Return of the Flying... Tic-Tacs?

As someone with a lifelong interest in both science and science fiction, it would be strange if I didn’t have an informed opinion about UFOs. And in fact, I do.

     

It’s changed quite a bit, though, since I was nine years old and convinced that people from faraway planets were visiting Earth in flying saucers and playing funny tricks on its inhabitants – mutilating American cows, having sex with Brazilian farmers and so forth. Actually, that phase didn’t even last into my teens: the science (and science fiction) I was reading taught me that there is a universal speed limit, three million metres per second, that nothing can exceed, and that fact, combined with the sheer size of the Galaxy and the vast distances separating its constituent stars, makes it unlikely verging on impossible that beings from other planets ever have, or ever could, visit this one. Besides, most of the reports of UFOs published in the media (and later, on the internet) were obvious piffle; any scientifically literate person could debunk them with ease.

As for the ‘ufologists’’ claims of US government cover-ups, aliens walking among us in disguise and people being taken for rides in flying hospitals with artificial insemination facilities and investigative-enterology departments, they were clearly the work of people who were quite deranged, or else were looking for deranged people to make money out of. UFOs had become – or maybe always were – part of what I snobbishly refer to as underclass culture. By my early twenties I had pretty much put them out of my mind, though I happily continued to read science-fiction stories full of starships, aliens and even, yes, close encounters of the third kind.

Yet even such a sceptic as I had to acknowledge that a few of the reported encounters with UFOs defied straightforward explanation. The most difficult of these were instances where visual sightings were corroborated by radar traces or other electronic evidence, such as the encounter between a US Air Force RB-47 and one or perhaps two unidentified flying objects over Texas and Mississippi on 17 July 1957. In that encounter, visual sightings by members of the aircraft crew were supported by evidence from radars both on board the plane and on the ground. Other sightings involved multiple witnesses, trained observers and sometimes both. There were enough of these incidents – as well as credible reports from individuals known to me that never reached the media – to indicate that there was something else at work besides a bunch of overactive human imaginations. Yet this handful of credible occurrences were so rare, so bizarre and seemed to have so little in common with one another that it was hard to fit them into any kind of hypothesis. Besides, they were inconsequential, affecting no-one but a few people directly involved with them. It hardly seemed worth spending time and effort to try and make sense of them.

*

That was then. This is now. I remain thoroughly sceptical, when not frankly disbelieving, of most claims of UFO encounters, all claims of personal encounters with aliens and every single theory I have heard or read concerning the origins or causes of such incidents. But I now firmly believe that there is something or someone operating out there that we do not understand and cannot explain.

     

I believe this because the US Navy believes it.

     

We’ve been hearing a lot about UFOs from the Americans recently. We heard that the USN had declassified reports of certain ‘encounters’ and modified its reporting protocols for aircrews and others involved in such incidents to make it easier for them to come forward. We heard that US lawmakers, and finally the President himself, were briefed on things Navy personnel had seen, or detected with electronic surveillance and targeting equipment. The President told us he was sceptical, but then, he probably regards UFOs as his competitors in the battle for eyeballs among members of his trailer-park demographic. In fact, the evidence for the real presence of something out there has never been stronger.

     

Nearly all of it comes from sophisticated electronic defensive and offensive systems on US warships, military aircraft and military bases. Apparently, they keep picking up ‘bogies’ all the time but they’re almost never reported because there’s no proper procedure for doing so and no soldier wants to look like an idiot. But that doesn’t mean the sightings aren’t there.

     

Then there was the Nimitz incident, of which I learnt only recently, although it took place in 2004. A flotilla of warships around the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz was conducting manoeuvres off Santa Catalina Island on the US Pacific coast when the radar officer aboard the ship acting as the ‘eyes’ of the flotilla saw what appeared to be a whole fleet of UFOs heading towards it. After some discussion, a pair of F/A-18 Super Hornets was scrambled and directed towards one of the UFOs. What happened next can be read at the link above.

     

What is remarkable about the incident is that the Navy took it seriously but did not forbid personnel to talk about it. One of the pilots went on the record about what he saw; his wingman corroborated the story, but anonymously. The radar officer, too, has been talking to the media. He claims there was a cover-up, because the radar data on his hard disks were erased later, leaving only the date stamps.

     

Be that as it may, the Navy has been quite open about a more recent spate of incidents, this time off the East rather than the West coast of the USA, involving UFOs and F/A-18s. It has even permitted the public release of three videos showing the UFOs being tracked by Navy aircraft.

