PART SIX: EVERYTHING IS A UFO

“My father-in-law, Elwood Johnston, half-jokingly suggested, ‘Maybe it’s one of those Roswell UFOs?’ Whatever it was, it felt outright eerie.

It couldn’t have been more different from the UFO I saw as a child in 1964. That one was the complete opposite—black, silent, and stealthy. The 1964 UFO seemed almost childlike in its movements, playful even, glowing like a star grounded on Earth. It seemed to invite you to follow it, to notice it. How could you not?

But as this dark, mysterious object passed close by, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. The closest comparison I can make is the feeling of being in a pitch-black room and suddenly realizing something unknown is there with you.

My best guess is that it was some kind of flying wing, possibly related to the F-117 or the B-2, yet far more advanced. What really struck me was how unnervingly silent it was—no engine rumble at all. Nothing like the loud, proud roar of the F-14s and B-1Bs that had taken off from Roswell just over an hour before

photo illustration (C) Steve Douglass 

One thing was certain: it was designed to sneak up on you. I suspect the red strobe on its centerline was there solely to prevent collisions with civilian or military jets as it passed less than a mile from the end of the runway at RIAC. Interestingly, despite monitoring every VHF civilian and UHF military frequency nearby, there was no sign this triangular aircraft was communicating with anyone.

It wasn’t on Roswell approach frequencies, which are mandatory for any aircraft flying near a civilian airport, nor was it in contact with Albuquerque Center, Cherokee Control at White Sands Missile Range, or Holloman AFB.

That night, I logged every aircraft involved in the exercise at Roswell, noting their takeoff and return times. Later, I cross-referenced all callsigns with recordings I made on cassettes from my scanner array. I’m confident I tracked all the “players” as they checked in with the E-2C Hawkeye and E-3 AWACS, which managed the exercise and prevented potential collisions between civil and military flights. While it’s possible a secret participant was involved, it seems unlikely that any test aircraft would operate in the range without checking in with Cherokee Control.

photo (C) Steve Douglass 

Earlier that evening, I logged an unexpected aircraft—RYDER 11, an F-117—that made a single approach at Holloman as the sun was setting. I managed to capture an incredible photo of it silhouetted against the New Mexico sunset. Although the F-117 is a stealth aircraft, it’s not silent; the Nighthawk’s sound on approach is similar to a T-38. The pilot contacted Cherokee Control, requesting permission to operate on the Red Rio Range but was told the range was busy due to the Roving Sands exercise. Ryder 11 then asked for routing back to Tonopah, Nevada.

Photographing an F-117 was a real treat, though not a surprise—I’d heard it communicating with Albuquerque Approach an hour before I spotted it. I don’t believe the F-117 was part of the exercise.

That night, I was eager to return to my in-laws’ house and review the video. Before watching, I made a quick backup copy, transferring the entire day’s footage onto a VHS cassette. While the copy processed, I played back my scanner recordings to check for any unusual communications—besides that lone F-117, there were no unexpected callsigns.

After making the safety copy, I played the original footage to see if the aircraft was visible against the murky sky. It appeared as a black slab moving against a slightly lighter, yet still dark, Roswell sky.

I had captured it flying for a full 7.5 seconds.

Later, video and imagery experts brought in by Popular Science’s West Coast editor, Stuart F. Brown, analyzed the tape. The results weren’t exactly impressive—the contrast between the object and the background was separated by only five gray-scale pixels.

Today, this footage would likely be dismissed as just another blurry UFO photo—one of the thousands flooding the internet.

If only I could have recorded what our eyes actually saw. The pixelated blob on the tape was a poor substitute for the vivid, close-range sight that Elwood and I witnessed.

I was convinced I had captured video evidence of previously unknown and unacknowledged secret stealth aircraft—perhaps the elusive TR-3A Black Manta. This name wasn’t my invention; it first appeared in Aviation Week and Space Technology Magazine.

