Somewhere in the Skies - Bite-Sized UFOs | The Fish-Shaped UFO

Episode Date: November 1, 2024

This is the story of an encounter with a landed craft on a country road in Oklahoma in March 1966, witnessed by two separate motorists. It was fish-shaped and even found its way across the desk of Project Blue Book. Subscribe to Bite-Sized UFOs on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@bitesizedufos Patreon: www.patreon.com/somewhereskies ByMeACoffee: buymeacoffee.com/UFxzyzHOaQ PayPal: [e-mail] Website: www.somewhereintheskies.com Store: http://tee.pub/lic/ULZAy7IY12U YouTube Channel: CLICK HERE Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/somewhereskies/videos Order Ryan’s new book: https://a.co/d/4KNQnM4 Order Ryan’s older book: https://amzn.to/3PmydYC Twitter: @SomewhereSkies Read Ryan’s Articles by CLICKING HERE Opening Theme Song, "Ephemeral Reign" by Per Kiilstofte Produced by LIONSGATE Copyright © 2024. Ryan Sprague. All rights reserved. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/somewhere-in-the-skies. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Terms apply. 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 5 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, we shift focus to a strange fish-shaped object, encountering. on a country road in southern Oklahoma in March 1966. Project Blue Book, the third official United States Air Force UFO investigation program,

investigated this incident and details given this video have been taken from their files. At around 5 a.m. on the morning of 23rd March, 1966, Eddie Lackson, a 56-year-old civilian radar electronics instructor at Shepard Air Force Base, Wichita Falls, Texas, was driving to work westbound along Highway 70 in southern Oklahoma, and was about three quarters of a mile west of the junction with State Highway 65 to Temple, when he came across what he thought was either a truck or a large van that had broken down or was parked on the road ahead. Red lights were flashing on and off in the darkness, and it looked to Laxon as though the road ahead was completely blocked. He slowed to a stop, about 100 yards short of the obstruction, got out of his vehicle and started to walk towards the van or the truck or whatever it was to see what was going on.

According to the witness report he provided for the Project Blue Brook investigation, Eddie Lackson had passed the junction of State Highway 65 and Highway 70 at 0505 hours central time on 23rd March 19th. when he saw the object. It was orientated as to partially block a sign warning of a curve ahead. As Laxen walked towards what he initially thought was a truck, he now observed what looked like a Douglas C-124 Globemaster 2 transport aircraft, albeit one without wings, engines, or a tail fin. In addition, it seemed to have a bubble of some description, as if made from plexiglass, fitted on top.

The perplexed witness also saw what seemed to be a man wearing a baseball cap moving along the road at the base of the object, who then appeared to enter the craft by what looked to be a set of ladders or steps. On the man's upper arms were a series of markings that looked similar but not exactly like non-commissioned officer rank chevrons. The man may have been carrying some sort of torch or lamp. lamp. Once the man entered the object, it immediately rose from the ground and headed off in a south-eastly direction at an estimated speed of 720 miles per hour. A sound like a high-speed drill was heard as it took off. Laxon drew a sketch of the object as part of his answers to the project Blue Book questionnaire. From his viewpoint some 80 feet away, he estimated the craft as being some 75 feet long and 12 foot high, the colour of aluminium as in an aircraft's fuselage,

and he remarked that it had very bright lights before and aft. The craft was sitting on short struts or possibly legs, each around three feet high. The ladder or steps, plus the entry doorway, were between the sets of legs. Eddie Lachson also stated that he had discerned a set of what appeared to be letters and numbers on the side of the object, possibly markings or an identifier of some description. He was sure of most of the sequence which was arrayed vertically on the side of the craft. It was either TL4738 or TL4138 or TL4768, but the 4 could have been an A. From 80 feet away, the letters must therefore have been huge. Eddie Lacksson also stated that after the object had departed, and he had returned to his car,

he drove for about a mile and a half westwards along Highway 70 before coming across another early morning motorist, truck driver C.W. Anderson, who had pulled over and stopped to watch the strange lights. He pointed them out to Laxon as they crossed the Red River, This was the Texas border a few miles to the south of where they were standing. This is the spot along Highway 70 where Eddie Lackson encountered the strange craft in the middle of the road, halfway between Randlett and Warwicka, about 17 miles northeast of Wichita Falls in Texas. It is a mid-wide open country with few landmarks or natural obstructions. An overhead image shows the location where the UFO was spotted just west of the junction,

of the junction of Highway 70 and State Highway 65. There was plenty of press coverage of the temple sighting. Lachson was quoted as describing the object as being the shape of a perch, which led to other newspapers calling it a fish-shaped ship. He told reporters, when a man wearing what appeared to be a mechanic's hat with a brim rolled up climbed a ladder into the object,

