The Edwards AFB Radar-Visual Incident

October 7, 1965. Edwards Air Force Base, in the Mojave Desert, California. That day the Fourth Conference on Progress of the X-15 Research Airplane Program met at the NASA Flight Research Center on the base. NICAP says about 700 engineers and scientists attended. Nuclear armed "Hot Bird" interceptors of the 329th Fighter Interceptor Squadron, from George AFB in Victorville, sat on alert. The alert pilot was Capt. Darryl Clark, described by NICAP as "skilled at target identification."

Night came. So did the lights. In the control tower, air traffic controller TSgt Charles "Chuck" Sorrells described a "flashing red light on the bottom, with a green, glowing light above the red." Other voices on the recorded lines reported "white, green, flashing lights" that were "swiftly moving." One count reached twelve. At one point there were seven objects visible at the same time.

Then there was the way they moved. The objects "would be stationary for a period of time and then move very fast to another location." Voices called out "climbing now" and "rising rapidly." Altitude estimates began at "4,500 to 6,500 feet." Later they reached "30, 40,000" feet.

Clark watched from the ground. The light was "about 10 miles northwest of my position at first sighting," he wrote. "There it made a 90 degree right turn and started to climb at a 45 to 50 degree angle." It never levelled off. It "appeared to move right out into space until it finally passed out of view."

Radar at Edwards, San Pedro, George AFB and the Los Angeles Air Defense Sector tracked the targets. Major Struble at LAADS authorized recording of the voice traffic. An F-106A, callsign "Alpha Lima Zero One," launched from George AFB. By then, NICAP notes, the activity was just about over.

Sorrells helped vector the jet toward the lights over the runway. The pilot's voice came through: "Contact, uh, standby one, I have possible contact." Years later Sorrells recalled the moment the jet got near. The object "just rose real fast, real sudden, straight up, and he just went under it."

About 40 hours of audio were recorded from at least 8 positions. Only about 6 hours were declassified. Samuel M. Sherman obtained them through FOIA requests between 1992 and 1994. He said they arrived "all chopped up out of sequence." Seventeen pages of documents followed. Project Blue Book kept a file with a separate folder of explanations. Fran Ridge of NICAP judged them "none of which 'fly' based on what we hear on the audiotapes." He also asked why so little was ever released, and what went on during the hours no one has heard.

In 2000, Sorrells gave his verdict. "My experience as an air traffic controller made it plain to me that these luminous objects were not planes, helicopters, stars, satellites, weather balloons or any other known aerial object." Others urge caution. Writing for Inverse on the 50th anniversary, Ben Guarino placed the case at the tail end of the UFO craze. Thinkaboutitdocs warns that Sherman's reordered tape edit is an unverified reconstruction. No named skeptic has published an astronomical explanation. Still, the tapes hold one observer's "one great big bright, shiny star," and the pilot's "reflections off the ground that appear to be flashing."

Sherman turned the recordings into an audio documentary, The Edwards Air Force Base Encounter: The U.S. Air Force vs. UFOs, narrated by Jackson Beck. Sorrells' testimony appeared in Steven Greer's book Disclosure. The History series UFO Hunters returned to the night in the episode "Code Red," with former Edwards test pilot George Merrett. The declassified audio is still online, and the voices of that night can still be heard.