One speculation on the Dreamland Resort forum suggested that the “TR-3” was a misinterpretation by William Scott (who wrote reports about the supposed Black Manta) of “Tier III,” a classified USAF program for a large, stealthy, high-altitude UAV evolving from the CIA’s canceled Quartz program. This program eventually split into Tier II+ and Tier III- Minus, which produced the RQ-4 and RQ-3 drones, respectively. Bill Yenne’s 1993 book Weapons of the 21st Century claimed the TR-3 was first tested by Northrop in 1981, based on the Tactical High Altitude Penetrator concept—but there was no concrete evidence.

Phil Patton, researching for his book Dreamland: Travels Inside the Secret World of Roswell and Area 51, visited the NASA/Dryden archives in Edwards, California, and found a folder labeled “TR-3A Test and Evaluation Program”—but the file was empty.

The Black Manta, as it was known, became one of my unicorns. As Stuart F. Brown put it, “We know there aren’t any unicorns, but there are black aircraft.”

Decades later, I photographed it—or something remarkably similar—on multiple occasions. Others witnessed and photographed it too. Each time, government agencies responded with denial and disinformation campaigns, only fueling suspicions that a triangular-shaped craft was being concealed.

At one point, the USAF spent hundreds of thousands of dollars staging an elaborate publicity stunt, flying three B-2s over Amarillo in a textbook attempt to discredit the sightings—an effort to suppress accidental disclosure of a secret program. You can read more about that episode on my other blog, Black Horizon.

I wrote about the Roving Sands story in Monitoring Times. That article took on a life of its own, leading to more features in various magazines. Because it happened near Roswell, the story attracted so much attention that I ended up on national TV discussing the sighting.

Both The Today Show and Unsolved Mysteries reached out to me. I chose Unsolved Mysteries for two reasons: I felt the sighting deserved more than a quick two-minute segment during a morning show, and Unsolved Mysteries attracted an audience genuinely curious about the universe—not just parents rushing to get their kids ready for school. Although I knew they wanted to connect it to the Roswell UFO crash of 1947 to boost ratings, I insisted they clarify that I made no such claims.

After the episode aired, I became known as the guy who captured a UFO on video near Roswell. While I wasn’t thrilled by that label, I understood why people made the connection and accepted it. Little did I know, that sighting would open the door to everything Roswell-related for me

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Interestingly, at that time in Roswell, openly discussing the 1947 "crash" was discouraged in public. The city hadn’t yet embraced the idea of profiting from UFO tourism, and the local chamber of commerce certainly didn’t promote it.

Roswell was primarily a dairy and agricultural town, with a downtown that carried the comforting scent of baked bread. It was better known for its military academy and as the place where American rocketry pioneer Robert Goddard built and tested rockets that paved the way for the space age. The town also had a vibrant artistic community, boasting numerous museums, a zoo, and nature centers.

The now-famous UFO crash near Roswell was common knowledge among locals, but it wasn’t a topic of casual conversation with strangers—especially after the publication of The Roswell Incident by Charles Berlitz and William Moore. Since then, many more books on the subject have been published.

The U.S. government, weary of the media circus and public inquiries, attempted to quash the Roswell story by attributing it to Project Mogul—a secret balloon program.

While this explanation seemed plausible to most of the press, true believers saw it as further proof of a government cover-up. Many Roswell residents, particularly those who were there in 1947, rejected the official story. They knew what they had witnessed wasn’t mannequins or Mogul balloons crashing in 1953. This was long before aliens became a lucrative industry in the once-sleepy town of Roswell.

I had read *The Roswell Incident* and found it interesting, but I wasn’t convinced it was anything other than a weather balloon or military hardware that had gone astray from the White Sands Missile Range.

After seeing the photos of the debris—just sticks and aluminum foil—I was pretty sure of that. I dismissed Roswell as another one of those saucer-crash stories with a likely terrestrial explanation, probably linked to a secret government program gone wrong.

What I couldn’t have predicted was that everyone, myself included, was looking at the incident from the wrong perspective. More on that later.

