Talk:Malmstrom Air Force Base/Archive 1

Archive 1

Infringement?

Why does this articlelook the same, word for word? This might help [1].

From GlobalSecurity.org "In 1939, the Great Falls Airport commission appealed to Harry H. Woodring, Secretary of War, to locate an Air Corps squadron at Great Falls, Montana. In 1941, the Civil Aeronautics Authority provided the money for the development of the Great Falls Municipal Airport. In May 1942, construction began on an Army Air corps base six miles east of Great Falls. The base was known as East Base."

From Wikipedia Article Malmstrom Air Force Base "In 1939, the Great Falls Airport commission appealed to Harry H. Woodring, Secretary of War, to locate an Air Corps squadron at Great Falls, Montana. In 1941, the Civil Aeronautics Authority provided the money for the development of the Great Falls Municipal Airport. In May 1942, construction began on an Army Air Corps base six miles east of Great Falls. The base was known as East Base."

All paragraphs in this article are the same word for word. I’m wondering why this is so.--Hellogoodsir 19:22, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Trivia - Supposed Star Trek appearance

In the science fiction film Star Trek: First Contact, the "first contact" with alien visitors takes place at a "missile silo in Montana". Although countless missile silos pepper the Montana countryside, many Trekkies originally believed that the scene was meant to take place at or near what was once Malmstrom AFB, given nearby Great Falls' high occurrence of UFO sightings since the 1950s.

It was later revealed by producers that the scene was meant to take place at a missile silo in the forests outside of Bozeman, Montana.

Aviation project to move trivia to Talk. LanceBarber (talk) 19:17, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

This incident sounds like a UFO incident at Malmstrom AFB in 1967 which has been described in the 2002 UFO documentary Out of the Blue where former SAC launch controller Lt. Col. Robert Salas gives his testimony about an incident where a disc-shaped UFO hovered above the gates of the air force base and apparently temporarily rendered almost twenty of the Minuteman missiles inoperable. This incident should be included in this article if it can be attested to by reliable sources (I'm making no assessment as to the reliability of said documentary which by the looks of the copy available at Google Video was aired on the SciFi Channel). __meco (talk) 09:23, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Same testimony both from Salas as well as Col. Dwynne Arneson who was the topmost control officer at Malmstrom at the time, is included in a presentation of UFO-related testimonies released by the Disclosure project, Video at Google Videos (time: 32 minutes). __meco (talk) 11:35, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

When Arneson first made his claims, he couldn't even get the command he was supposedly attached to correct. The command he said he was part of for a good two years was never associated with Malmstrom AFB at all. It was in Wyoming, I believe. In any case, the only first hand evidence he has ever admitted to in relation to Salas' claims was his sighting of an official message that he has never been able to prove even existed. He can't prove its existence because he doesn't recall the date of the message, who drafted the message (or what command that person was attached to), who it was addressed to, what the subject matter was, or how it was classified. He can't even establish that the information he has allegedly brought to light has anything at all to do with events on Malmstrom AFB! His testimony is basically useless for establishing any facts whatsoever. In addition, the details he has remembered are completely different from the well-documented facts that he was alleging to have some knowledge of. They are also completely different from the assessments of the only two people present to witness the facts he wants to "clarify", and neither of those two men are Robert Salas. That's because Robert Salas keeps changing the facts of the tale he wants to substantiate. The story Salas is now telling, one involving his duty at Oscar Flight (Arneson's claims were originally made when Salas claimed to have been attached to November Flight) shares nothing in common with what Salas originally claimed in regard to November Flight. In fact, Arneson's claims were originally established to assert UFO interference at Echo Flight, which is the only flight of missiles at Malmstrom AFB that ever failed en masse (i.e., all ten missiles during one incident). Unfortunately, neither Robert Salas, nor UFO researcher Robert Hastings (both of whom have been the leading proponents to UFO interference with missiles at Malmstrom AFB in March 1967), have been able to convince the capsule crew who actually served at Echo Flight to lie about the presence of a UFO. This is why they have to keep changing primary elements like the date and the location of their stories.

If you don't examine the claims that these men have made in more detail, you won't see how ridiculous they actually are. They don't particularly enjoy giving people sufficient information to reach valid conclusions, so you'll have to look elsewhere than their own write-ups. You should remember the one statement you'll find all over Wikipedia: "Encyclopedic content must be verifiable." If all you intend to do is look at the claims these jokers have made, you haven't actually verified anything more than the fact that they once made these claims. It doesn't mean the claims themselves have been verified.

You'll find numerous cited sources and links for all of the above further below on this talk page detailing the Oscar Flight UFO/Missile Incident addenda.

James Carlson

Oscar Flight UFO/Missile Incident

The following points need to be considered:

In regard to the Oscar Flight witnesses and the claims in regard to the UFO interference claims in your Malmstrom AFB article:

The first of the three witnesses is by far the most important: Col. Frederick Meiwald (Retired), the commander of Oscar Flight. The write-up of Meiwald's testimony makes it very clear that those presenting the evidence -- Robert Hastings and Robert Salas -- are more than prepared to use dishonest assessments to make a case that absolutely cannot be made (at least not by any sane, well-educated individual):

"During a telephone interview on May 6, 2011, Col. Meiwald confirmed to UFO Researcher Robert Hastings that a large, round object had been reported hovering over one of Echo’s missiles just as that entire flight failed."

