So, Lance, Their Minds Were "Clouded"?
The Lockheed UFO Case Revisited
The 1953 Lockheed UFO case has become a favorite among UFO enthusiasts. The case was unknown for decades, hidden in the files of Project Blue Book, but has gained many fans since being championed by several prominent UFO researchers. Canadian filmmaker, Paul Kimball, featured it in his oft-cited documentary, Best Evidence: Top 10 UFO Sightings (it was number five). UFO researchers often refer to the case as a solid example of an unexplainable UFO experience.
A refreshing aspect of the Lockheed case is that it hasn't been tainted by dubious interviews decades after the event, like the supposed Roswell Incident, for instance. Virtually everything known about the sighting is contained in the Air Force's Project Blue Book file. The entirety of the evidence consists of only 8 pages of testimony from the actual witnesses. But as we will see, UFO believers can still manage to obscure and confuse things, even when the evidence is so easily digested.
A quick note: I painstakingly created and maintain a facsimile transcript of the sometimes hard-to-read Blue Book microfilms and I encourage interested readers to take a look at the evidence for themselves. I also welcome corrections to my transcript.
Download Johnson Case Transcript
You can see the Project Blue Book microfilm record here.
The Case
The main witness in the Lockheed case was someone intimately familiar with unusual things in the sky, having himself created some legendary and near-mythical aircraft.
As chief engineer for Lockheed, Clarence “Kelly” Johnson designed cutting-edge aircraft like the U-2 spy plane and SR-71 Blackbird. He was also influential in the creation of the SkunkWorks, the secret projects division of Lockheed. Johnson certainly qualifies as one of the most famous of UFO witnesses.
On the late afternoon of December 16th, 1953, Johnson, noticed a dark object in the sky to the west of his ranch near Agoura, California. The object was a long thin distinct black ellipse with no visible detail. Johnson viewed it for a couple of minutes as it seemed to stand motionless against the brilliant sunset sky. He then sensed that the object was moving directly away as it got smaller and smaller and, after about 90 seconds, disappeared.
If that was the only thing that happened, this surely would have been a rather forgettable sighting.
Johnson wrote his personal account of the event the next day and, over the next month, four of the five men in the plane also wrote their own accounts (Grugan did not file one). Despite some reluctance by Johnson, fearing how flying saucer stories might affect his reputation, these accounts were forwarded to the Air Technical Intelligence Center at Wright Patterson Air Force Base and eventually ended up in the Blue Book files.
We don't know what the Air Force did with the case. We don't know if a full-fledged investigation followed or if the entire thing was ignored. All we have is their terse unadorned conclusion as to what caused the sighting: a lenticular cloud.
UFO proponents hate this. For them, this conclusion besmirches the name and talents of Johnson and his team. Paul Kimball, in a recent interview, said, "If these guys, the top test pilots and aerodynamic engineers and flight designers of their time, would mistake a lenticular cloud for a structured aircraft or object of some sort, no reasonable or responsible military would continue to employ these guys...the military gave a bogus explanation." Another UFO site calls the Air Force conclusion a "rubber stamp explanation".
My knowledge of lenticular clouds was limited, I don't think I have ever seen one in the sky but I have seen many photos of lenticulars, usually in UFO books. Most UFO authorities agree that lenticular clouds do sometimes cause UFO reports. But since lenticular formations are relatively rare, these mistaken reports must also be pretty rare. And anyway, the photos I had seen of this type of cloud didn't really seem to have much in common with the Lockheed testimony. So I agreed that the cloud explanation seemed unlikely, especially after seeing the Best Evidence presentation of the case, which was faithfully parroted by other UFO web sites.
I decided to delve into the actual evidence, the testimony of the men, and found a disturbing trend. In the video, it was obvious that the evidence was being looked at from one particular perspective, a pro-UFO one, and evidence that didn't tend to lead to a UFO conclusion was often being ignored or misinterpreted.
Here's a few of the things I object to in this account:
1. The film uses a sort of faux-science to suggest that the location of the object can be accurately "triangulated" by using the known location of Johnson at his ranch and the location of the plane. In reality, the testimony does not allow us to know precisely where the plane was, much less its vector to the dark object. The graphic at right shows the true story of what we can determine from the evidence about the location of the object and plane. This is not really a major point but it does show how UFO researchers pretend to have some degree of precision in order to bolster their authority.
