The Rendlesham case is still investigated by ufologists today.
PART EIGHT
The Gulf War and Beyond
19
War in the Garden of Eden
Operation Desert Shield
While the area around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers — ancient Babylonia and now present-day Iraq — is considered to be the cradle of civilization, the actual history of the place is one of violence and war.
The Babylonian creation myth is a story of one god being dismembered by another, the remains scattered across the cosmos to form the universe. Ancient Sumerian legends abound, with winged monsters battling each other above the clouds before crashing to Earth. The first recorded war in human history was fought in Mesopotamia around 3200 B.C. In fact, so many wars have been fought in the area over the millennia, even historians can lose count.
If the ancient Achaemenian prophecy that says the world will come to an end when Satan throws a comet at the earth proves true, chances are good that comet will come down somewhere near the Persian Gulf.
It’s no surprise, then, that soon after August 2, 1990, the day Saddam Hussein, then dictatorial ruler of Iraq, ordered his troops to invade the neighboring Persian Gulf country of Kuwait, strange things began showing up in the skies over the troubled Middle East.
Saddam’s invasion was a grab for oil. In response, the United States and its allies began an enormous military buildup called Operation Desert Shield, its purpose being the eventual ejection of Saddam’s troops from Kuwait.
So, as men and material from multiple countries poured into bases throughout the Middle East, the sight of all kinds of advanced, high-tech machines flying overhead became commonplace. But clearly some sightings did not fit the description of any known aircraft.
For instance, according to a report by the National UFO Reporting Center at www.nuforc.org, on a clear evening in September 1990, just weeks after Saddam’s invasion, a U.S. Air Force advance unit working in the desert near Cairo, Egypt, had a very strange experience.
The seventy-member group was constructing a MASH facility and a fueling base in preparation for coming hostilities against Iraq. The group had finished work for the day and was heading back to their quarters when they were suddenly aware of a formation of pale orange objects flying high overhead. Aligned in a pair of parallel chevrons, as if forming a huge W, there were at least one hundred UFOs in the formation moving across the night sky.
Initially, the objects were traveling from the southeast to the northwest. But as the puzzled air force recruits looked on, the entire formation abruptly changed direction and began flying due north. In all, the phenomenon was visible for more than a half hour.
The next day the air force learned there had been no Egyptian or U.S. military aircraft overhead that night. In fact, no air traffic, military or commercial, had been scheduled for that airspace at all.
The sighting, so clearly reminiscent of Sergeant Stephen Brickner’s famous Tulagi episode of World War II, was never explained.
According to a story on unsolvedmysteries.com, in November 1990, two months before hostilities broke out in the Gulf, four soldiers on guard duty at a U.S. Army compound in Al-Jubail, Saudi Arabia, saw a bright, blue white object traveling across the sky.
They judged it to be about 25,000 feet high — and surprisingly it made no sound. It flew slowly at first, following a seemingly random course that left a zigzag light trail overhead. After watching it for a short while, the soldiers saw it suddenly accelerate on a straight course and disappear in less than a second.
Around the same time, several marines also deployed in the area saw a similar object moving across the night sky. It too vanished in an instant.
Again, what surprised them was that they heard no sound. Otherwise, they would have thought they were looking at a helicopter.
Later the same month, a resident of Kerak, Jordan, was watching some storm clouds roll in from the Red Sea. The witness noticed one cloud was darker and at a lower altitude than the others; this cloud also seemed to be traveling at right angles to the rest.
This made no sense — but it got even stranger. As the witness watched in astonishment, the odd cloud separated itself from the rest of the cloud bank and flew directly overhead.
Within this strange cloud, the witness saw an oval object, metallic and silver gold in color. It was at least 100 feet long and had rapidly flashing red lights on it. The witness sensed that it was emitting a vibration, but there was no noise.
This object seemed to be heading toward Israel — not a good thing in a region that was well within range of Iraq’s much-feared Scud missiles.
The witness continued watching the UFO until it faded over the horizon, its exact destination unknown.
One night in December 1990, crewmen aboard the aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy were preparing for action in the Persian Gulf.
Suddenly, a very bright, greenish yellow UFO appeared in the sky high over the massive aircraft carrier. The oval-shaped object remained stationary for almost a minute, as though it was spying on the huge ship.
Then the amazed crew saw what looked like an opening in the fabric of space. It drew the UFO into it, then closed instantly behind the object.
Another story found on the Web claimed that on January 15, 1991, just two days before the start of the war, a large number of U.S. soldiers saw a UFO over their camp in Saudi Arabia.
The object was oblong and bluish green in color. But it was its size that was so astonishing. Witnesses said the UFO was at least a quarter mile long and almost 1,000 feet wide. Gigantic by any standard of measurement.
The UFO appeared very suddenly and hovered silently over the troops for a long period of time. Then it eventually rose up and disappeared into the stars.
Many soldiers took pictures of the strange object, but the next day, witnesses said, military security people arrived at the camp and confiscated all the troopers’ film.
The Gulf War began on January 17, 1991.
Code-named Operation Desert Storm, the opening shots were fired when President George H. W. Bush gave the go-ahead for a massive air strike on Iraq.
A story on nuforc.com tells of a startling incident that happened just after Bush’s order. At 2:46 A.M. on that first day, a formation of four army MH-60 Black Hawk helicopters was making its way toward Iraq’s border with Kuwait. Through his night vision goggles, the lead pilot spotted what he assumed was an F-117 “Stealth Fighter” approaching the formation at an altitude of just 1,000 feet.
This was odd. The premission briefing the copter pilots had received made it clear there were not supposed to be any U.S. fighter aircraft in their area of operations. So what was this?
The object came within a quarter mile of the Black Hawks then slowed to a speed well below that of an F-117. At that point the chopper pilots knew this was not a Stealth Fighter.
The object turned sharply to the north, revealing a size of more than 80 feet long — far bigger than that of an F-117. It showed no lights and was not emitting any heat.
At that point, the object disappeared. When the team returned to base after completing their mission, the lead pilot asked flight operations if any fighters had been in their area of operations.