Page 38 - 200908 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - August 2009

38 Ann Druffel - Ufologist 38 Ann Druffel - Ufologist ENCOUNTERS It was then that I began to wonder if since, shown by any other scientist. ENCOUNTERS While transcribing his four handwritten AN EARLY SIGHTING what I had seen in early summer 1945 was a journals in which he kept precise notes of his AN EARLY SIGHTING huge surveillance ship, origin unknown, drawn AT THE BEGINNING to this world by the initial experimental A-bomb endeavors in the UFO field, I found what might AT THE BEGINNING have been a previously unrecorded 1945 detonation that occurred shortly before OF THE ATOMIC AGE Hiroshima. Had "something" from sighting confided to McDonald by fellow OF THE ATOMIC AGE Continued from Page 36 "somewhere" been drawn to Earth by that initial scientists. Many details of this remarkable Continued from Page 36 event, to survey and monitor a planet that had occurrence dovetail with my Long Beach just entered its atomic age? sighting and it is recorded in my forthcoming, I was awed by the activity associated I never forgot the 1945 occurrence. In FIRESTORM! DR. JAMES E. McDONALD's with the bright object and felt extreme fear, as fact, it seems to have been the key that led me to FIGHT FOR UFO SCIENCE (3). well. This fear came over me suddenly after I enter the UFO field as an investigator with During those five frenetic years from watched the departure of the smaller particles NICAP in 1957. By the mid-1980s, when other 1966 into 1971, McDonald spoke frequently because, as puzzling as the main bright object researchers began to hypothesize that the debris before prestigious scientific groups, in civilian, had been, the smaller objects were completely found near Roswell, New Mexico, may have military and governmental settings. His prestige inexplicable. Why did the departing pieces been from a Japanese "Fugo" balloon, I began to and perseverance impressed numerous other behave as they did? speculate that perhaps the object I'd seen in scientists who had themselves viewed "UFOs" I rushed into my home and tried to get 1945 had been a Fugo balloon also. These large, but had never spoken or written about these my mother to come out and look at the object free-flying balloons, as is now well known, encounters due to the fear of being ostracized by again. I tried to tell her, stumbling over my were released from Japan during World War II colleagues. They trusted McDonald, however, words, that "pieces are coming off the thing but and traveled in high wind streams toward the and he justified their trust by keeping their the pieces aren't acting as if gravity was acting American continent, a few landing as far east as reports confidential, if requested, referring to the right way on them." I didn't know much some Midwest states. Their purpose was not them only in private, handwritten journals. about gravity; my education to that point wasn't only for propaganda; many carried explosive In 1968 he gave a talk before a meeting heavy on science, and my astronomical devices. of the American Meteorological Society in knowledge was completely self-taught, but The possibility that my 1945 sighting Washington, D.C., and afterwards went to a "gravity" seemed essential to my explanation so might have been a Fugo balloon seemed highly gathering in a colleague's hotel suite. There he that my mother would have a good reason to unlikely, for the winds which carried these blew met a German émigré scientist who was come out again to watch the object. from west to east, or in a few instances made working at a U.S. Army research lab. This My mother, however, was absorbed in wide, curving paths downward and then easterly scientist trusted McDonald and described to him cooking dinner; she refused to come out again over the United States. These jet streams, as a 1945 sighting that was witnessed by 20 to watch. Although well educated, she was also they were later called, however, never traveled German scientists who, at the end of World War extremely practical, and a "strange occurrence" east to west. The 1945 object viewed by my II in Europe, were fleeing from Russian wasn't as important to her as compared to mother and myself traveled in a straight path soldiers. They were on a ship anchored in a bay cooking dinner for her hardworking husband from the northeast to the northwest. near Schlesweig Holstein (northern Germany) and family. I could not force myself to go back If the object actually was high above the where they viewed, in broad daylight, a bright out into the yard alone to resume watching. This atmosphere (and its appearance seemed to object, "bigger than Venus", high in the sky. fear was irrational, looking