War Panda | 16 Apr 2015 1:48 p.m. PST |
Reading an interesting thread on Vietnam Random Events the alleged appearance of UFO's during the conflict on numerous occasions. I had never heard of the phenomena but there's tons of info allegedly from vets etc about the subject. WHAT UFO'S ON THE INTERNET???
Made me wonder are there many unexplained or alleged supernatural occurrences during war time. I remember watching a documentary about the appearance of angels or St Michael during WWI …Angel of Mons? I believe it was called. I remember it quoted several "letters" from the front that mentioned the apparition but I could never find any substantial on the internet about it. Seems the new theory is that it was embellished propaganda.
link Any stories worthy of note? |
boy wundyr x | 16 Apr 2015 2:06 p.m. PST |
Martin Caidin's history of the P-38 ("The Forked Tailed Devil") had a story, supposedly substantiated by a couple hundred of witnesses from the American airbase where it happened, where a long-overdue P-38 returned to its base carrying its long-dead pilot; the plane inverted over the base, the pilot's body fell out, and then the plane crashed. Not sure if I have all the details correct, but that's the gist of it. Less weird, but one I always liked, was an account about a tail gunner in a Lancaster, who's com link to the rest of the crew was severed by flak on their outbound trip so he didn't hear the order to bail out. So he unknowingly flew on and on alone as the Lancaster kept going, eventually landing in a French field rather roughly but otherwise intact. He got up to complain to the pilot about the landing, only to find himself the only one aboard. Nice little "ghost in the machine" story for Lanc fans. |
darthfozzywig | 16 Apr 2015 2:13 p.m. PST |
Less weird, but one I always liked, was an account about a tail gunner in a Lancaster […] WOAH. |
MH Dee | 16 Apr 2015 2:32 p.m. PST |
The Angels of Mons is literally based on Arthur Machen's Bowmen of Mons. Over time the event and short story that inspired it got mixed up. |
JezEger | 16 Apr 2015 2:38 p.m. PST |
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Mako11 | 16 Apr 2015 2:40 p.m. PST |
Lots of stories of UFOs during the American bombing campaign in Europe during WWII. Reports of strange balls of "lightning", and other phenomenon. Sometimes they were seen to parallel the course of the aircraft that spotted them, as if flying in formation. I always chalked those up to the testing of German secret weapons, like their SAM programs, and/or some of those larger, wire-guided air-to-air rockets they were developing (forerunners to today's wire-guided ATGMs), Komets, etc. Around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis there was an American Aircraft Carrier that spotted a UFO, or UFOS, that were also USOs (Unidentified Submerged Objects) moving incredibly fast. It/they emerged from the sea, followed the carrier for a bit, and then dove back into the sea, IIRC (and/or one, or the other entering/leaving the sea). Not sure if it was at the same time, or not but sonar detected some Unidentified Undersea Object moving at 150+ knots (which again is impossible, or was at the time (1960s). Not during war, but supposedly Columbus sighted a UFO, or two rising out of the sea, flying around a bit, and then plunging back in, IIRC (could have part of that mixed up with some of the other reports, e.g. the movement of the UFOs). Certainly, no human-tech to permit anything like that in the middle of the Atlantic was present at the time. link
link link link link Of course, those may be other things, and/or some may be top secret US projects. However, these accounts, from our astronauts are certainly very compelling: syti.net/UFOSightings.html |
boy wundyr x | 16 Apr 2015 2:57 p.m. PST |
Here's the P-38 story: link Brief mention of the Lancaster story (with some others) here: link |
Stryderg | 16 Apr 2015 4:35 p.m. PST |
Story I heard/read, but can't attribute it: During the Korean war, a US Marine was on point during a really foggy night patrol. Said marine was devoutly religious and prayed to St. Michael often. During the patrol, someone passes him and says "I've got point". Moments later he finds himself in the middle of a gun battle and gets shot once. Suddenly, quite breaks out. Hours go by and he's just laying there. Morning comes, the fog burns off, and his squad finally finds him, and the 6 or 7 dead enemy laying around him. He didn't fire a shot, but there were shell casings everywhere. His squad was all accounted for, and none of them took over as point man before the ambush. All they knew was that he was on point, they heard the ambush, and rushed forward, but the firefight was over before they could get close, and they couldn't find him in the dark. Oh, and his name was Michael. |
rmaker | 16 Apr 2015 5:18 p.m. PST |
Well, there's the story of the US paratrooper on a practice jump whose main chute AND reserve chute failed to function. Broke both ankles when he landed, but was otherwise unhurt. He was the chaplain. |
Early morning writer | 16 Apr 2015 5:36 p.m. PST |
Co-worker who is former air force related about a test pilot who saw what was described as essentially a holograhpic image of a computer screen/scanner that flew around his aircraft while at speed as if it was studying – photo imaging his craft. Same co-worker also claims he and another air force person walked through a building at a certain airbase and saw the place on the floor where five 'coffin' sized impressions were on the concrete adjacent to the remains of cryogenic connections. The implication is, of course, aliens. But I actually parsed on the thought that perhaps there were American airmen being kept on ice for some reason in the hopes of reviving them one day. That actually makes considerably more sense than aliens and leads to the question – who were the airmen in question and why were they on ice? Important and well connected, maybe? Who knows? |
gamertom | 16 Apr 2015 8:31 p.m. PST |
Time for the X-Files theme song. |
War Panda | 16 Apr 2015 8:57 p.m. PST |
Some very rare photos from WW2 that deserve at least some explanation:
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Henry Martini | 16 Apr 2015 9:28 p.m. PST |
