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- Apollo Program UFO Sighting from 1960's Comes to Light
-
- (Washington State MUFON, March 21, 1988.) An interesting
- UFO report from the 1960's involving the test firing of an Apollo
- space program booster rocket recently came to light as a result
- of follow-up to the January 21, 1988 Whidbey Island UFO sighting.
- Dan MacIndoe of Oak Harbor, Washington received many phone calls
- from other UFO witnesses as a consequence of reporting his UFO
- sighting to a local radio station and giving out his phone
- number. One of them was from Paul J. Allen of Snohomish,
- Washington, who told him of his encounter with a UFO while
- working for GE/NASA in the summer of either 1966 or 1967.
-
- A quality control inspector working for General Electric at
- the NASA Mississippi Test facility at the time, Mr. Allen was at
- work during the first captive test firing of the second stage,
- Saturn IV-B rocket. He doesn't recall the exact date but he
- believes it was probably during the summer of either 1966 or
- 1967. [The date should be easily obtainable from archived
- historical records of the Space program.]
-
- At approximately 11:00 p.m. he stepped outside the Data
- Processing Center building for a smoke and to view the test
- firing. He noticed a bright light approaching rapidly from the
- east, which he took to be a light from a plane at first. However,
- it approached the Test Facility at an unbelievable speed, slowing
- over the Saturn V-B test stand before continuing on towards the
- Saturn IV-B test stand, whereupon it stopped and stood over the
- exhaust blast from the test firing for a minute to a minute and a
- half. He described the UFO as 200 feet in diameter. It hovered
- at 3,000-5,000 feet during the stage 2 captive firing, directly
- over the exhaust blast updraft until the firing ended. Then it
- approached at about 30 mph, came over the data processing
- center for about another minute, and left travelling almost
- straight up.
-
- Mr. Allen states there were 19 people who witnessed the UFO
- where he stood and another 9 to 11 people on the roof of the
- Control Facility Building, who had been filming the test firing
- and also saw it. No pictures of this test firing were ever shown
- to his group although they were shown film footage of all other
- firings. They were told that a weather balloon with a flashlight
- attached had been the cause of the UFO report and that was what
- they had seen. They were also told that if they discussed the
- sighting with the public they would lose their jobs.
-
- A complete report of this sighting is being sent to MUFON
- national headquarters and to CAUS.
-