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The Kecksburg (Pennsylvania) Incident: 1965

ruffready

Justified & Ancient
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Witnesses claim to have seen a metallic acorn shaped object with strange markings in the Kecksburg woods.

December 9, 1965 Kecksburg, PA UFO crash recovery.

could it be possible that the object was an atomic bomb? It wouldnt be the first time one was accidently dropped? Maybe thats why all FOI request go unanswered. :confused:
 
Quite a lot on the web about it - Google

This link gives masses of detail.

The link is long dead. An archived version of the webpage (as of the time of this post) can be accessed at the Wayback Machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/2003020...ned.info/directory/aliens_and_ufos/kecksburg/

This webpage provides links to 3 additional, and considerably more substantial, webpages. The archived versions of these outboard webpages can also be accessed via the Wayback Machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/20021216144430/http://www.post-gazette.com/magazine/19980908ufo1.asp
https://web.archive.org/web/20021218034057/http://www.mtpleasantpa.com/trualien.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20021216144430/http://www.post-gazette.com/magazine/19980908ufo1.asp
 
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Hmmm...odd that the Soviet Kosmos spacecraft was downed on the same day. I suspect that there may be some connection - but, hey, maybe it collided with an ET ship! Or something. Backwards 'K' does sound very descriptive of Russian lettering.

And now I come to think of it, Mothman Prophecies features a backwards letter K. It was in the wallet of the guy called 'Tiny' who bothers a witness family for a while. On a metal badge, I believe. You don't think-
 
I remember seeing a programme that showed a world map with every known "Broken Arrow" instance shown on it. There were absolutely loads of them (broken arrow being the codeword for a lost nuclear weapon, usually after after an air crash, accidental drop or at sea). It wouldn't seem outrageous to suggest that large military search and rescue presences, cover-ups, secrecy, and threats to witnesses ("you saw nothing") were due to these types of event.
 
another case thats getting alot of attention

Link* (like mothman) a movie will be made!!
Link is dead. No archived version found.

*EDIT: Link shortened by WhistlingJack
 
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MrHyde said:
Backwards 'K' does sound very descriptive of Russian lettering.

The only "backwards" characters in Russian are N ("ee") and R ("ya"). Maybe it was a backwards R.
 
Sci fi channel sues NASA over UFO photos

Cable channel suing NASA over UFO documents

Tue Oct 21, 4:36 AM ET

By Michael Learmonth

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The truth is out there, and the Sci Fi Channel is determined to find it, even if that means suing NASA (news - web sites), the Department of Defence, the U.S. Army and Air Force for documents related to unidentified flying objects.


Sci Fi, a U.S. cable channel that airs fictional programming such as Battlestar Galactica, as well as documentaries that explore the line between fact and science fiction, is part of a group pressuring the federal government to de-classify UFO information.

Last year Sci Fi joined forces with an investigative journalist, a Washington, DC law firm, and former President Clinton (news - web sites) chief of staff John Podesta, to gain release of documents relating to an incident it calls "the new Roswell," a UFO sighting in Kecksburg, Pennsylvania in 1965.

"Now, one year later, despite serious effort to uncover the facts, NASA and the Department of Defence are still maintaining their wall of silence," said Sci Fi Channel president Bonnie Hammer. "Whether or not this has anything to do with UFOs the public has the right to know."

Now the Sci FI Channel is supporting what could turn into a series of lawsuits, first against NASA and then against the Department of Defence, the Army and Air Force, to get classified documents released to the public.

The group said it expects to file the suit against NASA within a week. Representatives from NASA and the Department of Defence were not immediately available for comment.

NASA was chosen as the first agency to be sued because SCI FI and the groups' attorney, Lee Helfrich of the Washington, DC-based firm, Lobel, Novins and Lamont, believe that they've fully exhausted their administrative options with the agency, a prerequisite for a judge to agree to hear the case.

While news organisations routinely pursue Freedom of Information Act requests with the government, it's relatively rare for a cable channel, especially one focused on fantasy, not the gathering of news, to pursue such a course of action.

But Hammer sees a great deal of programming potential in pursuing government documents related to UFO sightings, part of the channel's effort to "find the line between science fiction and science fact."

"As we grow the channel, this will become more and more important," Hammer said.

In December 1965, residents of Kecksburg, Pennsylvania watched a fireball descend into a heavily-forested area 40 miles from Pittsburgh. That night the area was cordoned off by the military, trucks and helicopters came and went, and the town was briefly placed under martial law.

