Somewhere in the Skies - Bite-Sized UFOs | UFOs over Greenland

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Starting point is 00:00:56 Let's run there. Learn more at brooksrunning.com. 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 four of bite-sized UFOs. I'm Graham Rendell, and here's another chapter in the rich history of the modern-day UFO phenomenon. I say modern day, but that's generally accepted as everything from Kenneth Arnold's citing on 24th June 1947 onwards. This segment deals with an event that was alleged to have occurred five years earlier in the middle of World War II.

Starting point is 00:01:40 Greenland was neutral until the Germans invaded Denmark in April 1940. With the latter falling under Nazi occupation and following approval for the United States, the colony became a self-ruling territory. To avoid being dragged into the war, the newly created local government agreed to the establishment of an American consulate on Greenland soil. A cry-like mine was secured by sending former US Coast Guard personnel hired as armed guards. After the Lend-Lease program was set up to supply aircraft and other armments to Britain, the UK and Canada pushed for the construction of airfields in Greenland to assist with transatlantic delivery flights.

Starting point is 00:02:23 In 1941, the United States Army Corps of Engineers constructed an airfield, codename Bluey West One, and what is now Narsar Suak, near the southern tip of Greenland. The first aircraft landed there in January 1942 and a transatlantic ferry route was established between Maine and Prestwick and Scotland, with stops in either Labrador or Newfoundland, then Bluey West One in Iceland. Single-seat fighters were escorted on these shorter hops by B-17s and B-24s, and the bomber types themselves were brought across in large numbers to equip units of the 8th Air Force in Britain in advance of the start of the daylight bombing. campaign against Germany in January 1943. Now that I have set the scene, what about the UFO sighting? Well, the story allegedly involves one of the first United States Army Air Force bombers to fly via Greenland to Britain. The date is given as December 1942 and the location in the vicinity of what would become Tully Air Force Base, now Petific Space Base, currently operated by the United States Space Force and responsible for missile warning sensors as part of the Space Delta

Starting point is 00:03:36 global network, Tully became Bluey West 9 during World War II, but instead of an airfield, it was a weather station. Construction of the air base only began in 1951 and was completed two years later. According to an article in Saga UFO reports October 1977 edition, with the pages from my personal copy being shown here, Lieutenant Colonel James B. Nileck reported that the German carrier base fighters had been seen in the area of Tully. They had even buzzed his bomber, which was pilot speak for close passes. However, rather than being shaped like conventional aircraft, the objects Nilwreck saw was circular and red-orange in colour. According to the saga article's author Rufus Drake, the incident was widely reported at the time as some of the bomber's crew believed that they'd simply observed meteors.

Starting point is 00:04:30 Chances are that no one listening to this will have ever heard of this case. The only details I've been able to find are buried away in the back of a saga UFO report magazine from over 45 years ago, and the author of the article they appear in did not provide its sources, although the same article appears, in German, in UFO Nacherichn, Issue 245, dated June 1977. However, it is possible to examine the information that was included, and to see whether it sounds plausible. In today's digital age, it is also possible. to search for data which would not have been available to someone researching the insulin back in 1977. Once Bluey West One was completed, aircraft deliveries from America to Britain staged through there on their way to Scotland via Iceland.

Starting point is 00:05:20 Although the projection of the map here exaggerates the size of Northern Greenland, Tully was almost 1,200 miles to the north of Bluey West One. This was well to the north of the newly established ferry routes, known as Eastern and West. and crimson and way beyond any practical route from North America to Britain. In fact, there wasn't even an air strip at Tully until the early 1950s. Two Catalina flying boats did land on the ice near Tully during 1942 when locations for airfields were being scouted, but no construction occurred for nearly a decade afterwards. Although B-17E flying fortresses, the variant that would have been ferried across the Atlantic in December, 1942, had a range of around 3,0002

Starting point is 00:06:05 miles. It was impractical fly one as far north as Tully when there were no airfields, no ice runways and no supply bases available in that part of Greenland. And what about Nilex claim that the strange objects were carrier-based fighters? Did the Germans even have an aircraft carrier during the war? Well, yes, they did. Work on Graf Zeppelin was started in December 1936, although it was still incomplete by September 1939. Due to the priority given to submarine construction during the war, Graf Zeppelin was effectively sidelined. It was finally scuttled in March 1945, still unfinished. The Luftwaffe did build navalized versions of the BF109 fighter and Stuka dive bomber, and planned to use a Nerado torpedo bomber design, the R195, yet these aircraft were never used in their intended roles.

Starting point is 00:07:01 Could any other types of Luftwaffe aircraft have reached Greenland in December 1942? Wicusta 5, a weather reconnaissance unit based in Norway, had already landed on Spitzbergen to supply the German weather station there. It operated a mixture of Henkel 111 and Juncker's 88 bombers. Long-range reconnaissance versions of these aircraft would fly over the east coast of Greenland at sporadic intervals between 1941 and 1943. A dawnier seaplane evacuated personnel from a German weather station

Starting point is 00:07:38 on Sabine Island in 1943, almost at the same latitude as Tully, but on the east coast and 600 miles away. This far north, magnetic variations caused compasses to deviate significantly, adding to the problems that navigators faced. It is therefore almost impossible, to visualize German aircraft turning up on the west coast of Greenland during World War II. Finally, there is an issue with the Air Force officer who reported the incident. To date, I have not been able to find any records for a James B. Nilrek in the United States Army Air Force,

Starting point is 00:08:19 let alone those for a lieutenant colonel with that name. Was it a pseudonym? Rufus Drake did not confirm this in his article, but it is possible. And Rufus Drake was a pseudonym used by author Robert F. Dahl, a well-known author in the field of aviation. However, with only his words that appeared in a German UFO magazine and then the saga UFO report to go on, once again, we are left with more questions than answers. And that's it for this fourth episode of bite-sized UFOs. Until next time, remember, just the facts.

Starting point is 00:08:57 This has been bite-sized UFOs with your host, Graham Rendell. 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 | UFOs over Greenland

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