By Brent Swancer

AMONG the many, many UFO reports out there, some of them have truly stood the test of time and proven to be even more unexplainable than most. These are the cases that have come from very credible witnesses, with corroborating evidence to show that they are not making all of this up, and it is cases like these that truly inspire wonder and awe. One such UFO encounter happened in the skies of Australia, and has served to incite debate and discussion to this day.

On August 31, 1954, a Lieutenant J.A. “Shamus” O’Farrell was returning to Royal Australian Navy Air Station Nowra, in New South Wales, aboard his Sea Fury aircraft. It had been a routine standard night-navigation exercise at dusk, and at 7:10 PM O’Farrell contacted the air base with a routine radio communication. Up until that point everything had been going smoothly and without issue, but things were about to get very strange. Shortly after this radio contact with the base, O’Farrell allegedly saw a very bright light closing in on him fast from his 1 o’clock position. This anomalous light then crossed in front of his aircraft to take up a position on his port side, where it appeared to match his speed. He then noticed a second bright light approaching from his 9 o’clock position, which passed the plane about a mile in front of it and then returned to the position of the original light. He would later describe each object as a “vague cigar shape with the bright light situated centrally on top.” He would say of what happened:

I was just over 12,000ft. It was a fine dark night. The stars were all out with no moon, no clouds, no bad weather and good visibility. A pleasant night for night flying. I had been airborne for about two hours and was somewhere in the Goulburn region, near Canberra. When I left Nowra, the radar there was not working, but they were hoping to get it on line by the time I returned. The operators asked me to call so that they could do a check-tune on me as I came in. I was surprised when I saw two aircraft, on either side of me, each with a single bright light above it, but with no navigation lights. In fact, it was quite a shock because everything was going well. I was keeping a lookout, constantly scanning from one side of the aircraft to the other. They came from astern and I looked out to one side and thought, ‘Gee, what is that?’ I continued to look around and there, on the other side, was another one. They were in formation with me, and holding their station with me and they were about the same distance out on either side. And then I thought about it for some time to make sure I wasn’t seeing things that weren’t there. But sure enough, I could see two dark cigar-shaped objects – not very long, about the size of a Dakota – but their central bright lights made their outline quite distinct. I could see no other details, no other lights – just one bright centrally placed light over the top of each mass.

Sea Fury aircraft

The two mysterious objects would be reported as approaching and later leaving extremely fast, much faster than his own aircraft, later estimated as having been moving at 1,000 mph or more, and the shocked O’Farrell contacted Nowra to see if their radar was online yet and whether they were seeing this. After telling the base what had happened they confirmed that they had two objects on their radar that matched the position he described, after which the two lights fell into the 9 o’clock position and sped off to the northeast. The radar team would lose track of the objects after that, and at the time there was no rational explanation for what they could be. In an interview with ufologist Bill Chalker, O’Farrell would later say of the incident and his conversation with the base:

I said, “Nowra, this is 921. Do you have me on radar?” “And a few seconds later they came back and said, “Affirmative 921. We have you coming in from the west. We have another two contacts as well. Which one are you.” “I said, “I think I’m the central one.” And so they said, “Do a 180…for identification.” So I did a quick 180 and then continued on around and made it a 360 back to where I was going. “They said, “Yes, we’ve got you. You’re the centre aircraft.” I said that’s correct. They then said to me, “Who are the other two aircraft,” and I said, “I don’t know. I was hoping you would tell me, because I didn’t think there was anyone up here. They said, “Well there shouldn’t be, and they certainly shouldn’t be that close to you.”

So the conversation went on like this and I was very pleased to be talking to somebody because it gave me a lot of reassurance. With that these two aircraft came in quite close to me and I could really see the dark mass and that they were quite big, but I couldn’t make out any other lights or any other form of an aircraft. With that they took off and headed off to the north east at great speed. I was about to press the button and tell them at Nowra that the two aircraft were departing when Nowra called me up and said, “The other two aircraft appear to be departing at high speed to the north east. Is that correct?” and I said, “Yes!”. And they said, “Roger, we’ll see if we can track them.” They tracked them for a while and then lost them. I came in and landed at 7.30 (1930) and when I got there there were quite a few people waiting for me. I thought it was a bit strange and so they came over, and they said, “You sure you had aircraft out there!” and I said yes.