The next day, headlines in the Greensburg, Pennsylvania Tribune-Review read "Unidentified Flying Object Falls Near Kecksburg" and "Army Ropes Off Area," but residents of Kecksburg were never told why the military cordoned off the area and what, if anything, was found.

The results of Sci Fi's new investigation into the incident will air Friday in a documentary hosted by Bryant Gumbel called "The New Roswell: Kecksburg Exposed."

In Kecksburg it hired a forestry expert from West Virginia University who discovered growth patterns and core damage to trees there that support a "traumatic event" in 1965.

Sci Fi, a unit of Vivendi Universal, is among the assets recently sold to General Electric Co.'s NBC. Hammer sees the integration with a network news operation as a potential boon for Sci Fi's newsgathering efforts.

"If it's something that seems credible, absolutely," said Hammer on the potential of working with NBC journalists. "But we're not going to do it just to create buzz."

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...=/nm/20031021/od_uk_nm/oukoe_television_scifi
 
I I R C...

...wasn't the "UFO" reckoned to be a Soviet space capsule or satellite?

I seem to remember reading somewhere that it was acorn shaped or possibly bell shaped but had Cyrillic writing on the side.

Hang on, I'll see if I can find where I read it...
 
Here is a weblink, Filthy...

http://archive.anomalies.net/case-studies/kecksbrg.htm

<snip>
On 23 November, 1965, from a remote area deep inside the former Soviet Union, a rocket was launched. The payload was COSMOS 96, a satellite based on the modified Soyuz spacecraft, whose design was itself based on the diving bell.

Colonel Rodney S. Lusey, Deputy Chief of Staff, US Space Command, confirmed "A booster failure caused this satellite to decay after its launch. ...COSMOS 96 was launched on 23 November 1965 and decayed on December 9, 1965, at 51.8 north latitude and 85.2 west longitude".


There seems little doubt that despite the expected official denials, what was recovered at Kecksburg was indeed the fallen COSMOS 96 satellite.
<snip>

TVgeek
 
NASA Releases Documents as a Result of Sci Fi Investigation Into Kecksburg UFO Incident
NEW YORK, Oct. 24 /PRNewswire/ -- A day after SCI FI Channel announced its unprecedented support for legal action against the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to release its records on the 1965 UFO incident in Kecksburg, PA, NASA informed Lee Helfrich, attorney for the Coalition for Freedom of Information (CFi), that it is releasing 36 pages of documents connected to the incident.

After ten months of pursuing the records in Washington, D.C. through the Freedom of Information Act, NASA has finally responded to public pressure. The Department of Defense and the U.S. Army have yet to release any records.

"For more than four months we have received no response from NASA," said Lee Helfrich of DC based Lobel, Novins and Lamont, "but one day after John Podesta, President Clinton's former chief of staff and member of the Moynihan Commission, and Bonnie Hammer, President of SCI FI Channel, called on government agencies to make public records that are over 25 years old, lo and behold, NASA responds."

"I think its fair to say that we have truly entered the realm of science fiction in Washington, D.C.," said Podesta at a national press conference this week, "when it's fair game to disclose the identity of a clandestine CIA agent but not the records of an unexplained crash in Kecksburg, Pennsylvania that occurred 38 years ago."

"We don't know what is in the documents," said Kean. "They may not be responsive to our specific requests or relevant to our investigation. However, we are cautiously optimistic."

"What we receive will determine our next steps," said Helfrich.

On December 9, 1965, witnesses described seeing a fireball in the evening sky, a controlled landing and the systematic military recovery of an object. As reported by local radio and newspapers, U.S. military personnel cordoned off the area, investigated the site, and left without ever providing a full report.

A hard-hitting expose on the Kecksburg UFO Incident entitled THE NEW ROSWELL: KECKSBURG EXPOSED, hosted by Bryant Gumbel, premieres exclusively on SCI FI Channel on Friday, October 24 at 9PM (ET/PT)
 
Anybody else watch?

condreye buch, ruffready, Rincewind, TVGeek, Search, anybody? TBH, not sure whether this should be here or in the very similar Sci-Fi Channel gets serious about UFOs thread.

I thought overall it was pretty good. Probably the best things about it are that now somebody with serious $$ is putting weight behined things like FOIA lawsuits. (And given how incestuous the relationship betwee GE and the military, rather surprising). Good to see a respected anchor like Bryant Gumbel play host. It seemed to be able to lay out a few conclusions beyond doubt. THere were large numbers of US military on the scene shortly thereafter. Also that local newsman who investigated it was seriously messed with by the government.