2. The film takes the words of the witnesses literally, when the meaning may have been figurative. For instance, several of the witnesses describe the object as looking like a flying wing headed straight at them, which could reasonably be interpreted as a featureless ellipse, much like Johnson described. Indeed all of the witnesses agree that they could discern no details in the black shape. Notice how the video takes this description and runs with it, clearly showing a flying wing-type aircraft. But now it isn't flying straight at us: we see it in the video from a low-angle. The object stops looking like a flying wing and actually becomes a flying wing with details that none of the witnesses ever reported.
3. One of the most obvious examples of how the video goes for maximum ooga-booga instead of truth is demonstrated in the descriptions of the "departure" of the object and how long that event lasted. Here is how the actual witnesses estimated that time:
"In 90 seconds from the time it started to move, the object had completely disappeared." -Johnson
"In the space of about one minute it grew smaller and disappeared." -Wimmer
"In probably an elapsed time of somewhere around a minute, the object had reduced in size to a mere speck and disappeared." -Thoren
"In just a minute or two it completely disappeared" -Ware
So far so good. The men all seem in agreement of the basic time it took for the object to disappear. Wimmer and Johnson both viewed the object almost continuously so their estimates are probably the most important ones. But now we come to one last estimate:
"...in a time, in the order of 10 seconds, [the object] disappeared from view." -Colman
Can you guess which estimate was used in the film and presented as absolutely precise and enabling them create to all sorts of other amazing figures like 130G acceleration? That's right. They chose the ten second figure! This is UFO science at its most impressive!
A Solution?
One thing that did strike me as I read the accounts is that these men weren't trying to fabricate anything. They seem to be honestly attempting to report what they saw without embellishment.
One of their first guesses as to the nature of the object was that it was a cloud.
"Thinking it was a lenticular cloud, I continued to study it." -Johnson
"I saw what I thought was a small cloud." -Wimmer
After viewing it for a while, they all decided that it couldn't be a cloud, mainly because its edges were too distinct. Indeed most of the images I have seen of lenticular clouds still look more or less like clouds. So I was fairly amenable to abandoning the lenticular explanation.
But then I came across this startling photo:
Photo Courtesy Mark Meyer Photography (photo-mark.com)
This photo, taken in Wyoming, shows a very compact lenticular cloud much more like what the men described seeing in 1953. Of course, this is still clearly a cloud. But I began to wonder what this cloud might have looked like from much further away. In the photo above, either the cloud is very large or the camera is very close to it. It fills a good portion of our visual field. This was not the case for the Lockheed witnesses. Johnson doesn't say how large the object was in the sky but he strongly implies that it was rather small, comparing it to an aircraft flying near Point Mugu, some 30 miles away. From my work in visual effects, I know that taking an object with fuzzy edges like a cloud and making it smaller causes the edges to become more distinct. So I decided to simulate what the same cloud might have looked like from much further away. This is not a real photo; it was created as a demonstration using Photoshop (click on the image for a larger view):
This is much more like what the men described. The edges of this cloud are now so distinct that it loses it's cloud properties and just becomes a dark object with no discernible detail. In other words, it looks exactly like what was being described by the Lockheed staff. And note that I used the entire real cloud to make this image, including the wispy tail on the left. But details like the tail disappear as you get further away (here simulated by making the cloud smaller). Another detail that vastly improves the illusion of a solid object is the silhouette effect caused by the brilliant sunset, exactly the same conditions during the Lockheed sighting
"...the sun had gone down below the horizon but the sky was red and this object was perfectly silhouetted against this red background." -Thoren
So now I began to think that there could be something to the cloud idea but there were still some issues to consider. Other than its distinctness, what else convinced the men that they weren't seeing a cloud?
Well, there isn't much. Johnson says that the fact that it didn't move was one factor. This may show that Johnson wasn't really very familiar with lenticulars, which very often hang in the sky held motionless by two opposing air masses until they dissipate.
