The UFO PILOT
The UFO PILOT
by Bill Knell
It was 1995 and I was on a speaking tour that took me to many interesting places in the Southwest U.S. One was Roswell, New Mexico, site of the famous 1947 UFO crash. I had already been there several times since the 1980s, but this was the first time I actually got to present one of my UFO seminars in town. I also took the time to visit the International UFO Museum and Research Center at 114 N. Main Street in Roswell.
My wife and I stopped in to say hello to Glenn Dennis, the founder of the museum.
We first met in the early 1990s. To make a long story short, he had been a Mortuary worker at a local funeral home in 1947. That business had contracts with the Walker Air and Army Base (formerly Roswell Army Air Field).
They phoned twice on a Sunday afternoon in early July and he took both calls. Besides questions about body preservation, he was also asked to bring a number of child size coffins, that could be hermetically sealed, to the base. Once there, Dennis found out about the Alien bodies and was threatened to keep quiet about the situation.
I was also excited to meet Sergeant Clifford Stone, a military insider and part of an elite government unit tasked to investigate and retrieve crashed UFOs. I met him at a local business and we had an amazing conversation. Both Glenn Dennis and Clifford Stone unexpectedly came to my seminar. Afterward, they told me and my wife that my presentation was the most accurate they had heard to date. That unexpected accolade made my whole trip worth it, but there was one more big surprise to come.
I did guest spots on a local radio station and noontime TV news program while I was in town. My TV news interview was seen elsewhere as well and yielded an unexpected result. These kinds of guest spots often brought me new and fascinating information to investigate, but this one topped them all. A call came in for me while I was still at the TV station. It was from a man, a former Air Force pilot. He wanted to know if I was coming to Los Angeles any time soon? I told him I would be there in two weeks. He gave me his phone number and asked me to call when I arrived and had some time to talk. I'll call him John.
I called John once I arrived for my seminar in Los Angeles. John said he was coming there and would speak to me afterwards. Being in L.A. was quite an experience. I had a guest spot on the popular Mark and Brian morning radio show. Fortunately, I was speaking at a large venue. The place was packed. Among the notables was Charlie Sheen, who reserved twenty seats and brought friends, and David and Sean Cassidy (I later worked with Sean on some paranormal themed projects).
I stayed long after the seminar to meet and greet. I took questions and asked a few. Fortunately, John showed up. He patiently waited until the crowd thinned out, then came up to me and introduced himself. My first impression was that he was the real deal; a serious guy who had served in the military. I grew up around pilots and members of the military, so it was easy for me to recognise one.
John was in his late thirties at the time. He was single and lived in the L.A. area. He told me that he had some information that I needed to know. It was obvious to me that he wasn't a crank or over-enthusiastic UFO buff. We planned a meeting the next day at the La Brea Tar Pits. Being a history and archeology buff, I really wanted to see those. John showed up right on time.
He kept things casual and allowed me to record our conversation. He began by giving me a brief and carefully worded background on his military service. He showed me his Air Force DD Form 214 (Certificate of Release or Discharge from Active Duty) and some other paperwork to verify his credibility.
He convinced me that his military background was real and impressive, but I wondered what all that had to do with UFOs? Then he dropped the bomb. In 1980 he was working out of Laughlin Air Force Base near Del Rio, Texas. At that time John received notice that he was being transferred to Nellis Air Force Base, which is located near Las Vegas, Nevada. Its primary mission is stated to be “advanced combat aviation training,”
It didn't take long for John to stand out as a pilot and Air Force Officer committed to his service. Someone noticed this because in 1982 he was given orders for special training at an undisclosed location. He would stay for an as yet undetermined period of time. He was told to pack light, leaving most of his possessions in storage. John later boarded a transport plane for a short flight (about 130 miles) to Area 51. All the pilots knew the place existed and some had actually been there, but only on a stop and go basis. No one on that aircraft really knew what was going on there or said a word about it as they landed.
John and a few others were taken to an isolated area of the base, given identification badges and ordered to take blood tests. They settled into their individual quarters, attending a basic security briefing and had dinner. After that they were told to get a good sleep because the next day would be a busy one. It was. They attended several long briefings which blew away every normal perception he had about reality. He gave me a thumbnail sketch of what he was told.
The U.S. military was in possession of “foreign air crafts” of undetermined age and origin. The pilots were expected to learn how to operate them. Each received a book which they were told to study. The book was thick, but as his briefing officer said, “It says a lot about a little” and the pilots were expected to learn everything they needed to know on their own. His book mentioned that only a few members of the crews of these crafts had survived crashes caused by “deliberate interference with their propulsion units”. These “crew members” were “generally uncooperative” and of several different species.
John sensed that I had a million questions and was quick to explain that he was told just what was necessary for him to do his job and nothing more.
He did learn that the objects were brought down because on many occasions the crews had used their technology to “interfere with our defense capabilities.” Those activities included scrambling missile codes and interfering with computer and technology systems. He felt this information was shared in the hope that he and the others would realise that our military had not been the aggressors. “We were responding to attacks and future threats.”
On the third day of his time at the secret facility he was shown the craft that he would be working on. It was a classic flying saucer, about sixty feet in diameter. Others were smaller, some were much larger and different shapes. The interior was odd. It had no color and there were no seats. There were indentations along the inside where he was told a crew of five would station themselves.
The “crew” were short. They had large heads, large eyes and were very thin by our standards. He was told that “none of that type grew taller than four feet” and there were male and female, a fact that was guessed by body type. Over time he was told there were more “other worldly” creatures. All appeared intelligent and some were “very aggressive". It was hard for him to tell if the information provided to him about the “crews” were fact, fiction or somewhere in-between.
The craft he was tasked to work on was real enough and far beyond our ability to design or build. At some point John was told that it was brought down in the 1970s and lacked any significant damage. Two “resource officers” were assigned to him and one other pilot working on the same craft. They were likely engineers and technical experts. Their first question to him was, “Did you ever take Wood Shop in school?” He did.
The resource officers had an idea. They said that other crafts were made to fly by human pilots sitting in a wooden compartment inside the device. They had tried to use metal and plastic. Both unexpectedly became very hot for no known reason. That made the metal impractical and the plastic melted. The resource officers designed plans for a wooden “cocoon". The pilots were carefully measured and assisted base woodworkers in the building of it. Once completed, it fit perfectly inside the craft and was reasonably comfortable for sitting.
The outside of the craft was silver colored and mostly seamless, except for the entrance which you would not know was there if it wasn't open. A resource officer told John and his fellow pilot that one of the surviving “crew” was eventually forced to show his interrogators the basics of getting in and out of the craft. After that he died. However, resource officers later showed the pilots a specially built control panel that had a much more human feel than what was available inside the craft. The pilots had no idea how it was connected, but it worked.
After months of trial and error testing, the pilots managed to get the object off the floor and move it around a bit. John described his shock when, once it lifted up, parts of the cabin became transparent. When it landed that feature stopped working. Finally, the pilots were able to have the object move out of its hangar and travel about ten miles away. That was as far as they were allowed to go. During the instantaneous journey, John joked, "Suppose we run out of gas?” That couldn't happen, but John was never briefed on the object's propulsion system.
John told me all he could and, in his mind, probably more than he should. I was grateful for all he shared. He needed to tell someone. There were lots of Area 51 whistleblowers, but John seemed more sincere than most and never tried to enhance his tale. I first wrote about him in a 1997 newsletter and added his information to one of my seminars. I have four different ones. I have also shared his information during guest spots and in my books. Thanks John, the best UFO PILOT ever. More about him later.
Comments
Post a Comment