Upon landing, he was met by the Surgeon Commander, who would give him a full medical check-up to find nothing physically wrong with him. Although the Directorate of Naval Intelligence deemed O’Farrell to be a seasoned, well-respected pilot and “an entirely credible witness,” and despite this and the corroboration from the base radar, he would claim that the main attitude around the base was that no one completely believed it. After this, the case was quietly kept secret until it began to leak into the news in December of that year. Before long there were headlines all over the papers talking about the “Sea Fury Incident,” forcing the Royal Navy to make a statement. Incredibly, the Navy Minister would be quite forthcoming about what had happened, while stopping short of saying that these had been aliens from outer space. He would say:

It is a fact that on a night cross-country flight from Nowra on August 31, at 13,000 feet above Goulburn, a pilot in a Sea Fury observed two lights on his radar, with vague shapes underneath. The lights passed ahead of him at a very fast speed as he flew at 220 knots (just under 250mph). The pilot made contact with Nowra and advised them. It was later ascertained that the only other aircraft in the vicinity was a TAA Convair. This was passed by Naval Intelligence to RAAF Intelligence.

The news brought a great amount of unwanted attention to O’Farrell, who was afraid that this was going to ruin his career. He was approached by numerous news agencies who constantly harassed him, even as the military tried to distance itself from the whole affair and sweep it under the carpet. As this was going on he also faced a good amount of ridicule from those who didn’t believe him, including close colleagues. The other pilots thought he had lost his mind, and it all took its toll of O’Farrell, who continued to insist that he was telling the truth but just wanted to leave it behind him. He would say:

I was bit ashamed about it all. People thought that I had flipped my lid, lost control, done something silly. And it was a bit of a joke by the rest of the aircrew. People would have a few drinks and say to you, ‘Have a drink O’Farrell and tell us more about the flying saucers.’ As the years went by I became more embarrassed and I just wiped it out of my memory and never worried about it again. It has always intrigued me. It has always worried me. To this day I am as certain as I was then that I saw two objects flying in close formation with me. And I am convinced that they weren’t aeroplanes that come from the Navy, Army or the Air Force, or Civil aviation. Whatever they were, they were very fast craft and they very, very good performance. I saw no explanation, but I didn’t see any need to tell anybody else about it or talk about it.

However, he would never really be able to escape it. Over the years, O’Farrell’s case would be pursued by several UFO researchers, including Australian ufologist Bill Chalker and American UFO researcher Dr. Allen Hynek, who interviewed him and could find no rational explanation for what he had experienced. In particular, O’Farrell would remember how when he had met Hynek in 1973, the researcher had been very interested in the case, in that it was in his opinion one of the stronger cases he had come across. O’Farrell would say of this:

The interesting thing he (Hynek) said was that all of these sightings had been made by professional people in aviation. By that he meant they were military pilots, military aircrew, civil aviation operators, air traffic controllers, and the like, or airline pilots. These were the ones he was now (1973) going around meeting the people themselves and investigating. All the others he had written off and had been able to explain down to some other phenomena. It came to the point where he said, “Your sighting cannot be explained away.” And he left it at that. To this day I wouldn’t know where it came from or where it went.

Interestingly, the official files on the case would be classified for decades, and it was only after they were declassified that it would be learned that O’Farrell had not been as nuts as many had made him out to be. It would turn out that there had actually been two further independent witnesses to the event. One was an officer from the Department of Aviation who had been out repairing a navigation beacon when he had visually seen the two lights streak past shortly after the incident, and the objects had also been detected by an air traffic controller in the tower at Sydney’s Mascot Airport, who had logged in two strange fast-moving lights passing to the south of the city. Why had these reports been kept under wraps while O’Farrell was being lambasted by everyone as being a liar or a kook? Also rather odd is that the original tape of O’Farrell’s communication with the base during the incident has disappeared, as have several official files on the matter. Without those files, it is hard to say what is really going on here, but Chalker is convinced that this is a very credible account that deserves serious consideration, saying on the TV program The Extraordinary:

One has to bear in mind the credentials that come with the sighting. You have a highly qualified and experienced pilot, you have confirmation from the ground from the radar operator. You have two separate ground witnesses all confirming the presence of two unidentified aircraft of some description. And doing things that were apparently inexplicable beyond the capabilities apparent at that time.

