Ufos And Pilots

Although there are no written rules or standards to go by, it is a well-accepted fact that reports of UFO sightings are rated according to who makes the report. For example, one witness reports have less value than a multi-witness report.

Reports by those in certain professions are regarded as having more value than the "everyday" citizen. Among these professions are scientists, astronomers, law enforcement personnel, captains of ships and of course, pilots.

It is now well known that throughout the years, many UFO sightings by pilots have gone unreported. There is a stigma attached to a pilots who report UFOs; it is time-consuming to fill out the related forms, he often is debriefed and even threatened by superiors, and can lose his status, position, and ultimately his livelihood.

Fortunately, we do have some very good reports from pilots. Some of the most well-known are UK Pilot Reports Mile-long UFO, California Airline Pilot Reports UFO, and The Chiles - Whitted Encounter.

Sometimes, as in the case below, after being discharged from military or law enforcement duties, the fear of reporting eases, and a report is finally made. Consider this report of a UFO encounter over the Gulf of Mexico on February 6, 1975, by a Marine pilot.

CAPTAIN AND FIVE CREWMEN ENCOUNTER UNKNOWN OBJECT

On this night, Marine Reserve Squadron Captain Larry Jividen was piloting a T-39D Sabreliner combat trainer and utility aircraft with five Naval officer pilots on board for a special training flight. He didn't know the evening would evolve into a game of "tag" with an unidentified flying object.

Jividen hasn't spoken about that experience from nearly 40 years ago, until now. The nine-year Marine Corps officer, and later commercial airline pilot, had taken off at twilight for a two-hour roundtrip that began and ended at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida.

Jividen was interviewed by the Huffington Post, and made the following statements.

"At about 9 o'clock, we were descending from a high altitude, around 33,000 feet, and I looked off to the right side of the airplane and I saw a solid red light at our 1:00 o'clock position and altitude."

"It was not flashing like normal anti-collision lights flash on airplanes. I thought it might be some other traffic, but I wasn't sure, so I called Pensacola Approach Control and said, 'Understand we're cleared for the approach, but we have traffic off to our right, and who's first for the approach?"

Jividen and the other five crew members all described the unknown object as "a solid, circular object about the relative size of a kid's marble held at arm's length."

NO OBJECT ON RADAR

When they were informed that ground control had no other traffic in their vicinity, Jividen became concerned that the mysterious object hadn't shown up on radar. So he asked for clearance to deviate from their approach and turn directly toward the bright, red UFO "just to see what it does."

As he turned toward the object, Jividen says it turned toward his plane. "It suddenly flew from right to left, across the nose of our plane, and just stopped at our 11:00 o'clock position. At that point, I started to speed up to see if I could close on the object, and as I did that, it was pacing me in front.

"In other words, as I'd speed up, he'd speed up. So, I decided to descend to place the object against a star field to make sure that it was actually solid, and then I climbed so that I could silhouette the object against the Gulf of Mexico."

The encounter ended in a few minutes when the UFO finally flew away at blazing speed, disappearing over the horizon in the direction of New Orleans. After the crew returned to Pensacola, Jividen filled out an incident form and that was the last he heard of the episode. And nobody else heard about it for more than three decades.

Special thanks to Vaughn Pfeifer, AOL, and Ken Pfeifer for the details of this account.