UFOs in Texas?

AP reports:

"STEPHENVILLE -- In this farming community where nightfall usually brings clear, starry skies, residents are abuzz over reported sightings of what many believe is a UFO. Several dozen people -- including a pilot, county constable and business owners -- insist they have seen a large silent object with bright lights flying low and fast. Some reported seeing fighter jets chasing it."

NPR reports:

"Pilot Steve Allen saw the object when he was out clearing brush off a hilltop near the town of Silden. Allen described the unidentified object as being an enormous aircraft with flashing strobe lights — and it was totally silent. He said the UFO sped away at more than 3,000 mph, followed by two fighter jets that were hopelessly outmaneuvered. Allen said it took the aircraft just a few seconds to cross a section of sky that it takes him 20 minutes to fly in his Cessna. The veteran pilot said the UFO, an estimated half-mile wide and a mile long, was "bigger than a Wal-Mart."

Of course, all these people are nuts, right? What would a pilot know about observing something flying in the air?

I found a PDF file on 1300+ reports from civilian and military pilots over the past fifty years compiled by the NARCAP which points out that:

"Training and experience make pilots and crews much more reliable witnesses than others. They are used to unusual meteorological phenomenons. They have the added advantage of being able to approach the phenomenon. Sometimes they can even overfly the object, observing it between themselves and the earth below. Military pilots are trained to estimate distances,
shapes and speed of flying machines. Sometimes, pilots’ sightings are confirmed by radar detection, observers on the ground (control tower personnel, Ground Observer Corps, civilians."

What about radar detection? I haven't read any news of what the local airport saw in the past week over Stephenville. Some flak from the Air Force flak can say "I'm 90 percent sure this was an airliner," or it was the glint of the sun playing tricks on people, all the usual BS, and they can claim they didn't scramble fighters, even though a bunch of people saw them, but did air traffic controlers see anything? I'm sure any record by now is already on its way to some vault somewhere at Langley or something.

As USAF Capt. Edward J. Ruppelt is quoted as saying in 1956:

" . . . Of these (UFO) reports, the radar-visual sightings are the most convincing. When a ground radar picks up a UFO target and a ground observer sees a light where the radar target is located, then a jet interceptor is scrambled to intercept the UFO and the pilot also sees the light and gets a radar lock only to have the UFO almost impudently outdistance him, there is no simple answer. . ."

Oh, sure there is, those 40 or so people in Stephanville who think they saw something are cleary deranged.

You know, I ran out this morning to check this story out in the Inquirer, but here was nothing, so then I schlepped down to the Wawa to get the NYT and, again, there was nothing. I guess this is the kind of news that's not fit to print.

These folks apparently saw something. What leads to me to believe their story is the Air Force denial.

It's a cover up! Roswell, Roswell!