I now think of it like one of those trick images—like the famous optical illusion that can look like either an old lady or a young lady. Once someone shows you the other way of seeing it, you can’t unsee it.

My father-in-law, Elwood, was a well-known used car dealer and respected member of the Roswell business community. He was outgoing and social, known by nearly everyone in town. Because of him, I was introduced to many locals who had been there in 1947.

I engaged them informally about the Roswell Incident—not like an interviewer—and this approach made them more open. I played the long game, letting them bring up Roswell in ‘47 on their own terms.

It was clear that after the Berlitz/Moore book was published, their credibility and sanity had been questioned. When the Project Mogul balloon explanation was released, most of the public accepted the Air Force’s account, at least temporarily, and the negative attention left many locals bitter. For the Air Force, Roswell was a closed case, though many original witnesses were alive and adamantly cried cover-up. Blue Book’s J. Allen Hynek once said, “You can’t convince a person who has had a real UFO experience that he hasn’t had it.”

Elwood introduced me to key witnesses like Glenn Dennis and Walter Haut, who would later help establish the International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell. These were honest men, certain of what they’d seen, and no one could sway them. There was far more to their knowledge than what *The Roswell Incident* revealed.

My article on the TR-3A and Roving Sands sparked interest beyond what I expected. The next year, I wasn’t alone at the fence. Aviation journalists and interceptors—some of whom became lifelong friends—joined me every spring when jets gathered in Roswell.

What had been just me and a couple of scanners grew into a group of a dozen or more like-minded radio hobbyists, aviation fans, and black project watchers, all armed with cameras, scanners, and night vision gear. It became an event—an esoteric social gathering—where people came from around the world to scan the New Mexico desert, hoping to glimpse what I had seen.

I met fascinating people from all walks of life. At one point, I persuaded my good friend Ken Hanson to use his 40-foot RV as a roving command center, equipped with antennas, scanners, and all the comforts of home. We parked it at a public park just south of the Roswell Industrial Air Center, about a thousand yards from the flight line. On the back window, we posted a sign identifying ourselves as The Roving Sands Green Force—after all, as taxpayers, we were providing the funding, and it was our duty to see how the military was spending our money. Plus, I admit, it was a lot of fun.

But as our numbers grew, so did the military’s scrutiny.

The tension peaked when a Learning Channel producer wanted to document our unofficial Interceptor Convention, soon followed by an Australian TV crew with professional cameras joining us at the fence. The military wasn’t pleased. They tried to intimidate us—buzzing us with helicopters, pulling up behind our RV, and even pointing a .50 caliber machine gun at us, hoping we’d leave.

We stood our ground. We saw ourselves as patriots, an unofficial oversight committee made up of civilians they were sworn to protect. And the more they tried to push us away, the more determined we became to stay.

They had little leverage since everything we did was legal. We weren’t there to disrupt operations, only to observe and, perhaps, catch a glimpse of something unacknowledged.

And many times we did. Click on the video below to watch our segment on Amazing America. 

 

Some people ask me, “How come you see all this strange stuff? Why have I never seen what you claim to have seen?”

I respond with a question: “How often do you actually take the time to look up during your day?”

My life has been an adventure, largely because I’ve spent it looking up.

For example, as I write this, there’s a beautifully bright moon tonight. I didn’t just glance at it—I went outside and photographed it.

When was the last time you truly took the time to observe the moon, rather than just a quick glance?

When did you last watch a light moving across the sky and wonder what it was? Was it a plane, a satellite, a meteor, or a comet? Do you even know how to tell the difference?

Most people can’t distinguish a military aircraft from a Southwest Airlines passenger jet.

Forget just looking up—imagine being able to identify the type of aircraft flying overhead purely by the sound it makes. That’s something I, along with many of my friends, can do.

If you are a hammer, everything is a nail. If you know nothing about aircraft, satellites, comets, birds or clouds, everything is a UFO.

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UP NEXT: AND THEN I MET "MARK"