Operation Trojan Horse - John Keel-pages

Page 114 of 287

Page 114 of 287
Operation Trojan Horse - John Keel-pages

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frequently reported in UFO flap areas, often performing hazardous hedge-hopping maneuvers. One group of witnesses on the outskirts of Gallipolis, Ohio, told me that they had been seeing mysterious flying lights in their hills and fields for thirty years. They also remarked, without any prompting on my part, that ‘‘big cargo planes” came over the hills a couple of times each month, and “‘sometimes they’re so low we think they’re going to crash.”’ These “‘cargo planes”’ are multiengined and a dull gray color. The area does not lie on the direct route between the distant Ohio AF bases and the Charleston, West Virginia, airport. Furthermore, hedge hopping over the treacherous hills and mountains of Ohio-West Virginia would be foolhardy. In his report to the Armed Services Committee Hearing on Unidenti- fied Flying Objects (April 5, 1966), an engineer named Raymond Fowler outlined his investigation into the sightings around Exeter, New Hamp- shire, and stated: ‘‘On my first two visits to the Carl Dining field [where UFOs had been sighted previously] on the morning of September 11, 1965, I saw a low-flying C-119 Flying Boxcar pass over the area on both occasions. ”’ During my own extended field investigations people in many scattered areas far removed from AF bases described flying boxcars to me. They were nearly all seen at very low levels, sometimes performing intricate and hazardous maneuvers. For a long time I suspected that the Air Force was sending special instrument-laden planes into flap areas to take photographs and perform various tests. But eventually the circumstantial evidence mounted, and I had to discard this plausible theory for an implausible one, i.e., that aircraft resembling C-119s were being de- ployed in flap sectors, but they weren’t related to the Air Force. Smaller planes of the single-engined type are also frequently observed at low altitudes, sometimes flying back and forth in search patterns over places where UFOs have been seen to alight. As usual, these little planes are gray and unmarked. They have been reported in Texas, Florida and West Virginia by competent witnesses, some of whom have studied them with binoculars. Like their larger counterparts, they fly at night with their cabins fully illuminated, and they have often been seen hedge hopping in rainstorms and blizzards at night when no private pilot in his right mind would even consider taking off. This inclement-weather flying is a historical pattern. In March 1968, experienced UFO watchers in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, told me of seeing a formation of low-flying UFO-type lights over Highway 62 at night in a raging snowstorm. Directly behind the 112 / Operation Trojan Horse