by Donald B. Ratsch
On Friday November 13, 1997 by pre arrangement I traveled to Washington D.C. to meet with ORTK member and MUFON’s Representative for Washington D.C. Elaine Douglas. Elaine knew I was interested in and collected NASA UFO footage. She wanted me to meet a man she knew that could give me some interesting information on that subject. She also wanted me to show this man my collection of NASA UFO footage. He was to arrive at Elaine’s apartment at 10:30am so I arrived 30 minutes earlier at 10:00am. At precisely 10:30am there was a knock on her door and I opened it for Elaine. The man was well dressed and looked in his forties. Elaine introduced us and we exchanged small talk while Elaine prepared a snack. I popped a VHS tape that contained all my NASA UFO footage into the VCR which was approximately 28 minutes in length. With each NASA UFO scene I mentioned a little bit about each event such as the name of the mission, date and time, etc. It was obvious he was impressed and I knew it would reinforce the experience for him that he was about to reveal to me.
After the tape ended I asked him to tell me as best as he could remember what he told Elaine. He said that he worked for NASA during the Apollo years and was one of those guys who sat in front of the consoles monitoring information. He said he wasn’t sure what Apollo mission that this experience occurred but he was sure it was before Apollo 13 because the Apollo 13 problems made an impression on him. He knew that the experience did not happen on the first lunar landing which was Apollo 11 so he concluded that it must have been the Apollo 12. He said the experience happened in the evening when there wasn’t much to do and many of the seats in front of the consoles were empty. He said that since the launch had already occurred from Cape Kennedy where he worked, the main responsibility for the mission was handed off to Houston. And so with nothing to do, he sat in front of his console and wanted to hear a little air to ground/ground to air communications and so he punched in the proper keys to begin listening. He said that numbers were being transmitted air-to-ground/ground-to-air, just normal system specifications, readouts, and settings. Then approximately 8:30pm as the Apollo was some distance from earth on the way to the moon he heard the following exchange:
Apollo: “We have company.”
Houston: “Say again?”
Apollo: “I say we have company.”
(Then a short period of silence)
Houston (emphatically): “You were told not to make transmissions such as that! Put it on the flight recorder and we’ll discuss it when you get back!”
Long period of silence.
On November 23, 1979 a video presentation was given by NASA UFO debunker James E. Oberg. Oberg, production researcher used NASA film CL 862 which contained movie segments from various space missions. His presentation was titled, “Photo Aberrations, Debris, and UFOs.” A written Production Scene List Locator included scene numbers one to forty one, a scene description and File roll number for each scene was also included. There are several controversial film scenes which contain anomalous objects which to this date have not been satisfactorily explained. One such anomalous object is contained in sequence number 34 from File Roll 8032. According to Oberg’s scene description he writes, “LS – Apollo 12, Object in black sky. Magazine E. Oberg list the length of time that the object was in view as 23 seconds (08:41 to 09:06). Concerning the object, Oberg writes: “Here is a view of some spacecraft approaching the lunar module: although it is not clear what the object is at first, what is apparent is that hand-held shots of real external objects will follow this bouncy pattern — a pattern which other ‘alleged UFO movies’ do not at all follow. And in this case, as the object nears, you can see what it is: the command module which the astronauts are about to safely dock with.” What Oberg has just described about the object is not at all what the film clip actually shows. It is almost as if after seeing the ovoid bright object bounce around, left and right, up and down that he then closes his eyes and imagines how the rest of the film footage should conclude. The object in the scene is indeed in view for 25 seconds as Oberg points out in his scene description. He says the unknown object becomes clearer as it approaches the lunar module and the object turns out to be the command module in which the astronauts are about to dock with.
But what does that 25 seconds really show? For most of the 25 seconds the vertical ovoid bright object which is about a 1/4 inch in size on a 19 inch TV screen moves at a tremendous speed and gyrations of quick ups and downs, lefts and rights, arcs. In all these gyrations the object takes up the whole screen in it movements. Oberg says all this violent movement of the object is due to a hand held camera. I disagree. Many people have taken nice calm video shots with hand held cameras. But for the radical movement of this object to be the result of a hand held camera, the cameraman would have to be suffering from Parkinson’s disease, for the object moved so violently. The other seconds of the footage show the object moving across the screen in a smooth, slow, calm, fluid motion and sometimes is still and motionless. Why isn’t the object moving radically violent all the time? At the start of the film sequence the object is in view for 2 seconds in one of its slow moves then the bright lit object just goes out as if a light was turned off. A second later the object reappears from top of screen moving to near the center of screen. In all of the 25 seconds that the object was in view, at no time did the object move closer to the lunar module so as to be identified as the Command module as Jim Oberg suggest. This just did not happen. In all its gyrations in the 25 seconds, the UFO remained at a distance never moving closer to be identified.
APPENDANT
DECEMBER 23, 1997
I continued to be curious about CL862, a presentation by Jim Oberg in the later 70’s especially the Apollo 12 dancing UFO listed as being from File Roll 8032. The 25 seconds of the dancing UFO did not approach near the camera to be identified as the Command Module as Oberg stated it would. However I thought I would give Oberg the benefit of the doubt and take a look at File Roll 8032 itself to see if there was added footage that might show the dancing image moving closer to be identified as the Command Module as Oberg implied. So I purchased File Roll 8032 from NASA and received it mid-November 1997. Inserted the VHS File Roll 8032 copy into my VCR and pressed play. The first section that came up on the screen was Magazine E, the event in question I was interested in. And there it was, the round white bright ovoid object dancing around right, left, up and down, going out like a light bulb and reappearing from the top of the screen. At the end of the 25 seconds I partially expecting the image to move near as Oberg said. But to my complete shock and amazement the UFO actually did the opposite. In a split second it leapt far into the distance and continued its showing off dancing maneuvers. The image was now very small as the dancing antics took up only about half of the TV screen. This distance gyrations continued at only about three seconds in time. The curious thing is that in slow motion when the object moved to the distant position, one could see it getting smaller as if it moved into the distance. It was more like in one instance it was there at its first position, then it went out like a light bulb and then it appeared in its new distance position.
The big question to me is, why did Jim Oberg lie when he said the object moved closer and was identified as the Command Module when in fact it moved away and was NOT identified as the Command Module. So now we have Jim Oberg, NASA’s UFO debunker caught in two glaring deceptions. Number one he tried to make everyone believe that the Apollo 16 Saucer was actually the planet Earth (he has since backed off on that explanation since I challenged him on it) and now he tried to deceive again by exclaiming that the Apollo 12 UFO moved closer and was nothing but the Command Module when if fact it moved away into the distance behaving more like a quantum advanced space vehicle.