Of course, one other part of the account must be addressed: the departure. As I looked at videos of lenticular clouds dissipating, I noticed how, as the clouds got smaller, there was sometimes the impression that they were moving away. Here is an imperfect demonstration of this principle. I realize that these clouds don't look that much like saucers but hopefully you can get a feeling for the illusion of motion.
This is part of my working theory of the case: that the departure was actually the dissipation of the cloud.
The way that the witnesses described the departure certainly fits in with this theory:
"the object had reduced in size to a mere speck, and then disappeared." -Thoren
"I suddenly realized it was moving away from us heading straight west. In the space of about one minute it grew smaller and disappeared." -Wimmer
"When I got the glasses focused on the object, it was already moving behind the first layer of haze. I gathered its speed was very high, because of the rate of fore-shortening of its major axis." -Johnson
Johnson also reported that the object took a long shallow climb (this was not reported by the men in the plane, interestingly). I am suggesting that this apparent climb is also caused by the dispersing cloud as the top or bottom disappeared unevenly.
One nagging issue for me was that I honestly had no idea how long it would take for a cloud to dissapate. The theory requires it to be around a minute. I started work on writing this article without knowing the answer to this question but I knew that this one issue could invalidate the whole idea.
Some Additional Info
Earlier this year, Tim Printy, publisher of the skeptical UFO newsletter (SUNlite) pointed out a thread at the JREF forums discussing this case and I was happy to see that several folks there had independently seized upon this same scenario. The thread generated much helpful data, including some evidence from UK forecaster, Nigel Bolton, that the December 16th, 1953 weather conditions were ripe for the formation of lenticular clouds.
Just a few days ago I found some amazing lenticular cloud videos on YouTube that were shot right near the same locations of the Lockheed case. Here's one taken in Santa Clarita, looking to the west towards Santa Barbara:
I spoke with Chris, who shot these clouds (and many more, check out his site) and shared the theory with him. I was delighted with his reply:
Having this opinion from someone who is intimately familiar with lenticular clouds certainly strengthens the theory.
Final Thoughts
I hope the reader doesn't feel that I am suggesting that these witnesses were ignoramuses. I'm not. I think all of the witnesses did an incredible job of reporting the facts as best they could. The theory above postulates that several factors came together that did fool the witnesses:
1. Compact lenticular cloud.
2. Silhouetted against brilliant red sunset.
3. Seen from enough distance that the edges bcame totally smooth.
In short, I am suggesting that nature conspired to create a sort of illusion that fooled these observers.
It should also be noted that this theory is not presented as the final word on this case. I am delighted to hear confirming or disconfirming information.
Please feel free to share your own comments below.
I want to thank Tim Printy, Mark Meyer, Don Ecsedy, Donald Collins, Frank Stalter, Michael Allen, Chris@DCM and the gang at the JREF forums, particularly Stray Cat, 23_Tauri, Akhenaten, GeeMack, Puddle Duck, TJW, TomTomkent and ufology and also my wife for their help in preparing this article. This article was slightly revised on 3/23, hopefully slightly improving the tone.







The most immediate danger are earthquake like the one that shook north eastern Japan on December 7, 2012, triggering a one-metre tsunami in an area devastated by last year's Fukushima disaster. The quake shook buildings as far Tokyo and led to the warnings being issued for coastal areas. The U.S. Geological Survey announced the earthquake had a magnitude of 7.3. The tsunami warning was issued for the coast of Miyagi Prefecture, which was hit by a devastating earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011. That quake triggered fuel-rod meltdowns at the Fukushima nuclear plant, causing radiation leakage, contamination of food and water and mass evacuations in the world's worst nuclear crisis. Radiation from the fuel rods still represents some of the greatest threats to life on the planet. Under water they are comparatively safe, but exposed the radiation could be devastating. Workers at the plant were ordered to move to higher ground, but after Friday's quake Tokyo Electric Power Co, the operator of the Fukushima nuclear plant, reported no irregularities at its nuclear plants. ET has warned repeatedly against nuclear power and weapons.
