Have you ever heard of the UFO that allegedly shot down a nuclear missile in 1964? If not, you are usually not alone. This is some of the intriguing and controversial UFO cases in history, and yet it stays largely unknown to the general public.
The story begins on September 15, 1964 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, where a team of US Air Force officers conducted a test launch of the Atlas F rocket. The missile was unarmed, but was intended to simulate a nuclear warhead.
One of the officers collaborating within the test was Lieutenant Bob Jacobs, who was accountable for filming the rocket's flight using a special high-speed camera. He was stationed in Big Sur, about 260 miles from the launch site.
Another officer was Major Florenze Mansmann, who was the optical instrumentation officer at Vandenberg. His duties included analyzing the footage after the exam.
What they saw within the film modified their lives ceaselessly.
According to Jacobs and Mansmann, the video showed a saucer-shaped object flying near the missile after it separated from the booster. The object then emitted a beam of sunshine that struck the missile, causing it to fall and crash.
The object then circled the missile and fired one other beam before flying away at high speed.
Jacobs and Mansmann were stunned by what they witnessed. They had no idea what the thing was or what its intentions were. Was it to stop nuclear war? Did he test his own weapons? Was it just curiosity?
They never had the prospect to search out out. Shortly after watching the film, two men in civilian clothes got here to Vandenberg and confiscated the film. They claimed to be from the CIA and warned Jacobs and Mansmann to not discuss what they’d seen or face serious consequences.
The film was never seen again.
For many years, Jacobs and Mansmann remained silent about their meeting, fearing for his or her careers and safety. They only got here forward within the Nineteen Eighties once they were contacted by Robert Hastings, an creator and researcher investigating UFO sightings at nuclear facilities.
Hastings learned in regards to the incident from other sources and wanted to verify it with Jacobs and Mansmann. He also wanted to search out out if there was a likelihood of recovering the film.
To his surprise, he discovered that there could be a duplicate of the film somewhere within the Pentagon. He learned this from Luis Elizondo, former director of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), a secret Pentagon program that investigated UFOs and other aerial phenomena.
Elizondo he said Hastings that he had seen the film himself and that it was kept in a secure vault on the AATIP offices. He also confirmed the main points of Jacobs and Mansmann's description and stated that the thing was apparently not of human origin.
However, Elizondo couldn’t provide Hastings with access to the film because he had left AATIP in 2017 and not had permission. He also said AATIP is susceptible to being closed down by skeptical officials who see no value in UFO research.
Since then, Hastings has tried to accumulate the film, but has encountered many obstacles and delays. He believes the film continues to be somewhere within the Pentagon, but he doesn't know if it would ever be released to the general public.
He hopes that in the future the reality will come to light about what happened on September 15, 1964 and what it means for humanity.
Until then, we are able to only wonder: what type of UFO was that? And why did he launch a nuclear missile?
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