Here’s
a bizarre one. As some of you know, I had been reviewing the Kelly-Hopkinsville
UFO encounter from August 1955. I say bizarre because I don’t know of another
case that quite mirrors it. There are some that come close, but as they say,
close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. What struck me here was that
the witnesses engaged the alien “stalkers” with firearms that had no effect on
those creatures. I’m not going to argument the merits of the case here, only
focus on one aspect of it, and that is the gunfire.
To
recap briefly, Billy Ray Taylor had gone to the well out behind the Sutton
house and saw something strange fly over. No one else in the house, and there
were quite a few of them, had seen or heard anything. They weren’t buying the
flying saucer story but then, not long afterward, the dog began to howl, so
Taylor and Elmer “Lucky” Sutton went out to investigate. They saw a strange
glow in the field and in that glow there seemed to be a strange man some three
to three and a half feet tall, with a large head, thin arms and talons for
feet. Oh, and big eyes.
The
creature began to move toward the house and the two men retreated. They picked
up a couple of weapons, either a shotgun and a rifle or a shotgun and a pistol.
When the being was inside twenty feet of the door, both men fired at it. The
creature flipped backwards, as if struck by either the shotgun pellets or the
bullets from the other weapon. It leaped to its feet and fled.
The
creature, or one like it, reappeared and was shot at. One was on a fence post,
one in a tree and one on the roof of the porch. That’s not to say there were
three creatures, because they were appearing one at a time. There was only one
occasion when two were seen at once. They were shot at, apparently hit, would
float down or flip over, but would then jump up and run away.
This
went on for several hours. The family, at one point, jumped into cars and fled
into town to alert the local law enforcement. A number of law enforcement
officers along with some military police, returned with the family but found no
evidence of the alien creatures. Once everyone left the house, the family went
to bed but one of the creatures returned. About dawn the whole thing was over.
There
was evidence of the shooting, however. Bullet holes were found in the screens
and in some of the siding on the house. There are reports that the neighbors
heard the gunfire and shotgun shells were found. There was no evidence that the
creatures had been harmed by the bullets, and there was no evidence of Great
Horned Owls had been the culprits as was later alleged. For those who would
like a little more information, you can find it here:
http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2021/08/chasing-footnotes-kelly-hopkinsville.html
http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2021/08/chasing-footnotes-kelly-hopkinsville_18.html
This
got me to thinking about this sort of thing. Hostile encounters between humans
and aliens. Normally, the attitude is that the aliens make the hostile moves,
but I have found a number of cases in which the hostility seemed to have flowed
in the other direction.
In
an event that took place in November, 1961, but not reported until sometime
later, Don Flickinger, a government agent, said that he had received the
information in 1968 about a close encounter incident. Flickinger learned of the
UFO sighting from a man identified only as “S”.
According
to the tale, S and his pals had been hunting and were returning home when they
saw something bright descending. Terrain got in the way and they lost sight of
the object. They thought it was a plane crash and rushed to help. They saw,
about fifty yards away, an object they said looked like a silo sticking in the
ground.
To
get a better look, they used a spotlight. Near the “silo” were four human
looking beings. It was then that there was a “whoosh” and the men thought the
silo, the wrecked airplane, had blown up.
As
the men returned to the car, they spotted the object again. Near it was one of
the figures, apparently dressed in a white coverall. It was estimated to be
about five feet tall, though I’m not sure how accurate that estimate is. That
figure, being, attempted to wave them away.
The
men left, drove into town, thought to be Martin, North Dakota, and located a
police officer. They all drove back to the site after convincing the cop that
they weren’t drunk. There was nothing to see except some lights that looked
like the taillights on a car. They could find nothing in the field. With
nothing else to see, everyone left that site.
Two
miles down the road, the object reappeared. It landed about 150 yards away. Two
figures from the craft appeared watching the men. They plugged in their
spotlight. Two of the men got out of the car, one of them carrying a .22 Hornet
rifle. The man with the weapon dropped to a prone position and fired one shot.
One of the beings reacted, struck high in the shoulder. He was assisted to his
feet by the other and shouted, “Now, what in the hell did you do that for?”
Although
it seems that S believed that this was some sort of Air Force project, there were
no repercussions. It is highly unlikely this was a terrestrial project.
However, the only name associated with the case is Flickinger, and he wasn’t
with the men. He heard the story from S. He also mentioned that one of the men
was an Air Force NCO who was honorably discharged from the Air Force a few years
after the shooting.
A
better documented case took place at Fort Dix/McGuire Air Force Base in 1978.