This entire sentence is a blatant lie, an affirmation easily proved by simply examining the complete transcript of that same May 6, 2011 interview, particularly the following quotes kindly provided by Robert Hastings:

FM: We had an incident in October [sic] Flight. Whatever happened over at Echo, I have no idea. What Walt Figel may have relayed [to Bob Salas, during a taped phone conversation] 15 years ago, versus what he’s saying at the present time, I have no idea. I have no way of making a judgment upon what he has, uh, expressed whatsoever. I think since leaving Malmstrom I have only seen Walt Figel one time and, uh, not even to talk to him. So I can’t verify—and I certainly don’t know [his] motives. All I know is relative to the situation within Oscar Flight itself and, basically, what Bob Salas has relayed, relative to our actions at Oscar. I can’t verify anything outside of that.

Why an article about Oscar Flight would presume to confirm an incident at Oscar Flight by attempting to establish an incident at Echo Flight is beyond human nature. Doing so by making claims that are so easily determined to be a lie can only be the result of complete stupidity and the inability of the author to properly assess a simple one-on-one interview. Not that it really matters. After all, the same interview makes it clear as well that Meiwlad conifirms nothing in regard to an incident at Oscar Flight:

RH: Okay. Now, when Bob, I think moments [after] he woke you up, or you got up and sat down at the commander’s console—he of course had received a call from the Flight Security Controller, saying that there was a bright red, oval-shaped object hovering over the security fence gate—my understanding is that is what he told you as soon as you were at your console, that he had received this call and, uh, that of course coincided with the missiles beginning to malfunction. Do you recall him telling you that?
FM: I really don’t remember that portion of it, relative to the bright object. I remember an unusual condition [but] as far as the details, uh, I can’t elaborate on that.

A later reference from the same interview again confirms Meiwald's point-of-view, as well as his refusal to confirm a UFO at Oscar Flight (or, for that matter, at Echo Flight):

RH: Okay. He of course has also said that you two were, uh, when you were back at Malmstrom, you were debriefed by OSI and required to sign non-disclosure statements. Do you remember that?

FM: I remember being directed to do that. But that was no problem. I’ve been one of these people, when told to forget something, I forget it—eventually [inaudible].

RH: Right, well, is that a polite way of saying that you really don’t want to discuss this, even though you know more than you’re saying?

FM: No, I’m saying I don’t remember.

How does any of this qualify as a confirmation? The only thing Meiwald confirms is Hastings' and Salas' dedication to establishing a UFO presence using any means possible, including inventing this entire incident from nothing. This is the entire case in a microcosm. The commander at Oscar Flight refuses to confirm Salas' story. The only way anybody would consider Meiwald as confirmation for an Oscar Flight incident would be their failure to examine any of the evidence provided, a response to these silly little claims that Hastings and Salas are obviously depending on.

Not even one of the USAF officers closest to the action (Carlson, Figel and Meiwald) have confirmed anything in regard to a UFO presence. Meiwald says he doesn't remember any such incident involving a UFO, while Carlson and Figel insist that Salas is either "lying or delusional". Salas and Hastings have continued to declare that all three officers have confirmed these UFO incidents, yet the only evidence they've provided to suggest such a conclusion are the transcripts of an interview allegedly conducted in 1996 that lacks any provenance whatsoever, and is completely contrary to the written testimony that these men have repeatedly provided. The fact that Robert Hastings insisted on numerous occassions that he has in his possession the tape recordings and transcripts of an interview with Figel conducted in March 2010 that affirm a UFO presence at Echo Flight, and are completely contrary to the claims made by Carlson since 1996 -- the transcripts of which he promised to publish or otherwise make available to the public -- shows exactly how far he would willingly go to make a case for UFOs at Echo Flight (or any other case, for that matter). This is an idictment of his methods that he absolutely cannot deny, because after Hastings made these claims, Figel submitted his own accounting of that same interview, and it not only affirms everything that Carlson has testified to, it also makes very clear that there was no UFO presence at Echo Flight. For Hastings to follow through with his promise to make the above-mentioned tapes and transcripts available to the public, he would have to invent that testimony, possibly by cobbling together statements from other interviews that could be used to suggest a UFO presence that Figel has always denied. Essentially, Hastings would have been forced to post recordings that were forgeries. In March 2010, he promised to do exactly that, and very likely would have if Figel's assessment regarding the contents of his interview had not been published first. Two years later, Hastings has still neglected to publish that testimony.

The Oscar Flight article also uses the testimony of Robert Jamison to establish such an incident. The problem with Jamison is credibility: he has none. The evidence discussed is entirely the product of an affidavit provided in 2010 that seems to support the Oscar Flight UFO/Missile Incident with several reports of UFO observed by Air Force personnel. There are, however, some obvious problems with this testimony that can best be confronted point by point from this affidavit.

"On the night in question, the squadron's Job Control office called me at home sometime between 10 p.m. and midnight, perhaps even later than that. Our team was told to report to the MIMS operations hanger on base because a lot of missile sites were off alert status, that is shut down. Upo [sic] arriving at the MIMS hanger, but even before reporting to the Job Control office, I overheard other targeting team personnel discussing rumours of a UFO connection with the problem at hand. Supposedly, all ten missiles comprising Oscar Flight had gone off alert status just after a UFO had been reported in the vicinity of their Launch Control Facility.