I thought about the camera I carried in my car and turned to get it. But just then the object rose from the ground with the sound of hissing geese or a welding torch and took off towards Red River to the south. The Lawton morning press provided details of what C.W. Anderson, the truck driver that Laxon came across after driving further along Highway 70, had seen. Anson told reporters that he observed some sort of strange aircraft following him down the road. Annoyed by what seemed to be its continued pursuit, he pulled over onto the shoulder and got out of the shoulder and got out of the road. of his vehicle. The object, clearly not an aircraft due to its lack of wings, backed away and zoomed off, disappearing into the distance. Anderson's encounter occurred at around 0500 hours just before Eddie

Lacksen had his own sighting. The truck driver was still standing next to his vehicle, seeing if the craft would return when Laxon drove up, stopped and asked him if he'd broken down and needed assistance. Jackson worked at Shepard Air Force Base, Wichita Falls, Texas, as a civilian radar electronics instructor. He was questioned by a Major McDaniel from the base about the strange craft, who was in turn pressed for details by staff from Project Blue Book as to whether any experimental aircraft from Shepard had been in the Temple area on the morning of the sighting. Inquiries with the Army base at Fort Sill, 25 miles to the north of Temple, came back negative as well. Baces across the region, including Shepard, reported they had nothing in the air at the time of the sighting.

There was always the possibility that something exotic but man-made was to blame. Let's examine some of these possibilities based on the description of the fish-shaped UFO. First of all, there was a series of lifting bodies, unpowered aircraft that produced lift from the shape of their fuselages, with little or no conventional wings. Research into such machines formed part of a very large of a vehicle. an American effort to provide a lightweight spacecraft in the 1960s and 1970s. The idea was to give astronauts some measure of control over where they landed, unlike the early Mercury, Gemini and Apollo crew capsules. The first designed to reach prototype stage was the NASA M2F1, which was built at Dryden,

California. However, test flights of the M2F1 were restricted to the vicinity of Roger. Dry Lake in California. The improved Northrop M2 F2 made its first captive flight attached to a B-52 carrier aircraft on the same day as the Oklahoma sighting, but the lifting body had to wait until July of the same year before free flight could be made. In May 1967, on its 16th flight, it crashed and rolled on landing at Edwards Air Force Base. Footage of this incident appeared in the opening titles of the popular 1970s TV series, The Six Million Dollar Man.

An improved Nothrop design, the HL10, was first flown in December 1966. However, this was too late for the machine to be involved in the Oklahoma sighting. The final design in the 1960s was the Martin X-24A, but again it did not fly until well after Eddie Lacksson's sighting. In any case, all of these machines were unpowered, and therefore even if one of them had somehow landed in the middle of southern Oklahoma farming country, it could not take off again.

Another possible candidate was the Hughes XV-9, test bed for what was called hot cycle propulsion, where jet exhaust was directed through the rotor blades to nozzles at the blade tips. The sole prototype of this helicopter first flew in November 1964, but it was retired the following year, spending its entire time in the air over California, first at Culver City and finally at Edwards Air Force Base. The design suffered from excessive fuel consumption and was incredibly noisy. And what about Eddie Lachson himself?

How reliable a witness was he? Well, the answer to that was very. A pilot since 1941, he had been an instructor during World War II and taught aircraft recognition to trainee pilots. After the war, he became a civilian radar electronics instructor and worked at Shepard Air Force Base in Texas. According to the press, the public information officer, Shepard, was going to announce that Lackson had simply seen a helicopter, at least no doubt, until somebody pointed out that he was incredibly experienced as a pilot and instructor, and in the feeling. of aircraft recognition. What did Lachson and Anderson see that March morning in 1966 over the wide open landscape of Southern Oklahoma? Was it some sort of experimental helicopter or other machine,

one possibly spill on the secret list today? The presence of a uniform man who climbed up into the craft before it moved away would tend to suggest something man-made yet exotic, although official inquiries regarding experimental aircraft revealed nothing. But they would say that, wouldn't they? And that's it for this fifth episode of bite-sized UFOs. As always, I hope you've enjoyed this recent installment. Until next time, bite-sized UFOs. Just the facts.

This has been bite-sized UFOs with your host, Graham Rendell. Be sure to rate and review wherever you get your podcasts. video version of this episode, subscribe to the bite-sized UFO's YouTube channel. Thank you for listening.