back on it, for the justify this assumption), its angular speed was Intrigued, the scientists watched the activity in the sky plainly had nothing to do with such that it possibly was in a stationary orbit object for 20 minutes during which it moved 30 warfare or coastal defense, nor did it apparently above the Earth, with its apparent angular speed degrees toward the east. In spite of viewing the present any harm to humans far below. caused by the Earth's rotation. It traveled 15 to object through binoculars, none of the scientists Nevertheless, the fear stayed with me for 20 degrees in approximately an hour and a half. were able to identify it. It was neither a balloon several hours. In an attempt to recover the exact date of nor a plane and was never reported officially by To the best of my memory, about two my 1945 sighting, W.C. (Bill) McCall, M.D., any of the witnesses. McDonald wrote in his weeks later the first atomic bomb was detonated conducted a hypnotic regression with me in journal, "There was no explanation from any of over Hiroshima. I was fascinated with the initial 1977. Dr. McCall, who was active in UFO the highly trained scientists and technicians" accounts about the A-bomb in the newspapers, research, had his practice in Anaheim, (4). although I understood nothing of the technical California. Besides his medical expertise, he If the Long Beach sighting was evidence explanations given. But inexplicably, I felt the had 20 years experience in clinical hypnosis. that some type of otherworldly craft came to identical sort of awe and fear while reading The regression confirmed that the survey and monitor the human race's entry into about the atomic bomb as I had felt some days general time span was the summer of 1945. I the atomic age, the German scientists' sighting earlier while watching the object. Why the two was unable to retrieve the exact date but might fit into such an hypothesis since victory separate events should produce identical recalled that it occurred "near the end of the in the European theater of war came on May 6, reactions was beyond my comprehension. But month, either June or July." 1945, just about three months before victory the relief that the war was ending, and the fact In view of my conscious memory that over Japan. that our city of Long Beach would no longer be the Hiroshima bombing occurred about two My own investigations and research into in danger, swept many concerns from my mind. weeks after the sighting, it seems logical to apparently physical UFO sightings, most Several years after the war's end, the think that the Long Beach sighting was made without reported presence of "occupants," history of the atomic bomb was published in during the last half of July. The date of the continued from 1957 through 1975. In the mid- various newspapers and popular magazines. Hiroshima bombing was August 6, 1945, 1970s, however, most sighting reports involved Although still not comprehending much about whereas the first experimental explosion over apparent alien abduction incidents that at the it, I gradually realized that the initial New Mexico occurred at 5:30 a.m. on July 16, time were assumed by most researchers to experimental atomic explosion near 1945. involve a different phase of UFO surveillance. Alamogordo, New Mexico, of which the Ever since realizing that my 1945 Although I investigated abduction reports American public had been totally unaware, took sighting was possibly an otherworldly "scout initially under this same assumption, by the place in the same general time period that I saw craft," I searched through all available sources 1980s I had begun to suspect that visits by so- the strange object in the sky. Concurrent with of UFO literature for 1945 sightings that might called aliens conducting experiments on this slow realization, and after I had been active correlate with my own. I was totally humans might well be a separate phenomenon as an adult in the UFO field for many years, I unsuccessful until the mid-1990s when I was from apparently physical UFOs, which are began to speculate that the main brilliant object engaged in archiving the UFO files of the famed viewed by witnesses in broad daylight and in and its particles resembled in many respects the atmospheric physicist, Dr. James E. McDonald. full waking consciousness, are caught on radar, UFOs known as "carrier craft" (or to use a less From 1966 to 1971, McDonald courageously chased by military jet pilots and occasionally scientific term, "mother ships") with their and publicly researched UFO phenomena in a photographed by reliable witnesses (5). attendant smaller satellite disks (2). scientific and persistent manner never before, or (Continued on Page 39)