Perhaps someone more knowledgeable than me on US date formats would like to comment too ;).
Myarka.
I haven't studied the document (in the link) with great precision at all, but off-hand I haven't seen any dates given purely as numbers. There's "7 April, 1954" which is a common way of dating in the US, yes, if the month is written out. Americans write the date both ways.
V
Hi Jas,
Yet another interesting mystery posed by you!
Whatever opinions any of us write here, both for and against the document being genuine, are only the most superficial of impressions. Others have researched the document for years, or at least pondered it for that long. Obviously its a subject of debate within the Ufological community: I note that the authors who released this version of the document believe it is authentic, but also state that the recipient of the photographic film did not consider it authentic. Then we have Stanton Friedman and Bob Wood who have also looked into this at length:
Retired McDonnell-Douglas aerospace engineer, Robert M. Wood, Ph.D., has intensely researched the SOM1-01 document that first appeared as 35mm black and white negative film in a package addressed to Don Berliner of the Fund for UFO Research in Maryland. The package was postmarked March 7, 1994 from LaCrosse, Wisconsin, and bore a return address of a pharmacy in LaCrosse. On the 35mm film were thirty-two pages of text and drawings and the fingers of whoever photographed the pages of the TOP SECRET/MAJIC classified manual.
Bob Wood had a 43-year-long career as an aerospace engineer, first working for Douglas Aircraft that merged with the McDonnell Corporation in 1967 to become McDonnell-Douglas, later purchased by Boeing in the early 1990s. Over those four decades, Bob Wood worked on aerodynamic heating, ballistic missile defense, radar, and the space station before his retirement in 1993. That year, nuclear physicist and UFO researcher, Stanton Friedman, had seen the 35mm negative in Berliner's possession and contacted Bob to see if he would be interested in researching what was on the film.
Some unconnected thoughts of my own in no particular order are:
The document makes a big deal about triangular UFOs. Having in younger years read literally thousands of UFO reports, though there may have been one or two, I dont recall triangular UFOs as having been at all a norm in the 1940s-1950s; they are more of a recent manifestation since the 1980s, which leads me to believe the document is a modern creation.
My thoughts and impressions about how US authorities were reacting to UFOs, including any crashed craft, in the 1950s, are admittedly just my own opinions, but my feeling is that they were being caught more unawares and by surprise by UFO developments, responding ad hoc, and were not as organised as this document suggests. Could be wrong, mind you. It just seems a bit too pat. I think in particular I feel that it reflects not what was actually happening by 1954, but what modern researchers believe or speculate was happening then. So again, I feel its a modern creation.
Documents like this, and things like the alien autopsy film of some years back, are a minefield of possible deception. The world's greatest and most experienced Ufologist IMO, Jacques Vallee, whilst absolutely believing in the reality of UFOs as craft not from this world, and also believing that there's a large degree of military and government involvement (we know this anyway as some governments over the years have come quite clean about their research projects), nevertheless cautions that in his opinion governmental bodies and / or their military also release pro-UFO disinformation for reasons we can only speculate on, such as muddying the subject or turning attention away from other areas, or discrediting private research.
Given that I tend not to think this is an authentic document, some comments in earlier posts don't strike me as being from an objective viewpoint. There's clearly a foundational bias that's not scientific, along the lines of beginning from a viewpoint of "I know UFOs don't exist", after which any comments are fair game since the document cannot be authentic if the phenomenon isn't authentic - whereas a simply huge body of evidence proves it is. (But we've been there before.)
I don't off-hand recall if Timothy Good has written on this document? He's the best world authority of government and military secrecy regarding UFOs and his opinion would be worth having. He's the author, for instance, of the astounding collection of data about actual government cover-ups of the UFO phenomenon, "Above Top Secret".
I'm giving it a thumbs-down, whilst believing that something along these lines was happening in 1954 (and still is) within the USA anyway. 🙂 I wonder what the motives are for whoever creates such hoaxes - if I'm right that it is one?
V
P.S.
The website itself appears to be a personal one, of Linda Moulton Howe. She's included the document for reasons which escape me within 4 pages detailing a more recent sighting. I've just started having a look, but the other pages are interesting, and the whoe website would be of interest to some. 🙂
V
You're doing homework, V? At this hour?! 🙂
I'm very much a believer, but things that have irregularities on the very surface tend to not be worth looking at in my book.
I don't delve too much into this topic as it scares me but enthralls me in equal measures, so forgive me if I sound like I know what I'm on about. Really it's just my visual opinion - a blatant thumbs down. I'm very open to being wrong though, just so you know! 🙂
I suppose one type of question to ask about this document is along the lines of: Can we ever prove whether it's authentic or not? And: If we decide it's authentic, what can we then do about it? (I'd say, nothing. :cool:)
I saw what IMO was undoubtedly a UFO aged nine, and took up the subject as an intense interest from the age of twelve. But by the time I got to about 20, what was becoming obvious to me was that there seemed little one could do. They come, they are seen, they disappear, and the public can't much investigate them. We can only record sightings, and read those of others. And sightings go on and on, into the tens or hundreds of thousands world-wide. If the military have craft, bodies, or information, we are usually not privy to it. So there's not much IMHO we can actually do with the subject, fascinating though it is. I found this frustrating decades ago, so dropped the more intense interest of my youth. I'm still interested, but recognise for me anyway that it's more of a mild hobby, or a past hobby at that.
To me, the most interesting development in the field, and IMO a real step forward, has been the publication of translations of the Vedas, which indicate in great detail that ancient peoples of India were in touch with UFO occupants, knew the different kinds of beings, knew the kind of places they were coming from, and much else beside.
V