go out against the background of a black or dark blue sky," Harley Rutledge said of the night vigil. - The objects themselves are not visible, except for cases when something obscures the stars. They change color from white to orange. In most cases, they fly with the speed available for airplanes, and sometimes they develop unthinkable speed - thousands of miles per hour.
Rutledge calculated that at one of the maneuvers he saw, there should be an overload, 330 times greater than the gravitational force. For humans, this is deadly, and any earth technology will inevitably fail. He turned to the university rector with a proposal to begin a serious study of the phenomenon.
Project start
Rector Mark Scully approved the idea and allocated a special grant to it. He allowed Rutledge and Ueleka to take instruments from university laboratories and involve volunteer students in research. Soon they were joined by other professors and teachers.
Scientists have chosen several points for observation, equipping them with the latest technology. At the disposal of Harley and his colleagues were telescopes, portable radars, spectrometers, dozens of other instruments. The monitors were supported by means of radios provided by civil defense.
The police, the mayor's office and the Pidmont radio station provided all possible support, and the hotel allocated a separate house for the headquarters. One of the radios was handed to private pilot James Trickey, ready to climb into the sky at any moment.
Dozens of people took part in the project under the modest name "Identification" (Project Identification). Soon the observation net brought the first catch.
Meeting in the air
On May 11, 1973, observers saw a UFO high in the sky. Harley Rutledge decided to fly to the side in order to approach them as close as possible.
"I was on board the plane, piloted by Tricky," the dean said in an interview. - John Wilson and Drake Kambich, the undergraduates from my faculty, are located in the rear seats. We flew north of Piedmont.
The sun had set, but the sky remained blue, as at noon. At 20:10 I looked at the earth, the sky and the horizon through binoculars, trying to see where the lights come from - because of trees, fly from afar or just light up in the sky?
I looked up and forth when a yellow, almost white fire caught fire on a clear sky. He blinked with a frequency about once a second. A second later, a second fire lit up. They blinked one by one: one faded away, the second flared up, and vice versa.
Then I still hoped it was some kind of natural phenomenon, but then there were seven lights at once, lining up in a straight line. The first three lights burned against the background of something black, obscuring the blue sky, while the other four were shone separately.
I pointed in that direction. The pilot changed course. Suddenly, in the lower right corner of the binoculars appeared the tenth UFO. I handed the drake to the binoculars, but he saw nothing. UFOs disappeared instantly, when they were not looked at - they went out or flew into space.
At 21:10 John, looking in the back window, said:
"Dr. Rutledge, the UFO is approaching ... He is coming straight at us!" The pilot unfolded the plane, but the object disappeared earlier than we could see it.
Synchronous observation
On May 25, 1973 at 21:37 four observers from Mount Pyle were told by radio that they see a strange glow in the west. A group that watches from the city's fire tower, 18 kilometers from the mountain, also saw it.
At 21:42 the mountains reported that they now see a UFO well. He "moves quite slowly across the sky, yellow or orange, in brightness corresponds to a star of the first magnitude." A minute later, when the object was seen equally well from both points, its exact position was plotted on the map.
By 9:46 pm, nine trajectory points appeared on the map with 15-second intervals between calculations. One point was missed due to radio interference, but observers from the mountain said that the object was flying the same course. Then people on the tower lost a UFO sight.
Two groups jointly led UFOs for 25 kilometers. Thanks to this, it was possible to calculate the speed: first the object flew at a speed of 500 kilometers per hour, then changed the direction of movement and accelerated to 523 kilometers per hour.
The same night Rutledge and his colleagues saw a giant UFO flying right above the observation post.
"There were four lights on the object, two reds and two white ones," Harley recalled. - The UFO was close enough, and I considered it well in an 80-fold telescope. He had a metal case, and on the red lights I could see the corrugated faces.
Games of an alien mind
A month later, UFOs began to appear in the Pidmont area not only at night. One of the first to be lucky was Professor Rutledge:
- In the evening of June 19, 1973, when the sky was still light, I loaded the car with equipment to take it to the observation post. And then a slowly moving UFO appeared from behind the trees. Very short, thick, it looked like a 45-caliber bullet - rounded in front, dull behind.
I extended my thumb and index finger to the length of my arm to gauge the angular dimensions of the ship. At this point, he changed the color from gray to green. I took the binoculars, looking away from the ship for no more than a couple of seconds. When I looked up again, the object had already disappeared. I was slightly stirred. Any doubts about the existence of UFOs have disappeared. According to my calculations, its length was 64 meters.
Harley Rutledge had no doubt that UFOs are reasonably responsive to the actions of eyewitnesses.
- I lift the camera, and the fire goes out. I light the flashlight, point to the UFO, and it changes the direction of the flight. This happened too often to be a mere coincidence. Those who participated in the project felt that we are dealing with reason. The mind standing behind the UFO can purposely attract our attention and then react to the actions of the observers. I felt as if someone was playing with us. Several times UFOs reacted to our radio signals, voices, even thoughts.
Once we deliberately moved the observation post 10 miles to the west to be exactly under the favorite UFO flight track. But they changed the route, flying around us.
Long hunting
The project, which Rutledge was going to finish in a few months, stretched for eight years. 620 people took part in it at different times. 378 observers passed before this a special training course developed by the professor.
Since 1975, the number of UFOs around Pidmont has decreased dramatically, but not so much as to curtail observing points. In total for eight years it was possible to observe 178 UFOs and to spend the whole series of instrumental measurements.
The electronics specialists said that the recorded signals are similar to the work of electronic warfare to suppress enemy radars. It seems that this explains the invisibility of UFOs for the radars set by the project participants. But the radiation did not stop photographing.
During the project, more than 700 photographs taken by the dean, his staff and local residents were collected and studied.
"To date, I've personally seen 160 UFOs, 42 of them directly from my yard or not far from home," Professor Rutledge told the UFO symposium in 1986. " - I saw seven ships, including two disk-shaped vehicles.
I watched one of the discs in broad daylight from my office in Southeast University. In four cases out of seven there were from one to three witnesses who could confirm what I did not see.
I am often asked: "Why do you see so many UFOs?" This is not a question, but a charge. The fact is that I do not sit in an armchair, but work in the field, spending hours and days in the place of UFO activity. This work is comparable to the expectation of a meteorologist who wants to see a tornado, or an astronomer waiting for a new comet.
It does not matter how much equipment and people are at your disposal. Night after night, you do not get anything until the subject of research appears. I saw everything except for little men, but I still do not have a final hypothesis about the nature of the phenomenon.
In 1992, 66-year-old Harley Rutledge left teaching for health reasons. After his departure, the new university rector removed from the training and research programs mention of UFOs.
June 5, 2006, the professor died at the age of 80 years, taking to the grave hopes for the revival of a strictly scientific study of UFOs under the aegis of a respectable university.
