Brian Vike's Favorite Cases.
Date: June 1975
Time: Approxamtlty 10:00 p.m.
Brian Vike's Note: The report below is new one to a growing list of
incidents that took place at the Cannon AFB, in NM. With so many servicemen who
have filed reports of unknown objects over the base, it certainly has become
clear that the Cannon AFB was a location for many UFO sightings.
I would like to ask if any other folks have
information about the UFO incidents that took place at the Cannon AFB, would
you please contact Brian Vike at: brian_vike@telus.net. Thank you and
please note that your privacy is respected.
Brian, Per our phone conversation, this is the
"sanitized" and completed events of June, 1975 at Cannon AFB, NM:
Let me go ahead and lay my experience out for you.
I was an Airman, assigned to the 27th Tactical Air
Command at Cannon AFB and I worked the swing shift on the flight line. It was a
Friday night and as usual, I checked the ops board for sorties. F111-Ds had a
nasty habit of landing broke more often than not and on Friday nights, that
meant swing shift stayed late to fix any "red x" entries in the A/C
maintenance log. I was relieved to note that nothing was scheduled and so I
only needed to finish my shift and start the weekend.
At around 10:00 p.m., I heard the afterburners of
F111s taking off. Thinking they could be from another base, I ran outside to
see. Our base identifier, "CC", was on the vertical stabilizers of
the two F111-Ds that were taking off in combat formation, two staggered abreast
and simultaneous. I had never seen our birds take off like that - it was simply
not done.
I approached our dispatcher and told him we had just
launched two. We were both upset because we weren't supposed to have any
training sorties that night and nobody wanted to stay late on a Friday. He
called Ops and they told him it was a hot scramble after bogeys over the base
that the radar shack was tracking.
I found out later that MMS (Munitions Maintenance
Squadron) loaded the F111's with live air-to-air ordinance. I also heard that
it wasn't the first scramble during this time frame, but I personally was not
witness to any others.
The dispatcher happened to be friends with the radar
operator on duty, so we called the radar shack and put him up on the external
speaker. The (veteran) radar operator was totally flummoxed. He was tracking
"two or three" bogeys making impossible aerial maneuvers at
impossible speeds, at least 3,000 MPH disappearing and re-appearing. He checked and
double-checked his gear and it was fine, no malfunction (he was tracking our
F111's fine). I jotted down the phone number to the radar shack and stuck it in
my fatigue shirt pocket.
The two A/C landed about 45 minutes later, no
ordinance expended and they were in good order, no late night work for me. I
heard later that the pilots were not debriefed in the normal manner. I left the
shop for the Airman's Club, socialized over a pitcher of beer and played some
foosball. I made it back to the barracks at about 2:00 a.m. Seeing the phone on
the CQ's desk, I decided to call the radar site, it was a small portable
building out in the middle of a field. I was curious and wanted an update on
the bogey situation.
The phone at the other end was answered by a
"Capt. Kowalski". (A captain in the radar shack at 2:00 a.m. on a
Saturday morning? no way! was what I thought.) I asked for the radar operator
by name and the Capt.. stated that he was not there. His voice was loud and
threatening. As a young airman, I was truly frightened by his aggressiveness
and almost hung up.
To cut to the chase, Capt. K. interrogated me for some
time about who I was, why I was calling and so forth. During that time, a few
things became clear to me:
1. He was definitely not USAF. He used terms such as
"serial number" and "CO" which were common to other
branches of the armed forces, but not used by USAF personnel. Whoever he was
and whomever he worked for, his cover was blown.
2. He may not have even been military. He swore, no
curse words excepted with every sentence, lost his temper constantly, or
appeared to for effect, and sounded more like a street thug than an "officer
and a gentleman". To use a military phrase, he had no "military
bearing". Having been raised in a military family, military bearing is not
something one comes by naturally, nor is it easily relinquished.
3. I probably should never have called for that
update!
Capt. K told me the incident never happened. When I
refuted him, by saying I had watched the aircraft scramble and spoke with the
radar operator, he stated that I was either insane or on drugs. His voice was
constantly at a yelling volume and his demeanor, highly intimidating. He stated
that "we can do things to you that make Leavenworth (max-security federal
penitentiary) look like a picnic". Capt. K. told me they would be watching
me and that I was never to mention this "non-event" to anyone. He
also stated, "it's a big desert out there, people get lost all the
time". I got the point.
In the ensuing days, I attempted to locate this Capt.
Kowalski, entertaining the notion of bringing him up on charges of
"behavior unbecoming an officer". He simply did not exist anywhere on
base. I contacted the Communications Squadron who runs the radar shack to see
if they know who this Capt. was. I was surprised when I discovered that the
radar operator had suddenly gotten orders to a "classified location",
nobody knew where he went and none of his friends knew about any pending
orders. Imho, he was conveniently disappeared.
I have provided the details of this event to The
Disclosure Project. They in turn asked if I would be willing to travel to
Washington D.C. and testify before Congress to that effect. My answer to them
was and still is, "affirmative".
Thank you to the witness for their interesting
report.
Brian Vike, Director Kamloops
British Columbia Canada UFO Research. Email: brian_vike@telus.net
The Vike Factor Blog.
Kamloops British Columbia Canada UFO Research.