This myth of ten missiles failing at Oscar Flight is an invention. Meiwald, the Oscar Flight commander, originally asserted that he had been involved in an incident in which only 4-5 missiles failed. The total of ten missiles was arrived at slowly over the years through Salas' habitually evolving accounts. He also made it clear that the only UFO incident he knew anything about involved security personnel managed above-ground by the security detachment. He never associated the matter with missile failures, a conclusion supported by his insistence that he heard about it second-hand, the details of which he could not confirm. Had missile failures actually been associated with this UFO "event", he would have been directing the two men involved, which is precisely what happened at Echo Flight. Meiwald's UFO testimony, on the other hand, is complete hearsay regarding an incident he had nothing to do with. For that reason, it cannot be associated with a missile failures incident, making Jamsion's testimony unsupported. From his point-of-view, the incident was a mere rumor. Given Jamison's testimony that he "overheard other targeting team personnel discussing rumours of a UFO connection with the problem at hand", it's pretty clear that his testimony is also "complete hearsay regarding an incident he had nothing to do with."

"Once I arrived at Job Control, Non-Commissioned Officer (NCO) confirmed those reports, telling me that Air Police guards at the stricen [sic] flight had in fact reported a UFO moments before the missiles malfunctioned. I expected to be prdered to the missile site immediately, to help restart the missiles. I was surprised to learn that all of the targeting teams had been directed to remain at the hanger, as a precaution, until all UFO reports from the field had ceased. I estimate that our teams waited 2-3 hours before being given the go-ahead to proceed to Oscar Flight."

None of this has ever been confirmed. It was not recorded in the command history, as the Echo Flight failures were, and no other witnesses have ever come forward to back up his tale. On the other hand, the squadron commander, Col. Dick Evans, has stated outright that there was no missile failures incident at Oscar Flight. Such an event was not included in the command history, as the Echo Flight incident was, and there was no investigation of the incident, which would have been required per USAF standing orders.

Jamison's statement that "I was surprised to learn that all of the targeting teams had been directed to remain at the hanger, as a precaution, until all UFO reports from the field had ceased" is patently ludicrous. The U.S. military has never issued orders to delay urgently needed maintenance to any of the nuclear forces at its command, and certainly not in response to a UFO sighting that was not yet confirmed nor investigated. If anything, they would have been deployed faster.

At least a dozen other witnesses have also stated plainly that such an event never occurred, a conclusion that fits in well with the squadron commander's very positive denial as reported by Col. Walt Figel.

"While waiting, I walked to a temporary command post which had been set up in the hanger. There I overheard another squadron member talking on a two-way radio about a second UFO which had apparently landed in a deep ravine, not far from the base. Later that night, our targeting teams travelled past the landing site and observed a small group of Air Force vehicles positioned just off the road, at the top of the ravine. Based on a Newspaper report later published in the Great Falls Tribune, I believe that this event was the well-publicized UFO landing near Belt, Montana, on the evening of March 24, 1967."

The inclusion of this UFO is also mere hearsay -- Jamison's entire testimony is little more than rumor that has never been confirmed. The investigation of the alleged "UFO landing near Belt, Montana" did not include "a small group of Air Force vehicles positioned just off the road." There was only one car, and only three personnel from Malmstrom AFB were present. More to the point, there were no UFOs reported anywhere near Oscar Flight" on March 24-25. The only UFO reports were those between Belt and Malmstrom AFB, over 120 miles from Oscar Flight. According to the sheriff at Belt, there were hundreds of people across the state actively looking for UFOs once they had been reported on the radio. There was nothing reported between Belt and Oscar Flight, and the only UFO investigation that the military conducted was at Belt, Montana.

Another problem is Jamison's statement that he "had been directed to remain at the hanger, as a precaution, until all UFO reports from the field had ceased". The UFO reports on March 24-25 continued until just before 0500 that morning, and by that time, there was no military presence at the Belt sighitng for the targeting teams to witness. And without a UFO report anywhere near Oscar Flight, the order to remain on standby until the reports had ceased would have been irrelefvant to their entire mission. It's also an unforgettable fact that an order of this scope has never been recorded anywhere else throughout the entitre history of UFOs investigated by the USAF. This is hardly surprising, given its ludicrous and irresponsible character.

Jamison's original account discussed only onme UFO sighting. Upon conferring with Hastings and Salas, it became necessary to discuss two separate UFO incidents. This is also problematic, however, because only one was ever reported, and that one remained at Malmstrom AFB the entire time. There is nothing to suggest a second UFO had gone to Oscar Flight to shut down the missiles, and nobody but Jamison has ever tried to make the case for it -- and he had to confer with Hastings and Salas first in order to do so, since his original tale was never associated with a specific time and location. These group efforts to substantiate a confirmation ultimately prove problematic, because they make it so clear that the stories have evolved somewhat. It's almost a shame that Jamison was never able to confer with Meiwald, the commander at Oscar Flight. If he had, his story could once again invoke a single UFO, since Meiwald tends to suggest that the UFO at Oscar Flight was a figment of the imagination.

