22 January 1979
(Jackson Citizen Patriot, Michigan)
Sources: U.F.O. Newsclipping Service, Plumerville,
Arkansas and AFU.se
The whole article (Page 1):
“To the Air Force, the mysterious flying object
sighted over Wurtsmith Air Force Base in 1975 was an unidentified helicopter
that had made an ‘unauthorized overflight’ above an area where nuclear weapons
are believed to be stored.
But to James Gowenlock of Oscoda, an auxiliary
policeman on the Oscoda Township police force, the brilliantly lighted object
which he and two other officers watched from the ground could not have been
man-made.
It hovered over Wurtsmith AFB, home of the Strategic Air
Command’s 379th Bombardment Wing, for at least 15 minutes, and disappeared when
a KC135 tanker plane was sent up to chase it, Gowenlock said in a telephone
interview.
WURTSMITH was one or three Air Force bases where mysterious
flying objects were sighted during a two-week period in late October and early
November of 1975.
Reports of the sightings appear in Air Force and
Central lntelligence Agency documents obtained under the Freedom of Information
Law and reported by Parade Magazine and the Washington Post. At Wurtsmith, the
objects were sighted on the nights of Oct. 30 and 31, 1975.
Gowenlock said he was in the supermarket he owns when
two township policemen, John Muennink and Raymond Grametabaeur, stopped by and
told him they had sighted an unidentified flying object. The officers asked
their dispatcher to alert base officials, Gowenlock said.
The three officers watched the bright object for 15 minutes,
part or the time with binoculars. Gowenlock said the object looked like a
stationary flare that would abruptly move up or down at extremely fast speeds.
‘I would estimate it was 10 or 12
miles away from where we stood,’ Gowenlock said, ‘and
maybe it was 50 feet
in diameter.
The base reported it as a helicopter in distress, but
there were no helicopters stationed there. ‘I don’t think it could have been a
helicopter,’ he said. The three men heard a KC135 tanker plane start up. But
when it was airborne, Gowenlock said, the flying object dropped out of view.
WURTSMITH is located about 20 miles north of Tawa
City near the Lake Huron shore and is one of 18 B-52 bases in the Strategic Air
Command. Air Force spokesmen declined to say how many B-52s are stationed at
Wurtsmith and whether nuclear bombs are stored there.”
http://files.afu.se/Downloads/Magazines/United%20States/UFO%20Newsclipping%20Service/UFO%20Newsclipping%20Service%20-%201979%2003%20-%20no%20116.pdf
http://files.afu.se/Downloads/Magazines/United%20States/UFO%20Newsclipping%20Service/UFO%20Newsclipping%20Service%20-%201979%2003%20-%20no%20116.pdf
Wikipedia article: “Wurtsmith Air Force Base”:
Wikipedia article: “379th Air Expeditionary Wing”:
Wikipedia article: “Strategic Air Command”:
Related posts:
Aerial view of Wurtsmith
Air Force Base, Oscoda, Michigan
(decommissioned on 30 June 1993) (wikimedia.org
photo)
(tageo.com photo)
