NUFORC Sighting 31990

Occurred: 1980-03-01 18:00 Local - Approximate
Reported: 2003-10-01 20:45 Pacific
Duration: 30 minutes
No of observers: 0

Location: Bisbee, AZ, USA

Shape: Other
Characteristics: Aircraft nearby

Large, nearby, stationary, metallic, featureless oblate spheroid in full daylight, chased by jet fighter in Az in 1980

Hello, my name is ((name deleted)) and I currently live in Erie, Pa, phone # 814 ((telephone number deleted)). I lived in Bisbee Arizona for about twenty years, moving to Erie in 1992. In looking for accounts of an extended sighting of an aerial object in Bisbee in, I believe, 1980, I came across ((name deleted)) account on your site of another set of sightings I am not very familiar with. I do know ((name deleted)), consider him a reliable witness and he is one of the many witnesses to the 1980 affair. This was reported, years later, 30 Nov 95, in a Bisbee newspaper in an article by their staff reporter. None of the published accounts were even remotely like what I saw and carefully noted in my mind. Doing further research and field work, I found that this reporter was known to be inaccurate- to be kind about it, and even prone to gross sensationalism, this being the likely cause of the bizarre accounts published. No intended reflection on the publisher. I didn't think to remember the date of this incident but memory serves perhaps well enough. It was not hot, just comfortable, breezy and my recall of the nature of the lighting and timing and bearing of the sunset would all together lead me to estimate the time to be late winter, early spring. The news account gives the year as 1981 but I think it had to be 1980 from my own reckoning. I don't know how to contact ((name deleted)) to verify his account in the newspaper article. I'm surprised he didn't give you folks there at Citizens Against UFO Secrecy an account of the 1980 spectacle. It was truly stunning. ((name deleted) was quite a ways further away from it but still had a good view. I and another fella, ((name #2 deleted)), stood nearly under it for quite some time. I cautiously state that we did so for 10 minutes (no watch) though it was likely quite a bit longer. ((name #2)) and I (my first name is ((name #2 deleted)) too) were Bisbee's two leading mechanical shop owners and good observers of physical/energy realities. I had worked previously as a telemetry collector/analyst in the ASA for the NSA and so was! quite familiar with spacecraft and their capabilities, even being able to make the dubiously embarrassing claim of being a rocket scientist! This event occurred at about 6pm at ((name of fuel station deleted)) station on the Bisbee traffic circle. The object was nearly directly overhead, stationary, clearly visible!! ((name #1 deleted)) was about a mile and a half away, in South Bisbee, I seem to recall him saying that when he came upon us after the object left. We were about 150-200 yards from the Lavender Pit copper mine. I arrived from Douglas Arizona as ((name #2 deleted)) was closing his station, which he customarily did at 6pm. He and I stood for a few minutes talking, each with one foot up on the front bumper of my white 53 Chev panel truck on the station parking lot in the waning sun. I then had an odd feeling, looked about, then almost straight up and was shocked to see an object had appeared and was absolutely still above us. It was over the back of the Chevron property, overlapping onto an area called the Shady Dell. The sun was just disappearing down behind the Phelps Dodge mine track embankment, as seen from where we were standing. The object itself was in full sunlight, being higher up. My hand, at arms length, would not cover it up. There was a slight breeze. ((name #2 deleted)) then looked up to see what had me agape and was himself riveted to the sight. I finally looked over at ((name #2 deleted)) and asked him, "Do you see what I see?!". ((Name #2 deleted)) said "I sure do!" We then looked it over keenly, both of us comparing notes of our observations. We were in agreement about what we were looking at. I'm sure we both had thoughts run through our minds about whether we should leave the area immediately. We didn't feel threatened at all. It was just so extraordinarily strange to be in near company with such a thing. We had no idea what was going to happen and waited with bated breath. I, at one point, cast about looking for a stone to throw up at it to try and get a clearer sense of its height above us, and it's size. Then decided my action might seem unfriendly (stone! age savages it would appear) and for that matter the stone might come down and cause some property damage. Or some antimatter reaction. I abandoned the idea. It was a fair sized object. I thought that perhaps a low humming I was hearing might be coming from the object. We talked it over and finally decided that the slight noise was 60hz hum coming from the nearby overhead electrical wires. We had a kind of feeling about the object's presence that I can't quite describe, sort of as though there were some being up there observing and aware of us. The fact is though, we never saw any sign of such a sentient being. Just the handiwork and actions thereof. We noted that many of the cars coming around the traffic circle were slowing down, somewhat dangerously, then most accelerating vigorously on through the mine track underpass, itself nearly under the edge of the object. The cars could then be heard accelerating hard away from it onto the pit circumference highway up to Old Bisbee. Nobody stopped although they could be seen leaning down and forward briefly trying to get a better look. I think a lot of those people wished they hadn't seen it, my judging their reactions as they exited the area. I remember pinching myself and slapping myself, almost jokingly, to make sure I wasn't dreaming. In fairness, I should now describe the object though there is little to be said even though it was likely within a stones throw of us. It was an oblate