It's almost a waste of time to consider anything Jamison adds to Salas' claims. The only thing he's willing to attest to are rumors that he heard, and nobody has ever doubted that rumors were a part of the environment. Not a single eyewitness has ever come forward, and not a single individual referred to in all of the accounts offered has ever been named. There's also no evidence anywhere to suggest that missile failures occurred on March 24-25, 1967. On the other hand, we do have the UFO officer's report regarding his assessment of the situation on that date, and it states very clearly that there were no equipment failures anywhere on Malmstrom AFB for that date. And as we've already shown, there are no contemporary references anywhere that even hint at possible missile failures occurring at Oscar Flight. And, in fact, there are a large and ever-growing collection of USAF veterans who have insisted that no such incident ever took place.

The last witness associated with the Oscar Flight Wikipedia article is Staff Sgt. Louis D. Kenneweg. Given his insistence that "the date is uncertain", but the time was "around 11:45 P.M", it's easy to dismiss his testimony. He says that he witnessed an aerial object that he thought was a helicopter "disappearing in a low southerly trajectory over the [MIMS] hangar", but admits that it was pretty far away. Jamison, who was at the [MIMS] hanger, saw nothing remarkable. Kenneweg also insists on reflection that what he saw couldn't have been a helicopter, because when he asked the Air Police sergeant whether or not a helicopter was out, the sergeant "replied that the helicopters didn’t have radar and didn’t fly at night." Salas' testimony seems to contradict this; one of the more familiar aspects of his Oscar Flight tale is the fact that a helicopter evacuated one of the security policemen who had been injured during a confrontation with the UFO. So which is correct?

The primary importance of his story seems to be his assertion that "three sources of power vanished and the batteries were dead", an admission that Hastings considers important in that it confirms missile failures at the same time as this alleged UFO that he may have witnessed on a date he is unable to affirm. Unforunately, this also isn't very helpful, sice there were a great many such failures throughout the Minuteman system as discussed in the once highly classified ICBM histories. "[T]hree sources of power vanished and the batteries were dead" was hardly unique. More importantly, this is nowhere near Salas' claims that the entire flight of missiles went down, and Hastings' association of this testimony with Salas' little folk tale is arbitrary at best. Basically, we've got another light in the distance and a bunch of rumors that remain unconfirmed. And like all of the other witnesses, Kenneweg is unable to name a single individual who can confirm his claims. I've never come across such a large group of men who are unable to remember the names of any of those military personnel they served with.

In any case, Kenneweg can hardly be used to support an incident at Oscar Flight on March 24, 1967. He doesn't recall the date, and the points he does assert cannot be associated with the other claims that have been affirmed. He adds nothing to this collection of assertions beyond good reason to dismiss Salas' claims regarding a helicopter evacuation. Even with the group authorship that Hastings has used to lessen the number of contrary assessments, Kenneweg gives us no reason to assert anything outside of the rumors long associated with these incidents -- rumors that were looked into and found to be baseless. The only unique characteristic about the Echo Flight and Oscar Flight claims is the fact that they have been established without a single eyewitness excepting Kenneweg -- and he has reported nothing that can be confirmed.

The resources used to establish the claims follow:

In regard to the section "Col. Frederick Meiwald (Retired)

"In March 24, 1967 Fred Meiwald was the commanding officer of the nuclear missile launch facility (LF), code-named Oscar and part of the two-man crew with Robert Salas as his First Lieutenant. During a telephone interview on May 6, 2011, Col. Meiwald confirmed to UFO Researcher Robert Hastings that a large, round object had been reported hovering over one of Echo’s missiles just as that entire flight failed."

This reference is incorrect and provably false. In the same reference ["Robert Hastings’ Call to Col. Frederick C. Meiwald". Transcript of Radio Interview online. theufochronicles.com. Retrieved 3 July 2012.] there is the following exchange between Robert Hastings (RH) and Col. Frederick Meiwald (Retired) (FM):

"FM: We had an incident in October [sic] Flight. Whatever happened over at Echo, I have no idea. What Walt Figel may have relayed [to Bob Salas, during a taped phone conversation] 15 years ago, versus what he’s saying at the present time, I have no idea. I have no way of making a judgment upon what he has, uh, expressed whatsoever. I think since leaving Malmstrom I have only seen Walt Figel one time and, uh, not even to talk to him. So I can’t verify—and I certainly don’t know [his] motives. All I know is relative to the situation within Oscar Flight itself and, basically, what Bob Salas has relayed, relative to our actions at Oscar. I can’t verify anything outside of that."

Why an article about Oscar Flight would presume to confirm an incident at Oscar Flight by attempting to establish an incident at Echo Flight is beyond human nature. Doing so by making claims that are so easily determined to be a lie can only be the result of complete stupidity and the inability of the author to properly assess a simple one-on-one interview. Not that it really matters. After all, the same interview makes it clear as well that Meiwald conifirms nothing in regard to an incident at Oscar Flight:

"RH: Okay. Now, when Bob, I think moments [after] he woke you up, or you got up and sat down at the commander’s console—he of course had received a call from the Flight Security Controller, saying that there was a bright red, oval-shaped object hovering over the security fence gate—my understanding is that is what he told you as soon as you were at your console, that he had received this call and, uh, that of course coincided with the missiles beginning to malfunction. Do you recall him telling you that?
"FM: I really don’t remember that portion of it, relative to the bright object. I remember an unusual condition [but] as far as the details, uh, I can’t elaborate on that."

