Astronaut Gordon Cooper (UFO) [View all]

[frogmarch]

Gordon Cooper said his first UFO sighting occurred in 1951 when he was flying over West Germany. He denied reports that he'd seen a UFO during his Mercury flight. UFO debunkers often cite this particular denial of his to make the claim that Cooper didn't believe in UFOs - that is, that he didn't believe that UFOs could be alien craft. In fact, Cooper did believe that some UFOs could be alien craft.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Cooper

snip: (emphasis in last paragraph mine)

In 1957, when Cooper was 30 and a captain, he was assigned to Fighter Section of the Experimental Flight Test Engineering Division at Edwards Air Force Base in California. He acted as a test pilot and project manager. On May 3 of that year, he had a crew setting up an Askania-cinetheodolite precision landing system on a dry lake bed. This cinetheodolite system would take pictures at one frame per second as an aircraft landed. The crew consisted of James Bittick and Jack Gettys who began work at the site just before 0800, using both still and motion picture cameras. According to his accounts, later that morning they returned to report to Cooper that they saw a "strange-looking saucer" like aircraft that did not make a sound either on landing or take off.

According to his accounts, Cooper realized that these men, who on a regular basis have seen experimental aircraft flying and landing around them as part of their job of filming those aircraft, were clearly worked up and unnerved. They explained how the saucer hovered over them, landed 50 yards away from them using three extended landing gears and then took off as they approached for a closer look. Being photographers with cameras in hand, they of course shot images with 35mm and 4-by-5 still cameras as well as motion film. There was a special Pentagon number to call to report incidents like this. He called and it immediately went up the chain of command until he was instructed by a general to have the film developed (but to make no prints of it) and send it right away in a locked courier pouch. As he had not been instructed to not look at the negatives before sending them, he did. He said the quality of the photography was excellent as would be expected from the experienced photographers who took them. What he saw was exactly what they had described to him. He did not see the movie film before everything was sent away. He expected that there would be a follow up investigation since an aircraft of unknown origin had landed in a highly classified military installation, but nothing was ever said of the incident again. He was never able to track down what happened to those photos. He assumed that they ended up going to the Air Force's official UFO investigation, Project Blue Book, which was based at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

He held claim until his death that the government is indeed covering up information about UFOs. He gives the example of President Harry Truman who said on April 4, 1950, "I can assure you that flying saucers, given that they exist, are not constructed by any power on Earth." He also pointed out that there were hundreds of reports made by his fellow pilots, many coming from military jet pilots sent to respond to radar or visual sightings from the ground. He was quite convinced till the day he died that he had seen UFOs and was a strong advocate to make the government come clean with what it knew.

In his memoirs Cooper wrote he had seen other unexplained aircraft several times during his career and also said hundreds of similar reports had been made, often by military jet pilots responding to radar or visual sightings from the ground. He further claimed these sightings had been "swept under the rug" by the US government. Throughout his later life Cooper expressed repeatedly in interviews he had seen extraterrestrial crafts and described his recollections for the documentary Out of the Blue.

Edgar Mitchell, another NASA astronaut, believes, as did Cooper, that some UFOs could be alien craft.

But what do astronauts know? They're pretty stupid, right? Same with experienced commercial pilots as well as military jet pilots. Yeah.

I'm intrigued by the idea of UFOs. I hate the Ancient Aliens-type shows and other silly UFO stuff, including shows about supposed alien abductions, cattle mutilations and the Roswell woo, but I like shows that play cockpit recordings of pilots reporting UFOs. What are they, plasma spheres, space debris...what? I'd like to know. I doubt that ETs are visiting us, but I don't know.