20.04.2024

April 7, 1958 - Newport Beach, California

April 7, 1958--Newport Beach, California. Police watched two UFOs with flashing body lights, maneuver near coastline. [VII]

There is a comment after this that states there were similar sightings for two nights at El Toro and Santa Ana. They give no amplifying information for this comment. In section VII is a table with the following description: Two flat objects with rows of six flashing lights on leading edge of each, low above ocean with light reflecting in water; maneuvered, made sharp turns.[18]2 Footnote 18 comes from the Santa Ana Register of April 10, 1958.3

Sources

Getting a copy of that specific newspaper clipping is not easy to come by. Fortunately, Loren Gross’ UFO history for March-April 1958 had a clipping from the Anaheim Daily Bulletin for 10 April 1958, which contained a description of what was seen.4 Gross has no mention of any other sightings two days before or after for the date in question. Blue Book files contain only one sighting from Indio, California on the 11th. This was a meteor.

A search of the Newspaper archive did not produce any results for sightings in California between April 7 and 13. The APRO bulletin carried an article in the May 1958 issue.5 It repeated the article in Gross’ history and added no new information.

The article does mention a sighting on Sunday, which was the 6th of April. To summarize the article:

•The time of the sighting was 9:30 PM.

•There were two objects. They flew slowly towards the NE. The patrolman estimated their altitude as 500 feet.

•The patrolman made a report to El Toro Marine airbase.

•They were described as being flat and delta-winged. There were no signs of a tail or superstructure.

•Each had six red lights on the trailing edge that flashed on and off in series.

•One object turned over Newport. The other object went up the coast further and turned inland near the Santa Ana river.

The news interviewed several fisherman to confirm the story. Three 16-year olds saw them and stated the number of red lights were only two but confirmed the rest of the description.

The news contacted the El Toro flight operations officer at 11 PM. He mentioned that Gordon had called and stated that helicopters “could have been in the area.” The officer would not confirm if any aircraft were sent up to investigate/intercept.

The 16-year olds thought they might be helicopters because they darted and hovered.

The Sunday sighting happened in the early morning. This object traveled from Anaheim to the Saddleback area and was seen by police officers.

Analysis

While the article mentions that the police officer contacted El Toro Marine base, the base apparently did not file a UFO report with Blue Book. This limits the information available to this news clipping. I doubt that the Santa Ana Register story provided any additional information. It seems that El Toro was not interested in the report.

The newspaper clipping did provide some important information like direction of travel, it was missing a lot of other information that could help evaluate it. We had no duration, azimuth/elevation angles, speed, or angular size of the objects. Without that information, it is hard to analyze the event.

John Wayne Airport was an active airstrip in 1958 and called the Santa Ana - Laguna Beach airport. It was 6 miles to the northeast.

El Toro Marine air base was 12 miles to the ENE. The first object traveling over Newport was heading towards these two locations.

NAS Los Alamitos was to the north-northwest 14 miles. Long Beach airport was 19 miles to the northwest.

There is a possibility that these were just aircraft. The only individuals that mentioned them darting/hovering were the 16-year olds.

The police officer indicated they were just slowly traveling in two different directions. While the police officer seemed convinced there was a specific shape, the 16-year olds indicated they could not see a shape.

El Toro and NAS Los Alamitos had SH/UH-34 helicopters available that could have produced the sighting. El Toro also had CH-37s, which were large transport helicopters with an odd shape. Both had their share of fixed wing aircraft as well. Los Alamitos had S-2 sub hunters and P-2V aircraft. El Toro, which contained the entire the first Marine aircraft wing, had been flying the FJ-3 fury and was transitioning over to the F-8 Crusader. They also flew the delta wing F4D-1 skyray.

Both bases had a large number of aircraft and the first object went over Newport. This was the direction of El Toro. The other object that went up the coast was flying towards Los Alamitos. The fact that the only these individuals at Newport Beach, who saw these as unusual, has to be considered as indication that could have been aircraft. These objects flew over heavily populated areas and nobody else called to say they had seen UFOs.

It is disappointing that El Toro made no follow-up. I suspect the officer in charge of UFO investigations had no desire to pursue the case or was never informed of the event. In any case, they should have reported the sighting to Blue Book and conducted an investigation.

Conclusion

Like much of what is in the UFO evidence document, this entry is based on little more than newspaper clippings. As best I can tell, nobody, other than the local newspaper reporter, bothered to investigate the incident at the time. The media’s investigation was cursory at best. The bottom line here is that using a newspaper clipping as your primary evidence to demonstrate that something is a “manifestation of extraterrestrial life”6 indicates that this case was just “padding” in order to increase the number of incidents listed in the document.

While the case can be considered “Insufficient information”, there appears to be a potential solution in that they were possibly aircraft. The case should be classified as “Possible aircraft/insufficient information”. In either case, we are left with a small mystery but not something that is “unearthly”. It should be removed from the “UFO evidence” category.

Quelle: SUNlite 2/2024