Somewhere in the Skies - Bite-Sized UFOs | Military Police Chased by a UFO

Starting point is 00:00:02 Welcome to bite-sized UFOs, a show where we break down lesser-known UFO cases in 20 minutes or less. And now here's your host, Graham Rendell. Welcome to episode six of bite-sized UFOs. I'm Graham Rendell, author of UFOs Before Roswell and other books about pilot and aircrew sightings during the 1940s and 1950s. In this installment of bite-sized UFOs, let's look at an interesting case from September 1973, involving security personnel assigned to Hunter Army Airfield, Georgia, back then, an all but deactivated Army Aviation Base. Originally opened a Savannah Municipal Airport in 1929. The airfield was renamed Hunter Municipal Airfield in 1940 after a World War I flying ace who hailed from the city. World War II saw the facility, now named Savannah Army Air Base, used for combat training by,

Starting point is 00:01:04 United States Army Air Force light bomber and dive bomber units and later by groups operating the B-26 Marauder Medium Bomber. Strategic Air Command took over the base in September 1950, bringing in B-50 super fortresses and later B-47 Stratagets. By this time, the airfield had been renamed again, this time to Hunter Air Force Base. The SACC jets moved out in 1963 and were replaced by C-124 Globetmasters from the Military Air Transport Service. An Air Force radar station was also established as Hunter, remaining there under various geysers until 1979. In 1967, ownership of the base passed to the US Army again, who renamed it Hunter Army Airfield. They used it to train Cobra helicopter gunship crews, who would soon participate in the Vietnam War.

Starting point is 00:01:59 By 1970, training was winding down and the base was deactivated in August 1973. Although dormant, there was still a need for security of the army base, and responsibility for this rested with a 298th military police company. Its role was to maintain base security, check on the status of local facilities, and carry out perimeter patrols. Assigned to this unit in September 1973 were military policeman Bart J. Burns and Randy Shade. Both men would undergo a terrifying experience in the early hours of the eighth of that month. At around 0.2.30 hours, Burns and Shade were driving near the former Cobra Hall building at Hunter,

Starting point is 00:02:42 when they noticed a group of multicolored lights in the sky. These were flashing, but Burns, who had previously served as the helicopter crew chief, did not believe that they belonged to an aircraft. These appeared to be much lower than the cloud base, which was at around 19,000 feet. the lights seemed to be more like 2,000 feet above the ground. The MP's observation was cut short when the lights disappeared behind a line of tall trees in the distance, and they then continued their patrol, driving onto the runways at Hunter. At 0245 hours, Burns and Shade were on the perimeter road of the south-eastern edge of the base

Starting point is 00:03:18 when the lights suddenly reappeared. Shade, who was driving, believed that they were the same ones as they had seen 15 minutes earlier. The strange lights now seemed to be hovering over the end of the runway at Hunter. Shade came to a halt and both men got out to have a better look at what was in the sky, thinking it was a helicopter, although no sound came from where the lights were. Suddenly the lights dropped down to virtually treetop level and started to rapidly approach their position. Observing the lights more closely, the MPs could see that they seemed to be clustered under a metallic-looking saucer-shaped object. The latter did not appear to have any illumination.

Starting point is 00:03:56 of its own, but was instead lit up by the lights below. Initially stunned to the point of inaction, when they realized that the object was swooping down towards them, both men jumped back into their patrol car and Shade sped off towards the Airfield's guardhouse. Putting his foot down, Shade reached a speed of around 100 miles an hour, but the lights moved to a position directly above their vehicle, making driving difficult due to the brightly coloured whirling mass of lights that shone in through the car's front windshield. The MPs had estimated the object as being around 50 feet in diameter. As they hurtled along one in the taxiways,

Starting point is 00:04:34 they thought it was just above the roof of their car, almost touching it. Burns later admitted that he had bent down underneath the dashboard as they were pursued by the lights. He was that frightened. Shade swerved off the road as he lost control of his vehicle then ran into a grassy ditch. Both men got out in a hurried attempt to extricate the car, wondering what the object would do next, but it merely moved a short distance away. The MPs took around 15 minutes to get their vehicle out of the ditch,

Starting point is 00:05:02 and then headed back to the guardhouse, with the object following them in a respectful distance. As they got close to the facility, the lights then zoomed off and disappeared. Rough positions of the first and second sightings are shown on this contemporary satellite view of the base. Burns and Shade submitted a report to the Provost Marshal's office at Fort Stewart, Lieutenant David Anderson, a Fort Stewart public information officer, told reporters that the Pentagon had been notified of the citing, quote, since there are no normal channels for a communication of this type, unquote. Two years later, freedom of information requests for official logs from Hunter Army Airfield were answered with statements that the duty officer's log for September 1973 had been destroyed the following month as the base had been deactivated. However, it was also confirmed that the Fort Stewart-Provet Marshall had indeed contact of the Pentagon, although it was claimed that there were no more details than appeared in newspaper accounts at the time.

Starting point is 00:06:03 What information was given by the press about the incident and hunter? The two sightings by the MPs were listed, plus the pursuit and them driving into a ditch. Reporters found additional witnesses. Police officers from Chatham County, outside the base, had apparently observed the UFO swooped downwards at around 024. hours. A further UFO citing just to the north of the base had also been reported by civilians, 45 minutes before the two MPs first saw the strange lights. Through freedom of information requests to the Fort Stewart-Provis Marshal's office, a copy of the serious incident report sent to the Department of the Army at the Pentagon was obtained. It confirmed the version of

Starting point is 00:06:44 events that Burns and Shade had reported, and that the lights were blue, white and amber in colour. The report also mentioned that a second incident had occurred at around 0.4.30 hours the following morning, with Burns and another MP, Sergeant Murray, seeing a red light that rapidly moved away and disappeared into nearby woods. So what did take place in September 1973 at Hunter Army Airfield? Fort Stewart submitting a serious incident report to the Pentagon was presumably a course of action that had not been taken lightly, but despite its extensive press recovery, in the two days that followed, the MP's citing, several civilian witnesses coming forward and presumably inquiries with other branches of the military, no culprit or cause was officially announced. The original military police report was apparently destroyed in 1973. The case remains a mystery. It was the subject of a segment of the sightings program,

Starting point is 00:07:39 with Bart J. Burns and researcher Lawrence Fawcett visiting the spot where the MPs had seen the lights and then it had driven into a ditch. As for Hunter, the base was, reactivated in 1975 and is now home to the aviation units of the 3rd Infantry Division and a Coast Guard helicopter unit. Something very strange appeared over the facility in September 1973 and frightened two MPs who were patrolling the perimeter of the airfield. Nearly 50 years later that something remains a complete mystery. And that's it for this sixth installment of bite-sized UFOs. Bight-sized UFOs is all about the facts. This has been bite-sized UFOs with your host, Graham Rendell.

Starting point is 00:08:25 Be sure to rate and review wherever you get your podcasts. For a full video version of this episode, subscribe to the bite-sized UFOs YouTube channel. Thank you for listening.

Somewhere in the Skies - Bite-Sized UFOs | Military Police Chased by a UFO

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