This hardly qualifies as a confirmation of the Oscar Flight claims. In the same interview, Meiwald states:

"RH: Okay. He of course has also said that you two were, uh, when you were back at Malmstrom, you were debriefed by OSI and required to sign non-disclosure statements. Do you remember that?

"FM: I remember being directed to do that. But that was no problem. I’ve been one of these people, when told to forget something, I forget it—eventually [inaudible].

"RH: Right, well, is that a polite way of saying that you really don’t want to discuss this, even though you know more than you’re saying?

"FM: No, I’m saying I don’t remember."

Can Meiwald posibly be more clear regarding what he will and will not confirm?

In addition, Meiwald has never claimed that the "entire flight failed." Please note the following sources:

The following analysis contains all of the testimony that Meiwald has ever produced in regard to an Oscar Flight UFO incident: http://timhebert.blogspot.com/2012/03/oscar-flight-mystery-fred-meiwald.html. In all of these sources, Meiwald repeatedly affirms that he was not aware of, or could not recall, Salas briefing him on any UFO sightings topside at Oscar. He confirms only an unusual incident that he does not remember well enough to detail. He never mentions missile failures coincidental to a UFO incident.

Throughout all of his testimony, Meiwald affirms a security violation at only one site (LF) which a security team was dispatched to investigate. He never discusses with Hastings, and no testimony of Meiwald's has ever established any actual missile failures (sorties dropped into No-Go), so where does this confirmation of a full flight failure come from? There is no documentation of such a failure anywhere, and nobody except Salas has ever made this claim regarding Oscar Flight.

The conclusion is apparent: "Robert(s) Hastings and Salas have both stated in numerous articles posted on numerous websites that Fred Meiwald's recalling of past events totally backs Salas' assertions that "UFO(s)" had been reported hovering over Oscar's LCF and subsequently causing most, if not all of the flight's missiles to drop off alert. The evidence from the statements of Meiwald himself does not support this claim as he has never endorsed receiving a briefing from Salas concerning the FSC reports."

Only Salas has ever made such claims -- Meiwald has not confirmed missiles failing in conjunction with a UFO event. In a personal email to me (available on request, reprinted in full at both RealityUncovered.net and the referenced site above), Meiwald expresses doubts about UFOs causing any incident at Oscar. He further admits that he has a hard time recalling events that happened some 40 years ago.

As for the number of missiles, at http://www.cufon.org/cufon/malmstrom/malm1.htm, Salas asserts that "6 to 8 missiles go No-Go", not all ten. Meiwald, however, has never affirmed any number of missiles failing, and only Hastings and Salas have ever insisted that the entire flight of ten missiles went down. There is no documentation anywhere else that these alleged missile failures ever occurred -- only Hastings' insistence that Meiwald has confirmed it. Meiwald has provided no affidavit in regard to this matter, and there are no statements available anywhere by Meiwald indicating that a flight of missiles was disabled during a UFO sighting. If Meiwald confirms Salas' story, then where is the statement in which he does so?

Dick Evans, Salas' and Meiwald's squadron commander has stated that there was no such failure of missiles at Oscar Flight. Note: "Salas's mistake about the time and place should say something. Think about it, if you are that passionate about the subject, you would not forget any detail about such an incident and he was dead wrong. He was never there and never involved. Dick Evans was the flight commander at Kilo (Oscar's parent site) and he has no recollection about any incident at Oscar ever." [see http://www.realityuncovered.net/blog/2010/09/the-malmstrom-afb-missileufo-incident-part-ii/].

Without a confirmation statement that ten missiles failed during a UFO incident, we can only assume that such a confirmation does not exist, and that there was no such full flight failure of missiles. There is no mention of Oscar Flight missiles failing at any time in the ICBM histories, nor in the command histories. There is, however, a memorandum written by the UFO officer at Malmstrom AFB, Lt. Col. Lewis D. Chase, to his superiors at the Foreign Technology Division, a major intelligence hub in which he states that there were no equipment failures on the dates in question. All of the above statements are freely available on the internet.

Please take thises factors into consideration. If you deleted mention of the history behind Echo Flight, then you need to do the same for Oscar Flight, due to the fact that there is less evidence to support this "incident" than that addressed in regard to Echo Flight. Your article starts with the assumption that missiles failed at Oscar Flight, but you can't support t with any evidence. It simply did not happen. The only witness who has made this claim is Robert Salas, and he has nothing to back him up. He has changed his story liberally since 1995, and he has very provably lied on numerous occasions.

Your Oscar Flight references should be deleted entirely;you should do more research before calling something a "fact", which is exactly what you are doing in regard to Oscar Flight missile failures. There is no verification for it, and it should not be included in the general article. It's a hoax, and nothing more. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.247.70.229 (talk) 01:17, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

If you intend to discuss UFOs at Malmstrom AFB in March 1967, you need to explore the following:

I would recommend that if you are truly interested in understanding something about Salas' or Hastings' credibility, you go to the following URLs, where you can download at no cost a book and supporting articles discussing in some detail exactly how far they can be trusted:

• http://www.scribd.com/doc/26641522/Americans-Credulous-by-James-Carlson
• http://www.scribd.com/doc/42303580/Echo-Flights-of-Fantasy-Anatomy-of-a-UFO-Hoax-by-James-Carlson
• http://www.scribd.com/doc/49495918/The-Bunny-s-Retort-by-James-Carlson
• http://www.realityuncovered.net/blog/2011/08/strategic-editing/

I would also recommend that you examine the numerous interviews and articles at the Reality Uncovered website: http://www.realityuncovered.net/ -- many of the top articles referenced discuss the events at Echo Flight in March 1967, and include interviews with both the commander and the deputy commander at Echo Flight on March 16, 1967 when the missiles were taken offline by an electronic noise pulse, an incident that was thoroughly investigated and very well documented, contrary to what Hastings and Salas have always insisted.

