On the night of August 13-14, 1956, four UFOs were sighted. They were travelling at speeds ranging from 6,400 kmph to 19,000 kmph and were tracked and recorded by radar operators at two army bases in east of England.
Whenever a person sees an UFO in the sky or one that has landed in his vicinity, he is said to have had an encounter. The encounters between a human and an UFO was broadly classified into three different kinds by astronomer Allen Hynek in his 1972 book – The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry.
When a person says he saw an UFO then we can say he had a Close Encounter of the First Kind, provided the UFO sighting must have occurred within a distance of 500 feet. If there are other eyewitnesses from the same area and radar evidence, then this sighting becomes a very strong one. According to a recent UN statistic, since the 1940s around 150 million people have reported seeing an UFO.
The problem with this kind of Encounter is the great majority of sightings reported as UFOs can be explained as IFOs or Identified Flying Objects like the Planets Venus, Jupiter and Mars. Artificial satellites, meteors and comets, atmospheric phenomena like Aurora Borealis, ball lightning, and reflections from fog. Advertising blimps, balloons, clouds, migrating birds, kites, insect swarms, fireworks, swamp gas, dust devils, elevated streetlights, lighthouses, military test crafts, re-entering satellites and rocket launchings.
The important factor here is, in spite of explaining away thousands of UFO sightings, under the above mentioned categories, there still remains thousands of highly detailed descriptions of manufactured devices capable of speed and maneuverability far in excess of anything known to man. Hundreds of pilots both civilian and military have reported seeing these crafts since the 1940s.
One of the best examples of Close Encounters of the First Kind happened in 1956 over England. On the night of August 13-14, radar operators at two military bases in the east of England repeatedly tracked single and multiple objects which displayed high speed, as well as rapid changes of speed and direction.
Two jet fighters were sent which were able to see and track them. According to official US Air Force reports, the sightings could not be explained by radar malfunction or by unusual weather. It began at 9.30 pm when Airman 2nd Class John Vaccare, of the US Air Force at RAF Bentwaters, tracked one UFO on his Ground Controlled Approach radar covering around 80 km distance in 30 just seconds, which indicated a speed of around 9,500 kmph. According to radar, the size of the UFO was several times larger than a B-36 aircraft which had a wingspan of 70 m.
At 10 pm, another UFO was tracked from Bentwaters travelling at a speed of 19,000 kmph. Then, at 10.55 pm, the Bentwaters radar picked up another UFO travelling at a speed of 6,400 kmph. Around 11.30 pm, the RAF launched a DeHavilland Venom jet interceptor, whose pilot was able to lock on the UFO on his radar. Now the UFO began to follow the jet fighter, whose pilot tried to circle and get behind the UFO, but he could not. Now another fighter jet was scrambled from RAF station. The first pilot reported it was the clearest target he had ever seen on radar. The 1969 Condon committee report called this the most puzzling and unusual case in its files as the UFOs were both seen and tracked on radar.
This is not the only authenticated case of Close Encounters of the First Kind. Four years earlier in 1952, UFOs were sighted over Washington which were tracked on radar as well as seen by pilots. In recent times, the New York Hudson Valley UFO sightings in 1980, Belgium UFO sightings in 1989-90, Moscow sightings in 1990, Mexico sightings in 1991 and Stephenville Texas are some of the best authenticated incidents of Close Encounters of the First Kind.