spheroid. In more common terms, it was like a flattened or squashed sphere. From the top or bottom it would appear to be perfectly round or circular. From the side aspect it had kind of a horizontal football shape except the ends weren't pointed but instead gently rounded. It appeared to have curvilinear symmetry above and below the arbitrary ‘belt line’. It did not revolve or move whatsoever in the gently gusting breeze. It appeared to be made of stainless steel or perhaps aluminum or titanium or beryllium with a finely brushed matte finish. The disturbing thing, to a couple! of good physical observers as us two ((name #2 deleted)), was that the thing was absolutely perfect. There were no seams, slight irregularities or distortions, plates, rivets or any other deviations from it's monolithic perfection. The nearest thing that I can call up from our technologies would be a metallic balloon somehow squashed into the oblate spheroid shape. This would have stress lines and wrinkles though. It could not possibly be perfect, as this was. It would also be bobbling in the breeze. As I stated, this object was rock steady. As well, our observer sense of it was that it was hard bodied. We peered intensely at it for a long time. It was not hard to see at all, the object was nearby in full late afternoon sunlight. Atmospheric conditions, late afternoon, were good, with some slight shadowing on the object on the side away from the sun. There was no significant cloud cover other than a little bit of scuddy, stringy stuff. We were not in a position to see where the sun angle would have thrown the objects shadow, unfortunately. That would have been an astute observation to make. I also did not attempt to walk directly under it, which would have given us a good lateral distance and from that a better guess at height off the ground and, of course it's size. We were a little too awed, I think, to put that plan in motion, thinking that something could happen at any moment, though I thought it out at the time as I tried to estimate those parameters. Making this process even more nebulous was the fact that the object had absolutely no features except for it's shape, color and finish appearance. There were no rivets, as I said, no seams, plates, ports, lights, hatches, vents, doors, windows, antennas, pitot tubes...nada. Featureless. ((name #2 deleted)) and I both discussed this back and forth as we carefully looked it over. Nothing. Nothing by which one might then judge it's size, distance and nature. It couldn't have sat up there any stiller than it did. After quite some passage of time, it suddenly did a small maneuver, ! almost comical, like the wobble of a top as it spins down. I would relate this as being a precessional wobble as of the physics of a gyroscope spinning down through it’s structural harmonics and beginning to lose it's stability. The object wasn't spinning though, just wobbling. It was over in about three seconds, a couple of wobbles, and was instantly and fluidly moving quite steadily in the direction of the copper pit at about 10-12 miles an hour for the first hundred or so feet, which took it out of our line of sight behind the ridged embankment which carried tracks for the copper operation. It then appeared to us, visible over the tracks, in the direction and going in the direction it had originally disappeared in, approximately a mile away and going fast. It was now proceeding upwards at a steep angle at probably a thousand miles an hour, clearing the mountain containing the Queen Mine next to old Bisbee, and proceeding straight on out of sight at that angle, roughly in the direction of the setting sun. Surprisingly, considering the great speed it was now moving at, it still made absolutely no sound. These movements gave some hint as to the elevation of the object and it's size though not too reliably so. I would then estimate that it had been stationary over our heads at about 250 feet and was probably 80 to 100 feet in diameter and about 35-40 feet in height or thickness. ((name #2 deleted)) and I were surprisingly tired out by the experience and could conclude little other than what I have related. No little green men. We don't know what we saw. But we know what we saw. Paradox. It was nothing that our technologies could do then or even now unless it was an extremely realistic hologram projected from a satellite in space, as in Ronald Raygun's space based missile defense technology projects or something of that nature. I don't think so. Whatever it was, I don't think man had any thing to do with it. My memory is a little fuzzy about this but possibly ((name #2 deleted)) wife arrived at which point ((name #3 deleted)), ((name #4 deleted)) and a friend of theirs drove up, greatly excited. I can't remember the details of what they said they saw but I'm sure it wasn't what was reported in the Bisbee news 15 years later. I then left, heading out down the pit highway towards Old Bisbee. I had gotten only through the mine track underpass, through the first S turn and was just straightening out towards Bisbee Blue when I heard a tremendous, shattering roar, echoing wildly about. It kind of scared me, I hunkered down in the seat of my old truck and looked out the window to see the second astonishment of the day. A jet fighter plane on flaming afterburner, flying an extremely risque trajectory from over Warren out over the pit, to my left not a hundred feet above my elevation, going in the same direction and flight path the object had a couple of minutes before. This aircraft actually had to bank hard left to miss Sacramento hill, or what's left of it on the edge of the pit, then hard right back on track followed immediately by a hard pull up to clear Copper Queen mountain. It following the path the object had, moments previous. Obviously in pursuit. Our government knows about these things. Who is kidding who here. Breathtaking. End of story.

Posted 2003-10-07

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