It's a sad thing indeed when the resources that so many consider to be so credible have refused to examine 90% of the evidence available, including over 80 pages of FOIA documentation, the statements repeatedly issued by the only actual witnesses at Echo Flight, the statements originating with Salas' own crew commander during the alleged incident at Oscar Flight, and the statements of literally dozens of ex-missileers regarding the supposed event at Oscar Flight, including absolute and verified proof that no equipment failures occurred anywhere on Malmstrom AFB during the same period of the Oscar Flight failures insisted upon by both Salas and Hastings.

A lot of information regarding this incident can also be found at the Reality Uncovered forum, in particular the Echo Flight Incident thread: http://www.realityuncovered.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1688&sid=fb3fd24f098c0f3bc35595ea1b41a146.

Tim Hebert, an ex-USAF missileer himself, has also written some enlightening articles regarding the case on his blog at: http://timhebert.blogspot.com/

Dr. David Clarke, for many years an accepted expert regarding the British military forces' investigations of the UFO phenomenon, has also discussed this case in the context of the "UFO and Nukes" connection asserted by author Robert Hastings. You can read his article on the subject at http://drdavidclarke.blogspot.com/2010/11/flat-earth-nukes.html.

There is no doubt whatsoever that Hastings and Salas created this case for their own benefit. There were no UFOs involved -- it is a lie, and nothing more. This doesn't entirely negate their arguments in relation to these two events. If the witnesses both men have promoted -- Col. Walt Figel and Col. Frederick Meiwald -- actually told them what Hastings and Salas say they told them, it should be very easy to simply ask them to do so again, except write it down in a statement instead of using transcripts of telephone calls that both men have already and repeatedly refuted. This is a standard confirmatory process that Robert Hastings in particular has been extremely willing to establish with other witnesses. So why does he refuse to even discuss the matter where the Echo Flight witnesses are concerned? A written statement of the events that occurred and a willingness to respond to a very few clarifying questions immediately afterward is a time-honored test of one's confirmation of an act or incident. It's almost as if Hastings is afraid that a written statement will indeed call attention to his numerous flaws as an honest investigator of UFO phenomena.

These men are still alive, and I have already ascertained that they are willing to respond to enquiry regarding the events they participated in. I have, in fact, provided exactly that in regard to these silly UFO assertions. Given these points, why have Robert Salas and Robert Hastings refused to obtain from them a single, cohesive statement that resolves very plainly the questions asked, making clear those points they have been trying to establish for over 15 years? I would think that such an easy opportunity to not only establish their claims, but establish as well the honesty of their accounts and the honesty of the witnesses they have presented would be eagerly approached by someone who is actually telling the truth. Instead they've ignored every opportunity to establish their insistent assertions, and correct whatever doubts have been applied to the substance of their accounts.

The bottom line regarding their assertions is simple: they cannot be trusted to tell the truth, so why would anybody believe anything at all that they have to say? Both men have proven themselves to be dishonest, so any information regarding this issue that they are being paid to discuss should not be trusted. These men have told numerous lies to support their claims, and that should be taken into consideration whenever they present such doubtful claims as those they have repeatedly consigned to the public trough. In light of this, it isn't even necessary to examine other cases that have originated with either man; if they have proven themselves to be unreliable and dishonest sources of information in one case, all other cases they've defined should be rejected in turn. Of course, this doesn't concern any cases that have not originated with Hastings or Salas, and should not be applied to them. The doubt originates with their ethics and honesty, and can't be applied to cases that have originated elsewhere.

Thank you,
James Carlson
jtcarl@yahoo.com
Albuquerque, NM — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.247.70.229 (talk) 01:24, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Add to this

I added the fact that a Snowbird crashed here, so please add to it making it a full part of the article.

Thank you, Nathan Junyk (talk) 02:15, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

i dont know who put in that they re open the runway from time to time but its not true when the snowbirds were here they took off and landed at the ANG base located on gore hill across town. the only thing that the runway is used for is PT tests and every year we have drag races and an open house. Mazi1108 (talk) 11:26, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Not part of Peterson AFB

Malmstrom AFB is part of Air Force Global Strike Command, headquartered at Barksdale AFB, Louisiana, not Peterson AFB, Colorado. Additionally, it is a reporting unit to US Strategic Command, not Air Force Space Command. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.121.91.223 (talk) 13:30, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Request for assistance on challenging article

Sir;

Would you please tell me how best to challenge a given article on the basis of verifiability (or any other standard)? The following paragraph has been merged with the general article entry for Malmstrom AFB:

"On March 24, 1967, ten of the base's Minuteman ICBMs known as Oscar Flight became inoperative, allegedly after UFOs were seen hovering over them.[16] Personnel who have reported witnessing the UFOs include Captain (then First Lieutenant) Robert Salas,[17][18] Colonel Frederick Meiwald, First Lieutenant Robert C. Jamison,[19] and Staff Sergeant Louis D. Kenneweg.[20]"

In regard to this merger, the sentence "On March 24, 1967, ten of the base's Minuteman ICBMs known as Oscar Flight became inoperative, allegedly after UFOs were seen hovering over them.[16]", the failure of ten missiles has not been confirmed nor verified, although many witnesses have attested to the fact that no such failure of missiles took place. In addition, an official memorandum authored by Lt.Col. Lewis D. Chase affirms that there were no equipment failures on March 24, 1967; this memo was drafted only a couple of months after the date of these unsupported "failures", and constitute a character completely out of synch with the claims being asserted.

