Post by auntym on Apr 29, 2015 14:55:58 GMT -6
devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/15282/makes-sense-but-prove-it/
Makes sense, but prove it
By Billy Cox, Herald-Tribune
/ Friday, April 24, 2015
The second-season premiere of “Hangar 1: The UFO Files” last Friday night on The History Channel’s H2 subsidiary was, as feared, a stylistic rehash of season one’s attention-deficit-jangled format — overproduced, amped up with gratuitous audio elements, and presenting speculation as fact. Don’t like the narrator's voice? No problem — “Hangar 1” relies on three voices to tell the single story of an alleged UFO encounter with U.S. forces in Vietnam in 1968. Is 43 minutes worth of programming on a single incident too much? No worries there, either. Six segments, roughly seven minutes apiece on multiple cases. You won’t need coffee, man.
On the other hand, it probably wouldn't be a bad idea to clear this with HQ before you start going all Baron von Richthofen just because the thing doesn't carry a transponder/CREDIT: pinterest.com
What’s a little more disconcerting is how the opening installment, “UFOs at War,” seems to undermine the efforts of the Mutual UFO Network — from whom the case files are ostensibly borrowed — to advance its credibility even as the cable show attempts to broaden its base. Having survived 45 years now largely on the strength of its volunteer members, many of whom are sticklers for accuracy, its televised incarnation is clearly willing to cut corners for drama. Let’s focus on the main takeaway line from last week’s debut: “Lessons learned in Korea and Vietnam eventually led to a change in military protocol that prohibited any engagement with these unidentified aircraft.”
Given the potentially catastrophic countermeasures documented by military pilots, domestic and foreign, during close encounters over the last half century, backing away from a dogfight seems like a prudent option. But MUFON gives no source whatsoever for its claim. Jan Aldrich, an Army veteran who maintains the indispensable historical archives at Project 1947, is puzzled by “Hangar 1’s” logic. “The military always retain the right of self-defense, so a possible hostile act could have a reaction esp. in a war zone,” he states in an email. “... What protocol? No reference given. If you are going to make such a statement, better be prepared to back it up.”
In fact, during the 1950s, the Defense Department took an aggressive stance against UFOs’ repeated and infuriating affronts to sovereign American air space, especially during the Cold War. “The jet pilots are and have been under orders to investigate unidentified objects and to shoot them down, if they can’t talk them down,” stated a USAF flack, one Lt. Col. Moncel Monts. If only someone had saved the memo. But committing that policy to paper, and/or reversing that policy on paper, would be a risky move, according to former NICAP investigator Don Berliner.
“There were a lot of protests back then against the shoot-down orders, but I never saw those orders in print,” recalls Berliner, who went on to establish the Fund for UFO Research. “Maybe those orders were passed from person to person, but writing them down seems unlikely. That would actually confirm their existence and that would blow the lid off this thing.”
CONTINUE READING: devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/15282/makes-sense-but-prove-it/
Makes sense, but prove it
By Billy Cox, Herald-Tribune
/ Friday, April 24, 2015
The second-season premiere of “Hangar 1: The UFO Files” last Friday night on The History Channel’s H2 subsidiary was, as feared, a stylistic rehash of season one’s attention-deficit-jangled format — overproduced, amped up with gratuitous audio elements, and presenting speculation as fact. Don’t like the narrator's voice? No problem — “Hangar 1” relies on three voices to tell the single story of an alleged UFO encounter with U.S. forces in Vietnam in 1968. Is 43 minutes worth of programming on a single incident too much? No worries there, either. Six segments, roughly seven minutes apiece on multiple cases. You won’t need coffee, man.
On the other hand, it probably wouldn't be a bad idea to clear this with HQ before you start going all Baron von Richthofen just because the thing doesn't carry a transponder/CREDIT: pinterest.com
What’s a little more disconcerting is how the opening installment, “UFOs at War,” seems to undermine the efforts of the Mutual UFO Network — from whom the case files are ostensibly borrowed — to advance its credibility even as the cable show attempts to broaden its base. Having survived 45 years now largely on the strength of its volunteer members, many of whom are sticklers for accuracy, its televised incarnation is clearly willing to cut corners for drama. Let’s focus on the main takeaway line from last week’s debut: “Lessons learned in Korea and Vietnam eventually led to a change in military protocol that prohibited any engagement with these unidentified aircraft.”
Given the potentially catastrophic countermeasures documented by military pilots, domestic and foreign, during close encounters over the last half century, backing away from a dogfight seems like a prudent option. But MUFON gives no source whatsoever for its claim. Jan Aldrich, an Army veteran who maintains the indispensable historical archives at Project 1947, is puzzled by “Hangar 1’s” logic. “The military always retain the right of self-defense, so a possible hostile act could have a reaction esp. in a war zone,” he states in an email. “... What protocol? No reference given. If you are going to make such a statement, better be prepared to back it up.”
In fact, during the 1950s, the Defense Department took an aggressive stance against UFOs’ repeated and infuriating affronts to sovereign American air space, especially during the Cold War. “The jet pilots are and have been under orders to investigate unidentified objects and to shoot them down, if they can’t talk them down,” stated a USAF flack, one Lt. Col. Moncel Monts. If only someone had saved the memo. But committing that policy to paper, and/or reversing that policy on paper, would be a risky move, according to former NICAP investigator Don Berliner.
“There were a lot of protests back then against the shoot-down orders, but I never saw those orders in print,” recalls Berliner, who went on to establish the Fund for UFO Research. “Maybe those orders were passed from person to person, but writing them down seems unlikely. That would actually confirm their existence and that would blow the lid off this thing.”
CONTINUE READING: devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/15282/makes-sense-but-prove-it/