Stryderg – you might want to ask Stanard Ridgway about that story. I wouldn't be surprised if it involved '… a big marine called Camouflage'. Double whammy: The Battle of Los Angeles was 'fought' on the night of 24 – 25 February, 1942, when anti-aircraft batteries on the California coast opened fire for almost an hour on purported UFOs. In total close to 1400 rounds were fired, and there were five indirect civilian casualties. Those aircraft-buzzing WW2 UFOs were known as foo fighters. |
Timbo W | 16 Apr 2015 10:10 p.m. PST |
1643,Edgehill Warwickshire, the previous year's battle is refought by ghostly apparitions, the king sends Sir Lewis Kirke to investigate, who actually recognises many of his comrades who lost their lives in the battle. Or so say the contemporary pamphlets! |
JasonAfrika | 16 Apr 2015 11:19 p.m. PST |
My uncle was in Nam and told me that parts of Highway 19 through the Central Highlands were supposedly haunted by the ghosts of French soldiers. He said it was a spooky place and they hated going in there….weird thing was he said that the VC or NVA NEVER went in there, again supposedly because of the ghost legends. Can't remember the exact location. It was a winding, mountainous section of the road where alot of French convoys got ambushed. He never saw any ghosts but he said the place was very eerie and always very silent. Dunno |
JezEger | 16 Apr 2015 11:20 p.m. PST |
Well, I heard from this guy, down the pub, that his auntie knew someone who had heard about…….. etc etc. Standard urban myth stuff. The floating tank is just an inflatable dummy tank. They make one of the Abrams as well. |
MajorB | 17 Apr 2015 2:13 a.m. PST |
The vehicle that looks like a flying jeep is just that – a Flying Jeep: link |
Cuchulainn | 17 Apr 2015 4:31 a.m. PST |
During WW1 there was a chap from a town not too far from where I live, who served in the Royal Navy. His mother was at home and happened to look out the kitchen window when to her shock she saw him at the bottom of the garden waving at her. She immediately raced to the door but he was nowhere to be seen when she opened it. She happened to notice the time was 4.25 in the afternoon… A telegram arrived days later informing her the ship her son had been serving on – HMS Queen Mary – had been sunk during the Battle of Jutland on 31 May 1916, at 4.25. |
Henry Martini | 17 Apr 2015 5:21 a.m. PST |
Sounds a bit like that scene from the premonition vignette in the old black and white film 'Dead of Night'. The experiencer wakes up during the night, looks at the clock, and opens the curtains to see daylight when it should be dark and a horse-drawn hearse outside. Next day he's about to board a double-decker bus when he notices the time on Big Ben is the same as on the clock when he awoke the previous night, and recognises the conductor as the hearse driver, so doesn't board the bus – which seconds later plunges into the Thames; still one of the scariest psychological horror films of all time (except for the golf sequence). |
enfant perdus | 17 Apr 2015 12:16 p.m. PST |
My grandpa's cousin was one of the civilian contractors working for Morrison-Knudsen on Wake Island. Grandpa and Johnny* were very close growing up, more like brothers than cousins. When Wake fell to the Japanese, there was, in the absence of any information, the general assumption that Johnny had been killed, that part of the family being masters of pessimism and worst case scenarios. Grandpa was emphatic that Johnny was still alive, and would get upset when people talked about Johnny being gone, often saying "I'd know it if he was dead." One day in the Fall of 1943, grandma was in the kitchen when grandpa walked in, white as a ghost, and sat down at the table. He should have been out in the pasture until lunch, so her first thought was that something horrible was wrong with the herd. "I just saw Johnny, in the 80, standing by the fence," he said. "He waved at me, then he was gone. He's dead, Barb. I know he's dead." It would be years before they learned that Johnny was indeed dead, and the circumstances of his murder by the Japanese. I think it's interesting that this "experience" occurred some days after Johnny's death. I don't know an exact date, but both of my grandparents recalled that it was the middle of October, whereas the Wake Massacre was on October 7. *John Vernon Hansen, Wahoo NE
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JezEger | 17 Apr 2015 12:39 p.m. PST |
I think the real mystery is why these ghosts travel all the way home to wave goodbye and then do it from a long way away at the back of a field or end of the garden. Would it be too much effort to travel the extra 100 yards to the house? Call me the eternal skeptic….. |
enfant perdus | 17 Apr 2015 1:36 p.m. PST |
I completely understand your skepticism. The logical explanation is that subconsciously he had decided to "let go" and as part of that process, his mind produced the farewell image and the concurrent emotion to make that break. The timing is pure coincidence, perhaps something that had been building since his marriage at the beginning of the year and the impending birth of his first child. If, OTOH, our consciousness transcends corporeal death, or if we are part of a greater consciousness, then these may be a sort of "awareness" or received information. The brain manifests these in an acceptable fashion. |
War Panda | 17 Apr 2015 3:31 p.m. PST |
" Would it be too much effort to travel the extra 100 yards to the house?" I think often a single rose is preferred to a room full of daisies I won't judge the individual's emotional value of an experience by its empirical strength Call me the eternal optimist…..:) BTW …The quote made me laugh though :) |
Stryderg | 17 Apr 2015 5:16 p.m. PST |
Henri Martini ~ thanks, at least now I can attribute the story. |
Leadjunky | 17 Apr 2015 7:27 p.m. PST |
My grandpa told me of hearing a loud boom from the house and running in from the fields to learn that the flue had exploded in the kitchen. My grandmother was nearly hysterical saying one of the boys had been killed. All three sons were serving overseas in 1945 and he could not convince her that it was just the flue on the stove. They were notified some days later that their oldest was killed by mortar fire in Germany. My grandmother told me the day my grandpa passed some 36 years later that the same son had visited her the night before. |