The Sea Fury case has gone on to be considered one of the most credible unexplained UFO encounters out there, and there are many questions still lingering about it. What did O’Farrell see out there? Was this some kind of experimental aircraft or something else? Why were the other witness accounts covered up and why were the files doomed to be classified or to go missing entirely? It is hard to say that he could have possibly just been seeing things because there are other corroborating reports, such as the radar evidence and the other sightings, so what was going on here? Whatever the case may be, the Sea Fury UFO incident has managed to become a classic case that has continued to elude understanding.

MU

Who or what flies the “flying triangles”? are they UFOs or secret aircraft?

By Nick Redfern

SINCE the early part of the 1980s, sightings of large, triangular-shaped UFOs have been made. They are usually described as being black in color, making a low humming noise, with lights below, and with rounded – rather than angled – corners. And, they have been seen throughout the world. The sheer proliferation of such reports has led some ufological commentators to strongly suspect that the Flying Triangles (as they have come to be known) are prime examples of classified aircraft, the development of which secretly began in the 1980s by elements of the U.S. Department of Defense. There’s no doubt that the theory makes a great deal of sense. After all, it’s not difficult to think of them as next-generation Stealth aircraft. By the time the 1970s were up and running, Area 51’s finest were focusing a great deal on what has since become termed as Stealth technology – in essence, the ability to render an aircraft practically invisible to radar. Much of the highly-classified research that led to the construction and deployment of the Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk (more popularly referred to as the Stealth Fighter) and the Northrop B-2 Spirit (better known as the Stealth Bomber) was undertaken out at Area 51 – by which time the word “vast” barely begins to describe the base. A countless number of aircraft-hangars, underground labs, facilities built into the sides of the surrounding mountains, and new runways were part and parcel of Area 51. And with the Stealth planes being extremely important to the U.S. military.

Since both the Nighthawk and the Spirit are broadly triangular in shape, it’s easy to see why and how most people would think the Flying Triangles, too, are the work of the government, rather than the creations of extraterrestrials. I would be totally fine with suggesting that the Flying Triangles were (and still are) are indeed nothing but secret aircraft. There’s a problem, though. And, admittedly, it’s a pretty big one. Yes, the overwhelming numbers of sightings of the Flying Triangles do date back to the early Eighties. And with some in the latter part of the 1970s. However, there are a few reports of the craft going back to the 1960s. Now, the skeptic might say that those who claim to have seen Flying Triangles such a long time ago are nothing but hoaxers. That scenario, however, doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. I’ll tell you why. Welcome to a man named Jeffrey Brown. We have to take a trip to the U.K.-based National Archives. It contains the overwhelming majority of all the UFO-themed documents that the U.K. government has ever held and declassified.

Contained in those files is a one-page, March 28, 1965, UFO report that was filed with the Ministry of Defense by Brown. He actually filed the report – by phone – on the very same night of his sighting, which was on the moors of North Yorkshire, U.K. In part, the documentation states that Brown saw: “Nine or ten objects – in close triangular formation each about 100ft long – orange illumination below – each triangular in shape with rounded corners, making low humming noise.” Despite the fact that the report isn’t that lengthy in size, it’s huge when it comes to the matter of its importance. What Jeffrey Brown saw was, without a doubt, a Flying Triangle. There was the humming sound. There was the rounded corners on the craft. And there was the light emanating from below. Most important of all, that particular document is still at the National Archives. You, me and anyone else can go there and see Brown’s report. I did exactly that when it was declassified.

So, we have a report of a group of definitive Flying Triangles from as far back as the mid-1960s. Yet, all of the available evidence today suggests the FTs didn’t appear on the scene until the early 1980s. Or, maybe, around the latter days of the 1970s. It’s highly unlikely that, at the time of Brown’s incident, the U.K. military would have had not just one, but a whole squadron, of FTs flying around. Admittedly, this case is a fascinating one. If the military weren’t flying massive Flying Triangles over the north of England in 1965, then who was? If it was aliens, then does that mean all of the Flying Triangles were (and still are) from another world? Or, against all the odds, did the U.K. government of the day have hidden away, in various well-guarded hangars, incredible craft of their own making? Might it be a combination of scenarios? If so, how could “our” craft look just like “theirs”? This is an important Flying Triangle case. Maybe, one of the most important.

UFO: Flying Triangles

A lot of people will find what I have written here quite unusual and maybe unreal. But when you look at all the …