Dmitri Medvedev, the Prime Minister of the Russian Federation comment confirms aliens are here. He previously served as the third President of Russia from 2008 to 2012. After the recording of a television program, he did not realize that his microphone was still open and stated: “I believe in Santa Claus, but not too much,” Medvedev began, but then continued: “Aliens, I cannot tell you how many of them are among us at this time, otherwise it would trigger panic.” 

Gary McKinnon who hacked into NASA and the Pentagon warned that Chinese Hackers were everywhere stealing many US secrets. Advanced Persistent Threat is the favored term for China-based cyber espionage. We spend billions on research and a hacker can copy the discoveries for virtually nothing. The information is used for building their own new fighters with a few of their own improvements. The Chinese espionage and data collection is apparently very successful given the rapid development of the Chengdu J-20 and Shenyang J-31 stealth fighter (shown here), which bear a close resemblance to the F-35 and the F-22.
I once had a conversation with Igor I. Sikorsky a pioneer of aviation who designed and flew the world's first multi-engine fixed wing aircraft, the
On 16 November 2010, an F-22 (shown right) based at Elmendorf, Alaska, crashed killing Captain Jeffrey Haney. The F-22 fleet was restricted to flying below 25,000 feet, before being grounded completely. The accident has been attributed to a malfunction in the bleed air system that shut down the aircraft's Environmental Control System (ECS) and On-Board Oxygen Generating System (OBOGS). The OBOGS, which is fed by engine bleed air, was apparently shut down automatically in response to an engine overheat condition detected by the main computer. The pilot's widow successfully sued, claiming the aircraft has defective equipment. A fifth U.S. Air Force F-22 fighter crashed on November 15th in Florida during a training flight and the pilot safely ejected.
U.S. Air Force Maj. Gen. Christopher Bogdan, deputy leader of the F-35 program, noted in the course of his harsh September review of the project's status that the Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS)—which combines logistics, mission planning and many other functions, and without which the F-35 cannot be operated—had gone through a development pause and redesign because of “vulnerabilities” discovered in a security review. However, ALIS includes a colossal amount of sensitive information, including details of the performance of stealth systems on each individual aircraft, mission plans and locations. It has important elements that operate over Wi-Fi links and that communicate over the public Internet, and it (ultimately) will have thousands of access points open to tens of thousands of users and potential hackers. Apparently, “The Department of Defense is fully aware of cyber threats and is taking specific action to counter them.”
I was on a commercial flight from sea-tac airport Washington to Anchorage on November 11, 1966 on a clear day, when the pilot blurted over the intercom these exact words. I can still hear him after 50 years say, “Ladies and gentleman, if you look over the right wing towards the horizon you will see a hah, oh hell I don't know what it is.”
I was watching a UFO show on tv when Captain Terauchi the pilot of a Japanese crew of a jumbo 747 freighter aircraft witnessed three unidentified objects while flying over Alaska in November, 1986,. This sighting gained international attention when the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced that it was going to officially investigate this sighting because the UFO had been detected on radar. Captain Terauchi was featured on numerous radio and TV programs. Within a few months he was grounded, apparently for his indiscretion of reporting a UFO, even though he was a senior captain with an excellent flying record. Several years later he was reinstated. This Japanese pilot was in the same area where we had our sighting and held up his drawing of the UFO that was exactly the same as ours. NOTE: The above image is a rendering. Ken Pfeifer MUFON NJ
Joshua Tree Valley -- I was sitting in the backyard of a friend’s house on September 17, 2011, around 9:52 PM. Four of us were talking when I noticed a light come into view from the bottom of this valley flying east. I didn’t know what it was at first. Then I jumped to my feet and exclaimed, “Look, here we go!” 
BLANFORD – Richard Bondira has been photographing UFOs on clear nights since January 2012. He sent me dozens of photographs of UFO that he has filmed over the last six months. Sightings are continuing in October and November. As many as ten or more UFOs can be seen on some nights. They mostly hover but can be seen maneuvering, spin around, or go straight up. They usually come from the southeast heading northwest. Thanks to Richard Bondira
appeared to be so. The light glowed and did not blink as I took pictures with my camera. The silent object appears to change shape near a tree, so this is not a hoax. This is my third sighting this year! First two were at Pune. Thanks to MUFON CMS
-- We watched many orbs turn into many formations and the military has cleared my airspace for the day and night and I know why! Stop chasing these things with fighter jets continuously over my neighborhood! This is a residential area and we are tired of jets screaming past our house after these crafts! Go practice over the ocean; it’s unsafe, and unethical to do such matters over a major tourist destination, I have been recording all this for six months, I know the air force has no reason to be training exercises continuously over my house.
nd outside. When I decided to look around I saw stars and a big bright object the size of Venus cycling through every color.
