More sightings of U.F.O.s predicted

Press, 5 December 1979, Page 10

More sightings of U.F.O.s predicted

PA Wellington New Zealand could be in for another wave of "Kaikoura-type” U.F.O. sightings between October 30 and November 1 next year, according to a Department of Scientific and Industrial Research atmospheric physicist. Mr W. Ireland. He has just completed a report on 27 strange lights seen at night between December 20 last year and January 10. Mr W. Ireland said that there was a simple explanation for all 27 “sufficiently well-documented sightings.” “Tn the most widely publicised encounter, (that filmed by a television cameraman. David Crockett) nothing unnatural apart from the impressions of the witnesses seems to have occurred. “This U.F.O. was almost certainly a brightly-lit squid boat caught in the act.” Mr Ireland said all the sightings were unusual views of either terrestrial sources such as lighthouses, navigational beacon, and city lights, or of the planets Venus and Jupiter seen through an unusually Hear atmosphere. On this basis he predicted the 1980 U.F.O. sightings. Ideal conditions for the sighting would be a fine, clear night with a northwest wind blowing. At 3.15 a.m. on October 30, Venus and Jupiter would rise fn the eastern

sky less than a degree apart. On October 31, the most likely U.F.O. day, the two planets would rise only one-tunth of a degree apart. By November 1. the gap would be back to more than a degree. Other assertions by Mr Ireland in the report were: — The U.F.O-s seen in the Riversdale area of the Wairarapa and filmed by a television "rew at the Clarence River were sightings of Venus: — Since the Second World War the eastern coasts of Canterbury and the Wairarapa have had a reputation for providing strange radar images; — There is also a long history of optical mirages on the Canterbury coast, one of the earliest being a sighting on January 31, 1891, of the Rangitata railway bridge reflected out to sea: — During the Kaikoura U.F.O. sightings aircrew and radar observers were able to see much further than normal. In the case of the aircrew, this meant that lights in the distance could appear to be at the same altitude a. the aircraft. Mr Ireland said some of the U.F.O. sightings were more likely to be the lights of Kaikoura or Christchurch seen in conditions of unusual atmospheric clarity. On January 2, for example, the crew of a Royal New Zealand Air Force aircraft flying over Wellington about midnight

saw the lights of a squid fleet at Memoo Bank 300 kilometres away. Mr Ireland’s report drew immediate criticism from Mr D. R. Wood, the president of the Wellingtonbased New Zealand U.F.O. Studies Centre. “How did he come up with 27 sightings?” Mr Wood asked. “We could add 50 more and say explain those, too. "There is no way we or Bruce Maccabee would agree that the Crockett sighting could be put down to a single squid boat seen under normal conditions.” Mr Maccabee, a United States Navy atmospheric physicist and a noted U.F.O. researcher, spent 10 days in New Zealand studying the Kaikoura sightings, and determined that the Crockett sighting was unidentifiable. Mr Wood said reports by witnesses attributed great speed and a lot of movement to the objects. He said his gtoup would study the D.S f.R. report '•losely. The group approached U.F.O. sightings sceptically and found that most could be explained a wav. Dr J. F. de Bock, the director of the U.F.O. Studies Centre, said that of every 100 sightings received by the group, 95 could be explained immediately and another two or three after more research. It was the rest that the group was most interested in studying