by William E. Jones and Dr. Irena Scott
In the spring of 1966 our witness, who has asked not to be named in any published report, was assigned to an air defense missile base in Dillsboro, Indiana. The base was located approximately 10 miles from the Ohio River along U.S Route 50 southwest of Cincinnati, Ohio. In private hands today, in the mid-1960s, this base was a key installation in the defense of the Greater Cincinnati area from air attack by Soviet aircraft carrying nuclear weapons. The base housed Nike-Hercules missiles that could be quickly armed with either high explosive or nuclear warheads.
Our witness was in the U.S. Army working in the Assembly and Test area of the base. He was assigned to Battery C, 56th Artillery. On the night of this sighting, he was assigned to back-up guard duty. Around 12:30 AM, a Sergeant Grimes came into the guard office and told our witness and another enlisted man to relieve a guard at Post 4 who had called in and seemed to be "going crazy." When asked why this was happening, Grimes replied that there was a UFO over the Assembly and Test area, which was near Post 4.
Our witness and the other man left the guard office and proceeded toward Post 4. As they rounded a large pile of dirt over 20 feet high that was beside a construction area, they saw the UFO in the sky a couple of hundred yards or so away.The UFO was disc shaped. It was glowing orange/red and appeared to be metallic. The glow pulsated at a frequency the witness was not sure of. When this pulsation reached its brightest, the outline of the object was barely visible. Round shapes of what could have been portholes were visible, although the witness pointed out that he couldn’t be sure what these shapes really were. They were lighted in a blue color. From the bottom of the object white "pieces of light" came out and moved quickly toward the ground where they disappeared. Only one piece of light came out at a time, the following light not appearing until the previous one had disappeared. The light seemed to be going down into the Assembly and Test area, although it might have been falling into an area between Assembly and Test and the missile storage facility which was also near Post 4. When asked how big the object was, how far away, or how high, the witness replied that he couldn’t say because he had no way to judge.
After taking a quick look, both our witness and his companion decided they were in danger and neither proceeded on to Post 4. The companion ran back towards the guard office and our witness quickly entered a near by communications trailer where he proceeded to hear how the base handled the incident. Both of these men were later disciplined for not following on with their orders, although the discipline later meted out was not serious.
A warrant officer on duty brought up a missile "topside" from its under ground hanger and prepared it to fire on the aerial intruder. The launcher control facility was about 1800 to 2000 yards away from the base. Permission to fire was requested of the officer there all the way up the chain of command, and in each instance the request was denied. The final request was made to NORAD out in Colorado Springs, Colorado and the final denial came from there. Since our witness was in the communication facility he heard all of this on the radio. The response from NORAD included the comment that NORAD knew of the object’s presence, having tracked it for some time over the United States. That was all that was said about that subject.
Our witness left the trailer after the incident was over. He did not see the UFO leave and he stated that he did not remember anyone saying how that occurred. If someone did discuss this, he did not remember it. (Our interview with the witness took place in 1998.) However, he did say that he thought the incident lasted about 10 to 15 minutes.
The next day, 7 to 10 officers from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base came to the missile base in two or three automobiles. The witness said that as best he could remember, the group consisted of one "full bird Colonel," several Lt. Colonels, and a couple of lower ranking officers. He seemed to remember that two of these officers were Army and the rest Air Force. They questioned everyone on the base about what they had seen and what they had heard about the incident. When our witness was interviewed he was handed a blank piece of paper and asked to write down everything that had happened. He was then questioned by one of the officers. He was asked about the blue color of the portholes, or what ever they were. He was handed a color chart and asked to pick out the color of the blue he had observed. After he chose the proper color, our witness asked his interviewer why he was so interested in the blue color. The interviewer replied that it was because the color blue is associated with nuclear energy. The interviewer also asked our witness if he had seen anyone looking out the portholes. He chuckled and replied that he had not. At the end of the interview our witness was told to never discuss the incident with anyone; "It did not take place." From what his friends later said, apparently everyone on base received the same order. Not too much was said on base about the incident after that.
When we asked if the base had lost any power during this incident, our witness replied in the negative. He had seen no evidence of that, and no one had later said anything that would contradict his observation.
Our witness remained assigned to the base until December 1966 when he was transferred to Europe.
UFO sightings involving relatively slow moving "pieces of light" or "light packages" are, while not common, reported frequently enough to be considered a note worthy aspect of the UFO phenomena.
For example, on January 26, 1999 at 8:15 to 8:32 p.m., seven witnesses saw a large UFO near La Veta in the San Luis Valley of southern Colorado and northern New Mexico hovering over a small lake located on a golf course. The UFO was described as having wings with bright lights in front. It was translucent looking and was accompanied by a low humming sound. Structure was not apparent at first, but "orange-colored portholes" appeared in its side. The UFO shot a probe-like beam or tube downward toward the lake. (Filer’s Files, #8-1999, p. 4.)
Francis Ridge, a UFO investigator from Indiana, reports that that a UFO was reported over Vincennes and southern Indiana on November 14, 1960. Described as a "brilliant, red flash" by some southern Indiana newspapers, reports first came in from Florence, east of Vevay, where residents there said they saw an object burning in the sky. A Switzerland County farmer reported sighting "an object in the sky with three bright lights." According to the newspapers, "the Nike Missile station at Dillsboro said it traced an unidentified object with its radar but lost it as it traveled northwest toward Indianapolis." State police reportedly searched for a plane crash, but found nothing.
Mr. Ridge, then a field investigator for the now defunct NICAP organization, contacted Battery ‘C’ 5th Missile Battalion, 56th Artillery in Dillsboro who wrote him back on December 1, 1960 saying, "We were not radar tracking an unidentified flying object on Monday 14 November 1960."
Mr. Ridge concluded, "Something low and slow was observed by a number of persons over southern Indiana Monday evening. That ‘something’ was tracked by radar then later denied. The civilian reports we investigated were very much similar to ‘fireball’ reports, except for the speed and the radar confirmation. Without much detail, not too much can be determined from this incident, except that the object was not an aircraft or a meteor, and somebody at Dillsboro leaked the tracking to the news media."
Where these two Dillsboro cases connected? Obviously not because of the six year difference in dates. But at one time was someone watching over the now closed nuclear missile base near Dillsboro, Indiana? Did more sightings occur near there than are on the record? We will probably never know.