NUFORC Sighting 01941

Occurred: 1974-08-01 23:00 Local
Reported: 1997-01-10 00:00 Pacific
Duration: 12 seconds
No of observers: 1

Location: Campbell, CA, USA

Shape: Triangle

SUMMARY: Sighting of a pair of triangular UFO's over the SF Bay Area, August 1974

In the summer of 1974, I saw a pair of triangular objects while stargazing with binoculars. At the time, I assumedthat they must have been aircraft. But it's been a long time since then, and I haven't ever seen any airplanes,or whatever, that even remotely resemble the objects I saw.I have just recently gained access to the Web, and being amused by UFO stories, I found my way to a couple of theUFO pages. While browsing at Rutgers, I ran across some reports of "triangular UFO's", which made my hair stand on end. Up to that time, I had not heard of "triangular"UFO's. Here's what I saw in late August, 1974 while Iwas in the backyard of my house in Campbell, CA (South SFBay area).I was laying on the ground, looking through a pair of 20 power binoculars. My feet were pointed east, and the binoculars were pointed slightly to the right of straight up, at about the one o'clock position. Something went through my field of vision, moving right to left. I caught up to it quickly, and saw two objects flying in close formation, one behind and to the right of the one in front.They were both the same size, shaped like equilateral triangles with straight edges, flying point forward. Their color appeared to be flat slate grey, against a deep blacksky. There were no features, and I saw no lights, or glow of any kind. They appeared to be illuminated by the citylights. It looked something like this:left (north)- .if this diagram doesn't- - .line up, select a fixed- - .font (like courier). This- - .line should be straight.- . - .- / \ - .- / \ - .- / \ - .- / \ - . I've draw this sideways- /_________\ - . because it was a little- . - top . easier, and the proportions- / \ -(west). are more accurate.- / \ - .- / \ - .- / \ - .- /_________\ - .- - .- - .- - .- - .- - .- .right (south)There was something very peculiar about the way they looked as they flew. The craft in front appeared more steady than the trailing one, and the distance between them fluctuated randomly, varying from nearly touching, to a maximum of a triangle length. When the rear one began to lag, it would suddenly snap back to a comfortable distance from the front one. My impression was that it looked as though they were being manually controlled by pilots, and as if they had very high power to weight ratio, and like they were somewha thard to control.I watched them for about 8 to 12 seconds. During that time,they maintained a due north heading, and covered about 80 to 90 degrees of azimuth. After I lost sight of them, I waited for several minutes for any sound. I heard nothing.The binoculars were 20x50, with a field of view of 157 fee tat 1000 yards. If you assume that the objects were about 100 feet long, and took up about 1/3 of the field of view, then their altitude would be 2000 yards, or 6000 feet, and their speed would be 568 mph. That seems pretty conventional,but I think I would have heard jets at that altitude.Furthermore, what jets have a perfect equilateral sillouette?The closest thing I can think of (that would be flying in 1974),is the B58 Hustler. But my view was clear enough, that I could have seen the little bit of fuselage in the front and backof the delta wing.I probably blew the simple geometry I used for the altitude and speed calculations, but I've given enough facts that one could calculate height and speed for any craft of a given size.

NUFORC Note:

As the reader probably has noted, the formation did not survive the transfer from our e-mail program to our website. PD

Posted 2002-09-19