HOUSTON – While driving back home, I was listening to the radio on November 28, 2012, a bright sunny day. I spotted an airplane high above leaving a contrail behind it. It was kind of impossible not stare at the contrails in front of me. While driving and looking up, I saw a bright round circle right where the airplane was going. The plane started making a turn to avoid whatever that circle was. The circle was moving like it was dancing. I thought nobody was going to believe what I was seeing so I grabbed my phone and took three pictures. I stop my car at a red light as the bright circle shined and disappeared. This picture is 100% real with no editing Thanks to Irwin O Valencia for this sighting report. Ken Pfeifer MUFON NJ 
CHAPLEAU -- I was sitting around my fire pit having a few cold ones at around 10:30 PM, on July 17, 2012; when two military jets flew over my house. I got my camera and later that night at 3:38 am, i saw a brighter than normal star and thought I’d take some pictures of it.
PORT ALBERNI, B.C. -- I went to my friend’s house about noon on May 1, 1998, a nice clear warm day. I noticed what I thought was a flock of birds, but realized they were too far away to be birds. They were silent. There were about 15 objects by the green mountains that then flew in front of the snow capped mountains. They I could tell they weren't planes or helicopters or birds, they were just solid objects that made no sound. They flew out of my site as they traveled north towards Mt Klitsa... Ken Pfeifer MUFON NJ





























Commander Graham Bethune is a retired Navy Pilot and a good friend. During his 26 years of active duty he qualified in over 100 different models of aircraft.
The flight was normally about ten hours. But this particular night we had a 16-knot head wind. "About maybe 300 to 400 miles outside of Argentia, Newfoundland, I saw something below the horizon, on the water, that looked like approaching a city at night. It was just kind of an ambient light, no definition whatsoever. But it looked like we were approaching a large city at night. So I watched it for a while about 1:00 am.
Now standing behind me was the navigator, the radioman, and also the plane captain the cockpit was full. All of a sudden we saw, on the water, a yellow halo that was very, very small, about 15 miles away. And it came up to 10,000 feet like that a fraction of a second.
And then we knew that it was a friendly encounter. We knew that it knew that we were there and had come out to see us. But we didnt think the reason that it flew up was because they wanted to show us what the Icelanders were talking about.
Frank Chili sent me this photo that was given to him by Commander Bethune. He was quite insistent that US Air Force was getting the focus of UFO attention from the public, but the real player in this and always behind the scenes was the US Navy. Graham was informed by Admiral Forney himself and Graham never doubted that a ploy was set-up to divert attention away from the Navy. He also claimed we had a base on the moon and we had a Navy space shuttle fleet. He felt truth is often stranger than science fiction that ET movies are supported by the government to create acceptance. Thanks to the Disclosure Project and Frank Chili.
I found this interesting video on YouTube and the person seems to have found an actual animal on the surface of Mars. This creature's face has a mouth, cheeks, firm eyebrow area, and a gorilla-like body. Of course this could just be another ancient carving that survived the test of time. Remember the other famous statues of 
China's military abilities and budget still lag far behind those of the United States.
This image was taken by an Astronaut on the International Space Station in May of 2012.
David from Malta writes, "All over Malta and our sister island of Gozo in the Mediterranean Sea there are strange parallel tracks carved in the ground rock. They go off cliffs, across bays and even underwater and are believed to be prehistoric."
The Austrian out of place artifact collector, Klaus Dona, has been to this island to do research concerning elongated skulls in historical museums on the island.