So what’s going on? Ghosts in the machine – data artifacts thrown up by the equipment itself? Pilots hallucinating due to sensory overload? Absurdly advanced human technology being tested in secret against the best the United States military can throw at it? Visitors from outer space, or from one of those bizarre but scientifically tenable parallel worlds physicists speculate about? Or some Earthly phenomenon of which we are totally unaware, possibly the work of some unknown intelligence sharing the planet with us? Nobody has a clue. And given how little we know, no sensible person would even hazard an opinion.

But it’s no longer possible to dismiss the phenomenon out of hand.

Stirring Stuff

Imperial Vanities

by Brian Thompson

I enjoyed reading this book, and the reasons why I did are really the only things I can say in its favour: it deals with people and places known to me or that I am interested in, it is full of interesting details, and it is written in lively, elegant prose, the kind you can read aloud without tripping over sonic infelicities.

But what are the imperial vanities of the title? The retold exploits of Charles George Gordon and Samuel Baker and the rise and catastrophic fall of Samuel’s brother Valentine? All these are highly specific to the gentlemen in question, and sprang from personal rather than imperial vanity. Or does the title refer to the vanity of attempting to colonize and Britannicize such unfriendly and unpromising parts of the world as Sudan and Ceylon? The Gordon debacle did not prevent the United Kingdom from taking and ruling Sudan in the end, and as for Ceylon, it was already firmly in British hands by the time Baker commenced his experiment at Nuwara Eliya. Balaclava was certainly a vain mismatch of cavalry against artillery, but why is that specifically imperial? True, it was one empire against another. But the Charge of the Light Brigade was what launched Valentine Baker’s career.

Still, it was fun reading about Sam Baker’s intrepid blunderings about the world and his implausible but undeniable successes, especially since, as a Sri Lankan, I know the scene of his early triumphs and disasters, Nuwara Eliya, pretty well. By the way, Brian Thompson consistently misspells the name of this well-known Sri Lankan town and occasionally refers to it familarly as ‘Newara’, which nobody ever does or has done. I must say I was quite disappointed at the number of errors I found in his chapters dealing with Ceylon. Adam’s Peak is not the highest point on the island. That’s the summit of Pidurutalagala – as Thompson actually tells us, quoting Baker himself, only ten pages later. The Matale rebellion only began a ‘tax revolt’ and it wasn’t a case so much of ‘protesters’ ‘executed’ as of rebellious mobs gunned down, though it is true that some of the leaders of the revolt were later hanged. Thompson tells us it all took place in 1849, which is also wrong. He mentions the ‘Bishop of Ceylon’ when he means the Bishop of Colombo. The last is a trivial error, yet, taken together with the rest, it makes me wonder whether the only research on Ceylon Thompson did was in the Bakers’ own books and letters. I also wonder how many mistakes he’s made about people and places with which I am not so familiar.

That description covers most of the other scenes in this globetrotting book – I’ve never been to Africa, the Crimea or Central Europe, to name but a few of the places it visits – so I have reason to worry. And it isn’t as if the events of the narrative don’t occasionally sound far-fetched. Imagine buying your wife at a slave market, as Sam Baker did, or taking her off into darkest Africa to find the source of the Nile, as he also did. The entire life of Valentine Baker, the dashing cavalry officer and erstwhile royal favourite whose story forms the spine of the book, is so cartoonishly heroic it seems almost absurd. But it isn’t the mind-boggling facts that bother me; it’s the mundane fallacies.

Thompson gives most time to and is clearly most interested in ‘Val’, a much more conventional imperial figure than Sir Samuel, who never really comes clear in the book. He works quite hard to make Gordon seem ridiculous, which with the man’s visions and eccentricities and religious mania should not be difficult to do, but somehow the resulting portrait is one of tragic, anachronistic nobility. A purblind, egotistical, thanatophilic nobility, but noble still.

Indeed, the disappointments of this book are almost made up for by one remarkable paragraph. It comes near the end of the book. Gordon, almost in disgrace, is returning to Sudan under the orders of the Imperial government, understanding his mission to be that of evacuating the British presence in the country (such as it is). Nobody, least of all himself, expects him to return. 

Death, which Gordon had flirted with all his life, was now about to take a hand... The ministers asked him when he would leave: he said by the evening train. When they turned up at Charing Cross, with the additional presence of the Duke of Cambridge, Gordon was entirely without luggage save for a small satchel. Lord Granville purchased his ticket. At the last moment Gordon’s nephew dashed on to the platform with a tin case containing a dress uniform. The Duke of Cambridge played the part of a footman by opening the carriage door. Only Wolseley had the presence of mind to ask the Saviour of the Sudan if he had any money. He didn’t. Wolseley emptied his pocket book hastily and handed over his gold watch. The guard blew his whistle, the commander-in-chief of the British Army slammed the door and the train steamed out.

Well then. Vanity in the Ecclesiastes sense, perhaps. Enjoy, but, caveat lector.