Robert Salas, who has attempted to "prove" such an incident, is the only individual who has ever claimed that ten missiles -- an entire flight -- failed at any time. IRT: "Personnel who have reported witnessing the UFOs include Captain (then First Lieutenant) Robert Salas,[17][18] Colonel Frederick Meiwald, First Lieutenant Robert C. Jamison,[19] and Staff Sergeant Louis D. Kenneweg.[20]", confirmations that have never existed in fact have been established without any evidence whatsoever. In addition, the majority of the sources used to establish these UFO claims, were drafted by the very people who have been offered up as "witnesses", a case of individuals trying to establish claims on the basis of those claims alone. They do not establish "fact" or verify anything at all, and those resources not drafted by the witnesses are merely summaries of the claims being made, and also, therefore, confirm or verify nothing in and of themselves.

Furthermore, the following points need to be considered:

Colonel Frederick Meiwald, used as a confirmation for this event, has NEVER claimed that the entire flight of missiles failed, and has insisted -- in a number of interviews, including the write-up of this alleged UFO by Robert Hastings -- has insisted outright that he has no memory of anything at all related to this matter. The only point he has ever established (as Robert Salas himself has admitted) confirms the failure of only 4-5 missiles, a conclusion he freely admits may be wrong due to his poor memory, the facts of which can be supported by Meiwald's inability to date or otherwise recognize an assessment of date. As mentioned above, he also insists that he remembers nothing at all in reference to the supposed UFO, a conclusion supported, it seems, by the absence of any documented confirmation that a UFO was investigated anywhere near Oscar Flight. The UFO sightings for the dates given were all centered around an area that was about 150 miles away from Oscar Flight. In regard to missile failures on March 24, there were none. There were no sightings of UFOs anywhere near Oscar Flight, and nothing to suggest that such an incident actually took place.

There are numerous sources that confirm all of this, so if you want links supporting these charges, simply ask, and I will provide them; many, however, have already been submitted in the above section.

The phrase "Personnel who have reported witnessing the UFOs include ..." is misleading. There are no eyewitnesses to these UFO claims, and there is no documentation anywhere to indicate that these missile failures occurred. All indications lead directly toward doubt, as nothing in this merger can be confirmed as a real event. More to the point -- as mentioned above -- there is documentation that insists there were no equipment failures at all for the dates given.

Of the other two witnesses, they also admit that they did not actually witness anything at all. For the most part, Robert C. Jamison has offered only second hand hearsay to support his claims -- he says he heard other personnel discussing these matters over a two-way radio in another room. These alleged individuals have never come forward, nor have any other witnesses, to confirm these UFO claims. In fact, when Jamison first presented this dubious information, he insisted that he could not remember any associated date for the incident, and was unable as well to establish a location. He was persuaded by Robert Hastings some four years after presenting his tale to narrow down or pinpoint his "memories" to Oscar Flight on March 24, 1967. He saw nothing himself and his testimony has already been appraised as useless to establish anything at all based in fact.

As for Staff Sergeant Louis D. Kenneweg, he also was unable to pinpoint a date, and has affirmed that the "light" he saw was originally considered by him to be a helicopter. He eventually decided it was a UFO only on the basis of an individual's (again, who is unnamed and who has never come forward) comment that helicopters did not fly at night. He has presented no actual testimony to confirm this claim, and has presented no USAF regulations upon which to establish this content. In fact, the "no fly" orders have been arguably dismissed by Robert Salas himself, who has insisted that an injured crewman was evacuated via helicopter shortly after the UFO incident he has discussed detailing the claims he and Robert Hastings are attempting to assert.

There is not one single characteristic of the claims made that can be verified or confirmed in any way, and the sources given to establish these claims have failed to do so at every point. This entire paragraph is an absolute fiction and should be deleted as soon as possible. It starts with an assumption that has never been confirmed (the failure of all ten missiles), and ends with a conclusion that is provably wrong.

Please tell me how best to establish these matters and to have the record corrected by removing these claims from the general article.