KINGMAN -- I was driving east on the I-40, near Flagstaff, at 2AM, on November 25, 2012. It was a dark night and suddenly the northern sky became very bright. About 1000 feet AGL there was an enormous, energetic explosion of blue and white light with a shower of sparks like an electrical surge. The explosion seemed to create a ring-like effect, out of which emerged a large, oblong, glowing object. It had a blue, laser-like appearance. 
GOLDEN -- On November 25, 2012, I asked my husband to pull off the road as I saw a beautiful Sun Dog out the passenger side window and I wanted to take a photo.
Naperville -- I was driving on November 21, 2012, about 7:05 PM, and observed a "falling star" in the east. Fifteen minutes later as I was traveling south down Book Road and saw dim orange lights hovering at a low altitude. I decided to pull over and observe the 35 to 50 feet in diameter object. The orange lights were in a triangular pattern moving north. There also appeared to be a dim orange light connecting each of the three outer orange lights to the middle/center light. The object flew faster toward the northeast ascending and turned. Thanks to MUFON CMS
Cicero -- I went out for a smoke on November 14, 2012, and looked at the sky and saw something unusual so I went back inside and grabbed my camcorder to record this object. I saw a solid white/orb flying pass at low altitude coming from northwest to southeast that then disappeared. This UFO was flying like it was in a hurry but moving casually and smooth. I knew it wasnt a plane or balloon because it was just a white solid glowing object moving pretty quickly without making any type of noise. I was amazed to see something like this again because this wasnt the first time Ive see this object pass by. Thanks to MUFON CMS
Ferndale -- On Thanksgiving at 6:55 AM, November 22, 2012, I was just taking random pictures of my neighborhood, when I caught an object streak across the sky east of me. In the picture you can make out the white dot between the light pole and the power line pole just about dead center of both.
ST. LOUIS -- It was barely visible at first, but my 11-year old daughter spotted it on November 17, 2012. Im surprised my daughter spotted it because it was hard to detect in the night sky. It was clearly a black triangle when overhead and made no noise.
Missoula -- Various sized discolored circles were found in the backyards of houses in our subdivision using Google Earth. These were found on a map of Google Earth taken in 2011. They no longer can be seen on the new maps of Google Earth! There are no other circles in the surrounding area where we live. I do not think they were caused by fertilizer, watering, springs, etc. As you can see they are of varying size and density of color. I measured those in my backyard and they were 28 feet in diameter. Thanks to MUFON CMS
HOBOKEN -- I was leaving home at 6:45 am, Monday morning on November 14, 2012, and looked up to see a thin white elongated oval moving southwest. I quickly ran to my car and grabbed my Canon Camera 20 d and took 15 shots of the object before it passed behind my building. The object moved at a steady pace without noise. Thanks to Doug Auld
On November 22, 2012, at around 6:15 PM, I went outside to smoke and saw a series of orange orbs in the night sky. Most of them were in a perfect equidistant line. I ran back inside and told my wife and friend to come out. The orbs stayed in position for a short time and then they started slowly moving. They were perfectly round, the size of dime at arms length and very bright orange. We just stood there and watched and noticed one was dimming and then another one appeared when the dim one disappeared. Two more appeared when others disappeared then the rest of them slowly disappeared. Some moved left, some right, some up for ten minutes. The lights are all uniform, spherical dots in the picture and don't really show the size. Thanks to MUFON CMS
Lansdale -- The picture was taken on November 16, 2012, at 7:13 PM, as my sons and daughter are always camera ready. The objects are bright orange lights and I told my daughter to snap a picture. Its almost become unsurprising to my children when we see them.
Philadelphia On November 22, 2012, I noticed blinking lights high in sky, and thought it was a star.
On November 23, 2012, I was driving through Virginia and took a picture of the clear sky with nothing in the sky. 
RIO DAS OSTRAS --- Hello folks at MUFON, I am single and saw two UFOs around here on November 25, 2012.
Toronto At 10:17 AM, on November 13, 2012, I took five pictures of the CN Tower some eight kilometers west of me at 10:17 AM. The last photo taken had a strange white translucent anomaly near the tower.
were walking in the fields and woods in a small town near Zywiec in May of 2004. We took photos with a digital Camera and when looked at them on computer we saw a black object in the sky. We thought that it could be a Sailplane.