17 May 1978
(The Day, New London, Connecticut)
The whole article:
“ ‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ says Timothy
Collins, a Navy radar technician who tracked an unidentified object over the
Florida sky. ‘And I don’t want to see anything like it again.’
Collins, from Cambridge, Mass., was among at least a
dozen workers at the Navy’s Pinecastle Electronic Warfare Range who said they
spotted brightly lit objects late Sunday (14 May 1978).
The Navy personnel, interviewed by the Ocala
Star-Banner, said one object seemed to hover, then turned abruptly and sped
off. Computer-equipped radar could not follow the UFO, they said.
‘The computer wouldn’t handle it,’ said Lt. Cmdr. John
Sullivan, commander of the range, used by the Navy to train its combat pilots
in tactics for avoiding enemy weapons.
Robert J. Clark of Detroit, duty officer Sunday night,
said curious civilians began calling, including one man who said he and seven
others on State Road 19 near Silver Glen Springs (Ocala National Forest) had
seen an object 50 or 60 in
diameter with flashing lights.
The Naval Air station at Jacksonville said no Navy
planes were in the area.
‘So we got out the binoculars and went up on the
tower,’ Clark said. ‘We located an object due north, approximately 1,500 feet above the
trees. We watched it for 15 or 20 minutes and it looked like it was pretty
stationary.’
Then, he said, the object came up on Pinecastle’s
radar.
‘We locked in on it and then all of a sudden it was
gone,’ Clark said.
Collins, a Navy radar technician for eight years, was
manning the scope.
‘First it was heading south and then it was heading
north. All in the split of a second. Planes just don’t have a turning radius
like that,’ Collins said.”
Wikipedia article: “Naval Air Station Cecil Field”:
Quote from the Wikipedia article:
“Naval Air Station Cecil Field or NAS Cecil Field
(IATA: NZC, ICAO: KNZC, FAA LID: NZC) was a United States Navy air base,
located in Duval County, Florida. Prior to 1999, NAS Cecil Field was the
largest military base in terms of acreage in the Jacksonville, Florida area.
NAS Cecil Field consisted of four separate facilities,
the NAS Cecil Field Complex (Cecil Field), Outlying Field Whitehouse (OLF
Whitehouse), the Yellow Water Weapons Department and the Pinecastle [Pine
Castle] Electronic Warfare Target Area / Warfare Range. Including nearly 2,500 acres (10 km²) at
OLF Whitehouse, the NAS Cecil Field complex consisted of 22,939 acres (92.8
km²); in addition, the base leased another 8,379 acres (33.9 km²).
By late 1999, approximately 17,200 acres (69.6 km²) were transferred to the
civilian sector in the form of the Jacksonville Aviation Authority, while the
remainder was transferred to Naval Air Station Jacksonville.”
Wikipedia article: “Ocala National Forest”:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocala_National_Forest
Quote from the Wikipedia article:
“The United States Navy’s Pinecastle Bombing Range in
the Ocala National Forest is the only place on the East Coast where the Navy
can do live impact training. The Navy drops nearly 20,000 bombs a year at the
site, a few hundred of which are live. The Pinecastle Bombing Range is a fenced
5,760 acres
(23.3 km2) area, with the eastern edge of the range located about 2 miles (3.2 km) west of State Road
19 and the Camp Ocala campgrounds, and one-half mile (800 m) west of the Farles
Lake campground. F/A-18 Hornet jet fighters and other aircraft take off from
Naval Air Station Jacksonville or from aircraft carriers off the Florida coast,
fly low over the forest, and drop their bombs in the middle 450 acres (1.8 km2) of
the range. P-3 Orion and P-8 Poseidon aircraft will also use an instrumented
range in the southeast quadrant of Lake George to conduct aerial mining
training utilizing inert 500lb mines. All air-to-ground exercises using
conventional ordnance up to and including 500 pounds (230 kg) MK 82 bombs and
five-inch (127 mm)
Zuni rockets are authorized. Napalm and High Explosive Incendiary (HEI) are
prohibited. Live ordnance is restricted to the Live Ordnance Impact Area; inert
ordnance is used on all other targets. Pinecastle targets have also been
certified for laser operations. The Navy has used the area for target practice
for 50 years under a special use permit from the U.S. Forest Service.”
Pinecastle
Bombing Range,
Ocala National Forest, Ocala,
Florida
(pinterest.com photo)
(tageo.com photo)