Wish they'd spent a little more time (well, at least better time) on the sociological aspect of how the event fractured the town They did an OK job of taking on the Cosmo '96 theory, though by no means completely discrediting it as an explanation.

Weakest parts were the fake-newsreel innocent small town America stuff and of course the semi-obligatory UFO=alien powered craft among some of the participants. Most ludicrous moment the recreation of an uncorraborated story of a fellow who heard these horrible sounds coming f from the wood. (presumably "us" exterminating the occupants of the craft). I gathered from that scene that what crashed in Kecksberg was a Sasqutach from mid-seventies cheapo "documentaries":rolleyes:

But overall, not bad, IMHO. Next up, Rendelsham in mid-December.
 
Kecksburg scream

I still haven't seen the second hour (I taped it)...
but when the "scream" was being described, my wife
turned to me and said: "So, did someone scare a rabbit?"
Then we though of several animals and birds that would
sound like a scream.

I am really interested to see what documents have been
released! Several reports said 36 documents --
others said 36 pages. Which is it?

TVgeek
 
I've always favored the Soviet recovery theory of Kecksburg myself. The town meeting seemed a bit staged to me but you can't expect cinema verite all the time.
 
ok! the unexplained crash in Kecksburg, Pennsylvania

was >>>project corona !! http://www.fas.org/spp/military/program/imint/corona.htm The Corona vehicle was launched by a THOR booster and used the AGENA spacecraft as the upper stage. While in orbit, Corona took photographs with a constant rotating stereo panoramic camera system and loaded the exposed photographic film into recovery vehicles. The vehicles were de-orbited and recovered by Air Force C-119 aircraft while floating to earth on a parachute.
 
Very interesting, ruff. Has this been proposed before?
 
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I finally watched the second half...

Isn't it strange that the guy who owned the property
where the crash occurred was so adamant that nothing happened that night?

It makes me wonder -- if I were a retired farmer
and receiving a government stipend to continue
a denial, I'd have to think twice before saying anything...

This isn't a fact -- just an observation.

So why did he even let Sci-Fi channel on his land?
I'm sure they paid, too!

I thought the town meeting was interesting -- it was
naturally heavily edited, but it did solidify the point that
military personnel WERE present -- even though several
old veterans (hint, hint) were denying that anyone in
uniform was even there!

Now, about those fibers found in Roswell... ;)

TVgeek
 
I just saw an episode of the "Unexplained Mysteries" program that said, due to the freedom of information (FOI) act, it was shown that there were 200 soldiers who went to Kecksburg the night of the crash... has the FOI cooborated any other UFO siting?
 
Haven't we discussed Kecksburg before?

Wasn't it rumoured to have been a crashed Soviet satellite?
 
NASA to search files on '65 UFO incident
Fri Oct 26, 10:52 PM ET

WASHINGTON - NASA has agreed to search its archives once again for documents on a 1965 UFO incident in Pennsylvania, a step the space agency fought in federal court. The government has refused to open its files about what, if anything, moved across the sky and crashed in the woods near Kecksburg, Pa., 40 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.

Traffic was tied up in the area as curiosity seekers drove to the area, only to be kept away from the crash site by soldiers.

The Air Force's explanation for the unidentified flying object: a meteor or meteors.

"They could not find anything," one Air Force memo stated after a late-night search on Dec. 9, 1965. Several NASA employees also were reported to have been at the scene.

Eyewitnesses said a flatbed truck drove away a large object shaped like an acorn and about the size of a Volkswagen bus. A mock-up based on the descriptions of local residents sits behind the Kecksburg Volunteer Fire Department.

UFO enthusiasts refused to let the matter die and journalist Leslie Kean of New York City sued NASA four years ago for information.

"This is about the public's right to know," Kean said. "We would be doing this lawsuit regardless of whether UFO groups were interested in it or not. It's a freeodm of information issue."

The agency has turned over several stacks of documents which Kean says are not responsive to the request, an argument that U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan agreed with.

In March, Sullivan rejected NASA's request to throw the case out of court, resulting in negotiations that led to the agency promising last week that it will conduct a more comprehensive search.

Kean said Friday that she sued NASA rather than the Army because the space agency a decade ago released some relevant documents on the case.

SOURCE: AP: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071027/ap_on_sc/ufo_nasa_5
 
The mention of acorn-shaped reminded me of something, especially in connection with Broken Arrows, so a quick Google revealed the Mark VI aerial nuclear bomb. These were the ones of the type that the USAF managed to set on fire at Lakenheath, Suffolk in 1956.

