On November 23, 1953, an unidentified flying object was detected on radar at Kinross Air Base in Michigan. Flight Lieutenant R. Wilson was on a training flight in an F-86 jet aircraft, and encountered the UFO, and was granted permission to persue the craft. The radar personnel observed him following the craft for 160 miles. Both flying objects merged with one another on the radar screen. Radio calls to Wilson were unanswered. He had vanished completely. During the ensuing days the region was searched for wreakage and Lake Superior was examined for traces of oil leakage but none was found. He disappeared and was never found again.

On February 5, 1965, the U.S. Departement of Defense announced that the Special Division for UFO's had been advised to investigate reports of two radar operators who on January 29th, of the same year had spotted two unidentified flying objects on their radar screens at the Naval Airfield in Maryland. These objects approached the airfield at 4,350 Miles per hour. Thirty miles above the airfield the objects made a sharp angular turn and quickly disappeared out of radar detection range.

Bentwaters England, December 27, 1980, Known as the English Roswell, It occurred over the last days of December 1980, near a now-closed U.S. Air Force base in Bentwaters. For two nights security patrols observed unusual lights in the Rendlesham Forest just beyond the base's fence. On the second night they entered the forest with generator-powered floodlights, Geiger counters and 2-way radios. At the critical moment when an angular, 20-ft.-wide, 30-ft.-tall craft appeared, the radiation-detecting instruments started to clatter and the spotlights and radios began to sporadically fail.

Daylight revealed broken tree limbs and three 1 1/2-in. deep, 7-in.-dia. circular depressions, suggesting something had landed, just as the observers claimed. Initially, skeptics dismissed this physical evidence as wind damage. They explained the unusual lights by constructing a complex chain of events that included unusual astronomical activity, satellite debris burning up on reentry, and the rotating beam of a lighthouse several miles away.

Further investigation revealed a 1956 sighting in the same place, when British radar picked up signals from an object moving at speeds of up to 9000 miles per hour. This sighting and others persuaded England's top UFO investigator and Ministry of Defence officer Nick Pope that UFOs were possible, and prompted him to write a book titled "Open Skies, Closed Minds."

September 7, 1984 - On a routine flight from Belorussia to Estonia, while over Minsk the pilots of a Soviet Aeroflot airliner were started to see a strange, brightly glowing shape that appeared to their right and followed their path closely for several minutes. The glowing object changed shape repeatedly, appearing first as rays, then concentric circles, then as a cloud, and finally as an amorphous mass. While co-pilot Gennadli Lazurin sketched the object, Captain Igor Cherkashin contacted air traffic officials, who reported that radar showed a strange 'double' object, believed to be the airliner and the unidentified object. Years later, reports surfaced of a second flight crew traveling in the opposite direction who also saw the glowing object.

At the same time the pilots in the first craft noticed the mysterious object, a Soviet missile was being launched from a military site called the Plesetsk Cosmodrome. Lazurin's sketches of the object closely parallel sketches made by other witnesses at rocket launches, including amateur observers of the Soviet missile launch watching in Finland.

UFO enthusiasts claim the second aircraft was dispatched by the Soviet government to intercept the alien aircraft, and bolster their claim that this was an authentic UFO sighting by alleging that the entire crew of the second aircraft died soon after from accidents and various health problems: the pilot reportedly of cancer, the copilot from heart problems, and the flight attendant of a mysterious skin disease. Skeptics dismiss the deaths and health problems as coincidence and exaggeration.

Cold War politics, however, contributed an interesting twist to the controversy. In order to protect military secrets, Soviet officials denied the existence of the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, which fueled the fire of those arguing against the missile launch explanation. Instead, Soviet officials asserted that the sighting was caused by refracted light on floating space garbage.

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