SUBJECT: OLD UFO SIGHTING IN RUSSIA FILE: UFO2623
BY JAMES OBERG for OMNI
Once a UFO case becomes " a classic," no amount of logic can convince some
people that a prosaic explanation holds sway. Take the sighting made in the
pre-dawn darkness of Friday, September 7, 1984, when a Soviet Aeroflot
airliner was flying north from Belorussia toward Estonia. At 4:10 a.m.,
passing Minsk, the co-pilot noticed a bright light ahead and to the right. For
the next several minutes, the light, or whatever it was, supposedly escorted
the airliner along its path.
Captain lgor Cherkashin called the local traffic contol, who saw nothing in
the sky. But after several minutes of searching on radar, ground contollers
reported a funny "double image," presumed by some to be the airliner and its
escort from beyond. as the radar was tracking, co-pilot Gennadli Lazurin
grabbed his logbook and began making sketches of the apparition as it changed
shape, color, and size. Its scintillating sequences of color were so bright
the crew could see its refleciton in the ground below.
Years after the original report, pundits started discussing another civil
airliner, one supposedly heading in the opposite direction, that had observed
the strange lights as well. According to rumor swirling around the UFO
community, this second craft had been a military interceptor sent up to chase
the UFO. Its pilot reportedly died a year later of cancer, and its co-pilot
suffered heart problems. A stewardess was said to have contracted a mysterious
skin disease.
To some investigators on the case, the medical puzzle had an obvious
explanation: the poisonous rays of the UFO. Russian UFO-watcher Antonio
Huneeus later called it" one of the most serious UFO injury cases ever
reported."
But despite all the theories, a prosaic explanation exists. It turns out that
just when the pilots in the first craft glimpsed the mysterious lights, a
Soviet military missile was being launched from the supersecret Plesetsk
Cosmodrome. In fact, the sketches by co-pilot Lazurin show a distinct sequence
of lights - first rays, concentric circles, and expanding rings, then a cloud,
and finally, a fading amorphous mass; it's not coincidence that the same
sequence of shapes graces sketches made by other witnesses depicting known
rocket launchings. What's more, at precisely the same time the Soviet pilots
were freaking out, amateur observers throughout Finland were observing the
Soviet missilte launch themselves.
As for the radar sightings and health problems, skeptics dismiss them as
coincidence and exaggeration. Most people " exposed" to the UFO, after all,
were not affected, and those who were seem to have been injured in strikingly
different ways. And Phillip Klass, an electronics expert for Aviation Week
magazine, noted that given an insistent enough visual sighting, a radar
operator will almost always find something "funny" on his display.
Speaking for the record, Moscow, of course, did not agree. Soviet officials
denied the existence of the Cosmodrome itself. And the official army
newspaper, Red Star, later asserted that the Minsky sighting might have been
caused by refracted light beams striking floating space garbage.
As for UFO proponents, they admit that the rocket launching occurred, but
suggest that this was what attracted the real UFO to Russia in the first
place. "The UFO must have continued its flight toward Plesetsk, probably to
see what was going on," one expert speculated in the magazine, Science in the
U.S.S.R.
A starship from beyond or a secret Soviet missile? Decide for yourself. As far
as I can reckon, the telling evidence is there.
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http://www.ufobbs.com/ufo *
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