Appearance / Description of Object(s)

Several years later I saw pictures on a newsreel that looked like the thing we watched over Porterville. That newsreel is now included in a longer film you can find on the Internet at www.reenagagneja.com/ufos-True-story-Flying-saucers-1956. The reel I’m referring to is one hour, twenty-three minutes and 36 seconds into the film. The objects in the film aren’t very detailed, but are very much like what we watched that day. When I first located the object it was a lot closer to me than the ones in the film were to the photographer.

Size of Object(s)

I have no idea because I was confused. I was trying to make what I was watching fit into how I knew things were supposed to work and I couldn’t come up with anything. If you can guess what size the objects in the video are, then that was about the size of the object we saw.

Description of Area / Surroundings

The area was urban. No military bases or power plants were in the area. A small airport is four and a half miles southwest of the sighting area.

Full Description & Details

My First UFO Sighting

It was 1951 and I was twelve years old, living with my parents in Porterville, California.

My dad and I had just arrived home when I heard an airplane and looked up to locate it. There weren’t very many airplanes flying over the east side of Porterville in those years and I was a curious kid. Well, I located the airplane to the east of me. It was heading south over Rocky Hill. [Please see Google Earth for Latitude and Longitude positions 36° 5'6.39"Nby 118°57'53.58"W and about two thousand feet above Rocky Hill summit.] While watching it, something almost directly over me caught my eye. It was moving very fast, back and forth, north to south. My first thought was that I was watching a piece of white 8.5” by 11” paper floating back to earth, and thinking I might catch it if it came any closer. I also thought it could have come out of a dust devil. Dust devils happened quite often around Porterville. I was very wrong about how close it was to me when I first saw it. It was more like three thousand feet above me. Suddenly, it left the area heading north. We watched it for about another thirty seconds until it went out of sight over the Lewis Hill. The object’s start position was 36° 4'51.85"N by 119° 0'58.79"W and it went out of sight at 36°17'30.67"N by 119° 1'18.48"W. It was fast and made no sound that we could hear. When it was gone I looked for the twin engine plane and found it had only traveled a short distance, maybe five miles. The airplanes position now 36° 0'44.05"N by 118°57'45.09"W.

The next day at school, I was telling a friend about what my dad and I saw and he said he and a bunch of boys, practicing football together, watched it from a schoolyard on the other side of town. We were all very excited because we got to see a UFO, just like a lot of people were seeing during those years.

This was very exciting stuff for us eleven year olds, and for Dad.

Can sighting be explained as any conventional man-made or natural object?

No. It was too fast and turned 180 like a golf ball bouncing off a wall. The “G” forces in the turns would destroy a conventional craft.

Witness Background

I am a retired pipefitter with a highschool diploma and instructor credentials from UCLA to teach my trade to other fitters. During my working years, I installed mechanical system controls on electrical generating plants, rocket engine test facilities, paper making plants, various science laboratories and a space shuttle launch, recovery and payload preparation facility. My hobbies are building and flying radio controlled gliders, riding my bicycle and flying single engine, fixed wing aircraft.

Views on UFOs, before and after sighting

Before my sighting I heard people talking about UFOs and knew some people claimed to have seen them. This was my first sighting, so I had no opinion one way or the other but after seeing one, I became a believer.

Other Comments

I used Google Earth and a stopwatch to recreate what happened that day.

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