[HN Gopher] Air Force Jet Was Scrambled to Intercept a UFO-Then ...
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       Air Force Jet Was Scrambled to Intercept a UFO-Then Disappeared
       (2020)
        
       Author : rmason
       Score  : 51 points
       Date   : 2022-04-09 20:46 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.history.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.history.com)
        
       | emmelaich wrote:
       | > https://notice.aenetworks.com/ > This content is not available
       | in your area.
       | 
       | I'm in Australia. Don't think I've ever had this problem with
       | history.com before.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | technerder wrote:
         | Running into the same thing here in Canada
        
           | phyrex wrote:
           | Works for me, also in Canada
        
         | notRobot wrote:
         | Not available in my current location either. I hate what the
         | internet has become.
        
       | kul wrote:
       | Lq
        
       | dylan_b wrote:
       | https://archive.ph/qcxbZ
        
         | berkut wrote:
         | That's giving me: SSL_ERROR_NO_CYPHER_OVERLAP in Firefox...
        
           | recuter wrote:
           | And others in the thread are geoblocked. Coincidence? These
           | bastards can't suppress the truth forever!
        
       | erdos4d wrote:
       | If there is a radar operator here, I want to know if it is at all
       | realistic for an attack on an aircraft to result in it simply
       | disappearing from the scope. Wouldn't the falling debris of the
       | plane still show up for several minutes until it fell below what
       | the radar could see? If this is so, doesn't this story imply the
       | larger object had to have "eaten" the smaller one (the plane, I
       | am assuming)?
        
         | WJW wrote:
         | The radar cross section of any falling debris would not
         | necessarily be big enough for a radar to detect, especially
         | with 1953 tech on a stormy night. Also, two blips "merging" on
         | a radar scope is a common occurrence when two targets are
         | closer together than the pulse length.
         | 
         | This article tries really hard to make this a UFO mystery, but
         | jets fell out of the sky pretty regularly in 1953, especially
         | in storms and at night. Radar technology was also not anywhere
         | near what we have today and even with modern technology we can
         | still just outright lose a plane. MH370 still hasn't been found
         | for example.
         | 
         | (I'm not a radar operator per se but I did study weapons
         | engineering at the NL naval college and spent several years of
         | my military career specifying specs for advanced naval radar
         | systems)
        
         | jhpaul wrote:
         | I am not a radar operator. My understanding is that radar
         | reflections are related to the size, shape, and texture of an
         | object. A normal plane will be a large blob on the return,
         | while, for example, a B2 stealth bomber is designed with
         | special materials and angles to appear around the size of a
         | large bird.
         | 
         | So an intact jet fighter will show up as a big dot, while
         | falling debris might look like many small dots, or be too small
         | for the resolution of the radar display.
         | 
         | There's also numerous sources of interference and background
         | noise, including from weather. So on a stormy night it might
         | not be apparent what is debris vs water.
         | 
         | The article is really more of an advertisement for a TV show
         | than journalism and doesn't give a very clear account, but it
         | sound plausible that two dots converging and disappearing from
         | radar could represent an in-air collision. And if over the
         | great lakes during a storm, investigators would be looking
         | underwater for hundreds of pieces of non-magnetic aluminum
         | spread over many square miles.
        
         | pengaru wrote:
         | I know nothing of this subject and probably shouldn't even be
         | commenting.
         | 
         | From the few firsthand wartime accounts I've read of planes
         | being shot down, from the perspective of radar operators they
         | just abruptly disappear.
         | 
         | Also keep in mind this would have been 1953 tech.
        
         | tbihl wrote:
         | I've mostly just operated marine commercial navigation radars,
         | but having said that, I wouldn't expect the return to be very
         | good. You would still have reflected energy, but it would be
         | much closer to noise, so it would have to be much closer to be
         | automatically detected, or even to be detectable on screen by
         | my own observation. A tracker assigned to it certainly wouldn't
         | maintain itself.
        
       | rmason wrote:
       | I'm not a big UFO buff but when someone told me about this
       | incident in passing yesterday I had to examine further. I am
       | astounded that nobody has tried to find the wreckage of this jet.
       | They found the wreckage of the Edmund Fitzgerald with a mini sub
       | and that was in 730 feet of water. Why hasn't someone like
       | National Geographic or the Discovery Channel sponsored an
       | expedition to find and film this plane's wreckage and get
       | answers?
        
         | jeffbee wrote:
         | Small plane wrecks are not easy to find. When people were
         | searching for Steve Fossett in the Sierra Nevada of California
         | in 2007 they found a number of other wrecked aircraft that
         | nobody even knew were up there. Planes disappear.
        
         | zeusk wrote:
         | They still don't have any certain idea or majority of wreckage
         | from MH370, the 1950s fighter is way down the list of missing
         | things.
        
         | pengaru wrote:
         | It seems plausible that one day someone will find it. Lake
         | Superior should be far easier to search than say the Atlantic
         | and presumably the freshwater will be kinder to the airframe
         | than the salty sea.
        
           | 14 wrote:
           | It is still over 400 meters deep. That is not easy to search
           | unless you have specialized equipment.
        
             | pengaru wrote:
             | History suggests technology and access improves though.
             | Practically everyone takes for granted daily use of what
             | was pretty specialized equipment not long ago.
        
         | Narretz wrote:
         | The Edmund Fitzgerald was 200m long. A jet crashing on the
         | water surface would leave little contiguous parts in one place.
        
           | userbinator wrote:
           | Look at the attempts to find MH370, a much bigger plane, for
           | comparison.
        
             | rmason wrote:
             | Except they don't know where it crashed. Here they have a
             | much smaller area to search. I'm fairly certain in 1953
             | that even the U.S. military lacked the advanced sonar
             | that's available to the average person to use from a boat
             | in 2022.
        
             | emteycz wrote:
             | Or photos of downed jets now. They're completely flat.
             | Crashing into water must've spread it all around.
        
         | boxofbonez wrote:
         | Wikipedia article for the pilot indicates remains of the jet
         | could have been found in 1968:
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Moncla#Reports_of_parts_...
        
         | INTPenis wrote:
         | This was the early days of jet planes so I think the simplest
         | explanation is human or technical error. Rather than a covert
         | attack, or aliens.
        
           | Mordisquitos wrote:
           | Don't rule out the complexest explanation: alien error.
        
             | rbanffy wrote:
             | Back then flying saucers were hard to operate. I wouldn't
             | blame the alien.
        
       | thrdbndndn wrote:
       | Shouldn't the date be the date of when the article was written
       | (i.e. 2020)?
        
         | ianai wrote:
         | In this use that particular practice is confusing. I thought
         | this was something that happened in 2020 from the title but
         | it's not.
        
       | [deleted]
        
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       (page generated 2022-04-09 23:01 UTC)