Iranian JETS Scrambled To Track A UFO Experience POWER FAILURES

Iranian JETS Scrambled To Track A UFO Experience POWER FAILURES

by Bill Knell

One of the most well documented and investigated UFO incidents of the 1970s took place on September 19, 1976 over Tehran, Iran. It began around 12:30 AM when several people reported an unusual bright light, "similar to a star, but much brighter," moving around in the sky. These reports were processed by Tehran Air Traffic Control. A supervisor in the control tower at Mehrabad Airport initially dismissed the reports until he saw the object himself and confirmed it on radar. He verified the presence of the object by 1:30 AM and passed on the information to the Iranian military.

They dispatched an Iranian Air Force F-4 Phantom II from Shahrokhi Air Base to investigate. Once the aircraft was within 25 nautical miles of the object it lost power to the jet's instrumentation and communications systems. At that point the pilot turned away from it and his power and systems were immediately restored. He returned to Shahrokhi Air Base.

Lieutenant Parviz Jafari

At 1:40 AM a second F-4 Phantom II piloted by Lieutenant Parviz Jafari, was launched. Jafari's jet gained a radar lock on the object at a range of 27 nautical miles. The radar return was described as being the size of a Boeing 707 tanker. The UFO then maintained a constant distance of 25 nautical miles from the F-4. Jafari stated that the object had a "flashing strobe light" pattern with alternating blue, green, red, and orange lights.

As the jet continued its pursuit, a smaller, brightly lit, round object came out of the large UFO and headed towards the F-4 at a high speed.

Lieutenant Jafari tried to fire an AIM-9 missile at the incoming object, but his weapons control panel and communications failed just at that moment. As he tried to maneuver away, the smaller object followed for a short distance before breaking off and rejoining the large UFO, which then descended towards the ground. Jafari reported that it appeared to land gently. A subsequent helicopter search found no evidence at the suspected landing site.

The simultaneous failure of instrumentation, weapons systems, and communications on both F-4s is one of the most unusual aspects of the incident. In both cases, the systems were restored immediately after the jets turned away from the object. Power interruptions and equipment failures are a commonality in many UFO encounters. They are also known to attack aircraft trying to track them as in the case of 25-year-old Captain Thomas F. Mantell, a Kentucky Air National Guard pilot, who died when the P-51 Mustang fighter plane he was piloting crashed on 01/07/1948 while trying to track what he radioed was “a metallic object of tremendous size."

Because all this occurred before the radical Islamic takeover of Iran, the U.S. government was cooperating with the previous regime of the Shah and able to fully investigate and document the case. The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report, provided through the Freedom of Information Act, confirms the details of the encounter. The DIA noted the high strangeness of the incident, concluding that it met the criteria for "a valid study of the UFO phenomenon".

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