Key West snowbird investigates UFOs

BY JOHN L. GUERRA

KONK LIFE STAFF WRITER

As a young Air Force officer during the Cuban Missile Crisis, it was Maj. George Filer’s job to courier reconnaissance images of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba from Langley Air Force Base to the Air Force Chief of Staff in the Pentagon.

Gen. Curtis LeMay, the head of the Air Force and organizer of the Strategic Air Command, relied on Filer’s delivery of those images to plan America’s attack on Cuba — an attack that would almost certainly lead to all-out nuclear war.

To say that Filer, now a part-time winter resident of Key West, was in a position of trust at a crucial moment in world history is no understatement. He also was one of only a handful of Air Force officers ever to hold Top Secret clearance.

Yet, even as Filer carried the spy plane photos to his bosses, he was in possession of another powerful military secret: That the previous February a giant aircraft of unknown origin had entered British air space, and while being pursued by an American military aircraft, had shot into space at more than 2,000 miles an hour.

Filer hadn’t picked up this baffling and terrifying information second-hand; he had seen the craft as the navigator on the U.S. military aircraft that had pursued the mysterious ship.

Filer agrees to interview

Filer told KonkLife about his sighting, which occurred just months before the Cuban Missile Crisis, during a telephone conversation in May. Filer said seeing what he saw cemented his belief that “aircraft not of this civilization” routinely show up in Earth’s atmosphere.

“Near the end of my tour, in February 1962, we were asked to intercept a UFO over England; it was a large object on scene. The crew of our tanker, a modified B-50 bomber, was made up of two pilots, a navigator, an engineer, and two refueling operators.”

Filer and his crewmates — members of the 420th Air Refueling Squadron from Sculthorpe RAF Base — had just completed a mid-air refueling mission over the wintry North Sea when London Control, which manages air traffic in the region Filer was operating, picked up a large flying object on its radar. The control tower asked the crew in the KB-50J to intercept the object, which was in the sky over Central England, near the ancient Stonehenge monument.

In his own words

Here’s Filer’s account of the UFO pursuit over England that changed his life:

“London Control excitedly notified us — we were flying at 30,000 feet — that they had an unidentified object hovering between Oxford and Stonehenge at around 1,000 feet altitude. We were asked if we were willing to intercept. Our refueling mission was about over, so we quickly agreed to chase their UFO. We were given an intercept heading and started to dive toward the UFO. This was really fun and exciting compared to a standard mission! I never could recall such speed and power as our six engines were advanced to full military power as we dived on the target.

“London Control was diverting commercial aircraft to clear our path for the intercept. Then we realized we were above our red-lined, maximum speed and had trouble slowing our aircraft. We pulled back the power on the engines. London Control started giving our distance to the hovering UFO. They called out, ‘You are100 miles apart, 60, and 40 miles …’

“At about 30 miles away from the UFO, my APS-23 Radar  picked up the hovering UFO directly ahead. It was an exceptionally large radar return, reminding me of a large bridge or ship. This craft was bigger than anything I had seen in the air before. It reminded me of the radar return from the Firth of Forth Bridge in Scotland. The return was sharp and solid as compared to the fuzziness of a rain cloud. I felt this craft must be made of steel or strong metal. We were doing around 425 mph as we got to within 10 miles, when the UFO apparently realized we were intercepting it.

“It was a dark night; we could only see a series of dim lights directly ahead similar to a cruise ship at sea. Now, only five miles separated us. Suddenly the UFO seemed to come alive, the lights brightened immensely and the UFO accelerated in a launch, similar to the Space Shuttle at night. We saw much brighter lights and fantastic acceleration as it climbed almost straight up and suddenly it was gone.

“We asked London Control if they had any rocket launches underway in our area. The controller said, ‘There are no rocket launches in that area, thank you for the intercept, you are now cleared to return to your mission.’

“The incident was recorded in my navigator’s log and was mentioned the next day in operations, but no intelligence debriefing was made.”

Filer and his crewmates had confirmation of sorts when Prince Philip, whose ancestral home was near the base out of which Filer and his plane flew missions, met with them after a dinner on base a few weeks later.

According to Filer, Philip asked them to recount what they saw and listened silently as they did so. Philip then told them the British had similar sightings of large ships in recent months.

 

 

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