UFO HUNTERS - First Response

History Channel - Original Air Date: 10/29

Is the military pursuing UFOs and attempting to bring them down?  That's the question posed at the beginning of this episode.  There is a history of UFO-military encounters stretching back at least until 1954.  Kevin points out that it's possible that these encounters are escort flights for top-secret government aircraft.  The UFO-H team interviews people, including a woman, Patricia, who claims to have seen helicopters in pursuit of a UFO on March 17, 2009, in Longbeach.  Fortunately, she used a digital camera and tripod to capture her encounter -- using 8 second exposures, as well as 1/30th of a second exposures.  The UFO she saw looks different, clearly, from the helicopters pursuing it.  But, her house is sitting amid a cluster of military bases and testing centers.  Were the copters searching, attacking, or escorting?  Patricia also gathered other witnesses in her neighborhood to back up her story.  (She's one of the best witnesses I've ever seen.)  On the same day, another witness, "Mike" from Corona, who works with a DOD contractor, has a video of a glowing, ring-shaped object moving through the sky.  It's impressive, but doesn't look that fast -- certainly no faster than the Balloon Boy UFO -- which makes me wonder if it could be an illuminated balloon of some type.  The next night, he saw and photographed the object again.  The day after that, his wife said helicopters circled his house; a month later, he was fired.  Kevin remains skeptical of the connection, and the craft's alien origin -- after all, Mike, too, lives near several military bases.  Kevin does some calculations, and concludes that Mike and Patricia probably did not seem the same object.  A photo analyst doesn't think Patricia's photo is a conventional aircraft or helicopter.  The analyst believes the ring craft is a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) with a ring of lights -- and the show even has a picture of one.  So, the ring of light photos seem solved; it was a hoax seen by Mike.  (No wonder the shots were so good.)

Meanwhile, out in Lake Havasu, NV, around the same time, a witness with experience with military aircraft saw a boomerang-shaped craft -- which he estimates at 3-400' wide.  (Though we all know how unreliable size estimates of flying objects are.)  The object was "chased' by several fighter jets.  He has fuzzy video, but there's no way to tell the object's size or true shape.  (Even the pursuit jets are fuzzy.)  Bill tries to connect these sightings to the UFO "crash" in Needles, nearby, in 2008 which also featured military copters "searching."  A show military expert says, of the boomerang-shaped craft, that if it were as large as reported, it is larger than any known aircraft -- including the Spruce Goose.  He also opines that the formation of jets they present to him, would be suitable for attack.  Bill, then, uses those opinions to draw his own conclusions: that the jets were in attack formation and acting aggressively toward the UFO (as opposed to escorting it).  Keven agrees that, in this case, something odd was going on.

With better pictures and recent cases, this was an above-average UFO-H show.  However, Bill still takes case facts and draws the most extreme conclusions from them; he's completely bought into the alien invasion mythology.  Myself, I'd like to see more investigation after the team has talked to witnesses, and less hasty "conclusions."