Here we have the name of a witness who was there at the time. According to what
George Filer, a retired major, said that it was after midnight on January 18,
when Army military police chased something that stopped and hovered. The jeep’s
headlights showed some sort of weird creature that was about four feet tall
with a large head and big black eyes. An MP apparently fired five rounds at it.
The being, injured, attempted to escape by crossing the fence line between Dix
and McGuire. It collapsed on a runway near a hangar, dying from the wounds.
Filer
said that he arrived at the base at the normal time and realized that something
was going on. He had to show his ID to get on the base, something that wasn’t
normal. When he arrived at this office, an NCO told him that an alien had been
killed, explaining that it was not human but something from outer space. Filer
was to gather information to brief General Thomas Sadler.
Filer
thought it was a joke and one that the general wouldn’t appreciate. He then
called various offices and each of the people he spoke to verified the event.
Filer began to prepare his report but a senior officer beat him to it.
Most
of these sorts of things, humans firing at UFOs and alien beings aren’t quite
that spectacular. During the Levelland sightings of November 1957, Don Adams,
from Edgewood, New Mexico, reported he had driven under a UFO and his car
stalled. He got out, grabbed his revolver, and fired six shots, which he
claimed had hit the object. He reloaded and fired another six, but the UFO had
begun to move to the north, so he didn’t know if those shots had hit the
object. He said that the bullets had no effect on the UFO.
The
Air Force did investigate and reported that Adams was drunk at the time. He was
thought to be unreliable, but since he was on his own property, he had not
violated the law. The Air Force labeled the case as a hoax.
The
military has also engaged objects that might be considered UFOs. During World
War II, the USS Helm, fired on a disk-shaped object that had circled overhead.
According to the MUFON UFO Journal article written by Paul C. Cerny and
Robert Neville, a chief aboard the ship told them that in August 1942, off
Guadalcanal, he had an excellent view and told them that fleet radar reported
an intruder. Not long after that, there was a visual sighting. When the object
was about a mile away the fleet opened fire. The object made a sharp right
turn, eventually circled the fleet and then disappeared.
On
March 25, 1942, the tail gunner on a Royal Air Force bomber, saw a glowing,
orange disk or sphere following them. He told the pilot who also saw the UFO.
When it was about 100 yards from the plane, the gunner fired, hit the object
but saw no effect. The UFO finally disappeared.
 |
| Colonel Oscar Santa Maria Huerta at the National Press Club in 2013. |
Keeping
with the international flavor of this, Peruvian Air Force fighter pilot, then
Lieutenant Oscar Santa Maria Huerta, on April 11, 1980, attempted to shoot down
some sort of a silver object near this airfield. When first spotted, the UFO
was about two and a half miles away, and about 1800 feet in the air. It was not
responding to any radio transmissions from the air field.
Huerta,
approached the object and began his attack. He said that he fired a short burst
of 30 mm rounds, that should have taken out anything nearby. Although just one
of the rounds would have shredded a car and he thought that the balloon would
be torn open by the rounds. He told me, in 2013, that he hit the object
multiple times but there was no effect on it.
At
that point the UFO began a rapid climb. Huerta, flying a Soviet designed SU-22,
used the afterburners in an attempt to catch the object. The UFO stopped and
Huerta lined up another shot but before he could fire, the UFO began another
high-speed maneuver. He tried a couple of times to gain a firing position but
the UFO continued to evade him.
Running
low on fuel, he decided to try to get a better look at the UFO. He said it was
about 33 feet in diameter with a shiny, cream-colored dome, looking like a
light bulb that had been cut in half. There were no wings, propulsion jets,
exhausts, antenna or windows.
Huerta
had to return to base. He turned and began a zig-zagged descent, hoping the UFO
wouldn’t follow him. The UFO remained in place for about two hours after Huerta
attempted to shoot it down. The incident was the subject of a July 1980
Department of Defense document entitled “UFO Sighted in Peru.” It concludes by
saying that the object was not identified.
The
point here is that there are many encounters in which we Terrans (a much better
term than Earthlings) fired on the UFO. Sometimes it was officially sanctioned,
sometimes it was frightened men and women and, of course, there are always the
drunks. This survey is nowhere near complete. I know of many other events. However,
a search of the UFO literature can take many days and I would ask for help. Send
me any instances in which we opened fire. Just a source would be fine so that I
might look it up. A few details would help. I’ll compile a compendium of these
instances, whether military or civilian. This is an area I believe has been
overlooked.