Coming within a hairsbreath of nuking one of your allies is bad, dropping one on your own country is worse, which is why it would be covered up it. From those dimensions the thing's about the size of a small car. Perhaps not a Volkswagen microbus, but sizes are a bit hard to judge, particularly if people are trying to keep you away from the thing.

I agree with ruff's original post, it looks like it could well be a lost nuke,

Nuclearbomb.jpg


USAF Museum, Mark VI
 
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That bomb does look rather like, well, a bomb, rather than an acorn.

IIRC, the alleged sightings of something being carted away did not stand up to much scrutiny ...but I do like the idea of it being a piece of Russian hardware.
 
Imagine it with the fins ripped off, it's definitely ovoid.
 
What would NASA be doing with a nuke?

(if they are involved more likley a sattelite??)
 
It was almost certainly a meteor- see this site.
http://www.debunker.com/Kecksburg.html
A major meteor fall was observed at this time-and photographed.

All the stories about a 'major military presence' and an 'acorn shaped object under a tarpaulin' were added later by people mis-remembering the incident, or deliberately exaggerating or fabricating reports.

I would suggest that NASA won't find anything very interesting, because there's nothing to find.
 
You might be right, but I remain impressed by the number and apparent integrity if the "first-night" witnesses who reportedly examined the construct. Their testimony has remained remarkably consistent over the past four decades.
 
And how many of these witnesses went on record In 1965 to describe the events?

None, as far as I can tell. All the stories started emerging more than ten years later, in the late seventies-
this page gives a detailed run-down on discrepancies between the story as it was reported in 1965 and at the end of the seventies.
For instance
Link is dead. No archived version found.

The present case of Kecksburg resurfaced back in the late 1970s when radio talk show hosts interviewed Clark McClelland about the case. Apparently, McClelland had no serious eyewitness testimony at the time but did talk about the newspaper reports about something mysterious regarding the events that evening. Several key witnesses came forward during the talk show and interviews were conducted. Out of these interviews the modern Kecksburg legend had begun. According to skeptic Robert Young, one of these early witnesses, Robert Bitner, was not exactly telling the truth about his role that evening:

Bitner's version of the story first surfaced on Nov. 16, 1979, and was the first event in the "modern" trail of the Kecksburg story. UFO investigator Clark McClelland was discussing the incident while a guest on "The John Signa Show", KDKA-Radio, Pittsburgh, Pa. His information was based upon 1965 clippings. .. Calls were received from four people, including Bitner, who said that they were eyewitnesses. The others saw only lights.

According to McClelland ... during later interviews with the people who had called in to the radio show, Bitner claimed that he was the 1965 Kecksburg fire chief. He said that he was 25 feet from a "large 10 ton military truck" surrounded by military guards which had a tarp over an object that appeared to be 6 feet high, 7 feet wide and 17-feet long.According to McClelland (Clark McClelland and Leonard H. Stringfield. Jan. 17, 1980, report and footnote in The UFO Crash/Retrieval Syndrome - Status Report II, ed. by Stringfield, Seguin, TX: Mutual UFO Network,1980, pp. 19-20.), during later interviews with the people who had called in to the radio show, Bitner claimed that he was the 1965 Kecksburg fire chief. He said that he was 25 feet from a "large 10 ton military truck" surrounded by military guards which had a tarp over an object that appeared to be 6 feet high, 7 feet wide and 17-feet long.

This seems to have been the first public account of an actual retrieval of an object by armed troops. Mr. Bitner told this story to UFO investigators and reporters for ten years. Then in 1990 when he was President of the Fire Company, the Unsolved Mysteries crew spent nearly a week in town filming a recreation and many interviews. As anyone who has seen this often run segment must remember, a central figure in the story is the Fire Chief, who first briefs Romansky and his search team, gives them their assignments, and he is even portrayed as being present at the crash site with Romansky and the others when military officers ordered them out and the area quarantined. Bitner was interviewed extensively for the program but, curiously, he was not included on the segment.

This seems all the stranger, since as the 1965 Fire Chief and the main witness to the mysterious armed recovery for a decade, he was also now the key man in the Fire Company. What happened? It seems that after his claimed role as the 1965 Fire Chief became publicly known, he asked to be dropped, or was dropped, from the program.
Translation; "Local firechief" tells tall tale, the tale gets out of hand, the "Local firechief" becomes president of the company, and the tall tales become an embarassment. Perhaps it is partly because the real fire chief in 1965 was apparently called Ed Myers, not Robert Bitner...
 
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Thanks for the link!

But didn't Ivan Sanderson interview Kecksburg witnesses as early as March, 1966, just three months after the putative events?
 
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