Thank you, James Carlson — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.247.70.229 (talk) 02:36, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Paragraph on full flight failure of missiles deleted

The paragraph referring to a full flight failure of missiles allegedly associated with the appearance of a UFO has been removed, because it is provably false, and is little more than a blatant, systematic, and paranoid fantasy promoted by known liars and frauds, i.e., Robert Salas and Robert Hastings. No evidence has been presented to affirm the claims these charlatans have made, and well-documented, contemporary accounts prove that the claims are false. There was no full flight failure of missiles at Oscar Flight, and there was no UFO reported by anybody within a hundred miles of Oscar Flight. These UFO claims were never documented, and the issues raised did not exist prior to the years 2000. No confirming witnesses have ever come forward, and the claims being made in relation to the only possible confirming witness -- Colonel Frederick Meiwald -- have been misrepresented and are contrary to his own statements regarding this matter. All necessary resources proving the falsity of the claims being made are accessible in prior statements above. None of these UFO claims have been verified, and none of them have been confirmed. The missiles did not fail, and the UFO was never reported. The whole thing is a proven hoax perpetrated by Salas and Hastings. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.247.70.229 (talk) 10:20, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

I have reverted your removal of referenced information. If you want to challenge this account you have to present some controverting sources, not just claim the existing information to be a hoax. That is original research and not allowed. __meco (talk) 11:16, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

I have presented the information you requested. A memo (a link to which you can find above) was written by Colonel Lewis D. Chase in 1967 attesting that there were no equipment failures on March 24, 1967. The entire fable of missile failures at Oscar Flight has never been verified, and no authority beyond Salas has ever discussed it. It cannot be verified, because it did not happen. Please examine the resources above. You can't simply make a claim and consider it a fact without some confirmation, and it does not exist in this case. There were no Oscar Flight missile failures, and there is no new research to establish such an incident. There is documented proof that nothing of the sort occurred on March 24, 1967 in the Chase memo. Have you examined ANY of this case at all? And if so, how exactly have you verified any of it? Do you consider it reasonable to assert a claim of fact merely because the claim has NEVER been denied? Would you agree that dinosaurs went extinct due to their inability to prepare a really good chocolate pudding, and that it should be celebrated as "factual" merely because it hasn't been disproven?

There were no missile failures at Oscar Flight. Present some evidence attesting to those failures. I can list you dozens of individuals who were present at the time and insist that the failures did not occur. Can you name even ONE person beyond Robert Salas? That's not original or new research -- it's a travesty, and a hoax. Prove the point before considering it a fact of life. These claims are a pathetic joke that you have chosen to endorse on the basis of nothing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.247.70.229 (talk) 17:16, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm just trying to make sure nothing gets added to or deleted from the article unduly. __meco (talk) 20:18, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Very well; that's commendable. Give me a little time to prepare a full accounting of the evidence with complete references and links discussing all the points relevant to the contested paragraph. I apologize for not discussing these details when the original article on Oscar Flight was first presented and open to debate, but I simply was not aware such an accounting was being undertaken at the time. Rest assured, I can and shall provide you with complete details fully referenced in regard to this matter, and the assessment currently provided in the general Malmstrom AFB article. Thank you for your concern, and I hope I didn't offend you unduly. I'll have a complete accounting of the information asserting the above claims shortly. Thanks very much for examining the issues under consideration. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.247.70.229 (talk) 20:52, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Complete refutation of Oscar Flight UFO claims

The claims made in regard to Oscar Flight missile failures during a UFO incursion are ludicrous, unverifiable, and unconfirmed, while many details of the assertions made have been proven wrong. This ridiculous addition to an otherwise fact-based general article needs to be deleted immediately. It is nonsense with absolutely nothing to recommend it.

Please note the following:

In response to the above comment: "I'm just trying to make sure nothing gets added to or deleted from the article unduly. __meco (talk) 20:18, 18 August 2012 (UTC)": I intend to prove that by allowing the offending paragraph to be published, you have, in fact, added to the article unduly. By refusing to conduct even the most basic research, you allowed a complete lie to be added to a general article, an act that in turn represents a travesty of the rendition of facts an encyclopedia is supposed to attest.

The paragraph is a simple one, so the research would not have taken a conscionable man long: "On March 24, 1967, ten of the base's Minuteman ICBMs known as Oscar Flight became inoperative, allegedly after UFOs were seen hovering over them.[16] Personnel who have reported witnessing the UFOs include Captain (then First Lieutenant) Robert Salas,[17][18] Colonel Frederick Meiwald, First Lieutenant Robert C. Jamison,[19] and Staff Sergeant Louis D. Kenneweg.[20]"

The first sentence -- "On March 24, 1967, ten of the base's Minuteman ICBMs known as Oscar Flight became inoperative, allegedly after UFOs were seen hovering over them" -- is referenced only by "Connelly, Dwight, ed. (April 2006). "UFOs observed at ICBM sites and nuclear weapons storage areas". MUFON UFO Journal (456): 3–6. Retrieved 3 July 2012" linked to http://www.theblackvault.com/encyclopedia/documents/MUFON/Journals/2006/APRIL_2006.PDF. Examination of that reference shows that it is an article written by Robert Hastings. It contains numerous errors of fact. In regard to Oscar Flight, this article claims that the failure of ten missiles is supported by the testimony of Robert Jamison and Robert Salas. Jamison's testimony can be dismissed, as the article says merely "Jamison is certain that the incident occurred at one of the missile flights located near Lewistown, MT, perhaps Oscar Flight. This event probably occurred on the night of March 24/25, 1967, based on Jamison's portrayal of related events." Jamison himself can't speak to the number of missiles, nor can he speak to the location. He doesn't even verify the date of March 24, 1967. Only Robert Hastings makes that claim, and he is a proven liar and a fraud many times over, something you would have realized had you bothered to conduct any research whatsoever.

Jamison has no clear memory of date, location, and knows nothing of the number of missiles. The incident he relates in the article cannot even be used to substantiate such facts, as all of it is firmly rooted in hearsay. Date, number of missiles, the failure itself, and everything having to do with the UFO under discussion remains unproven. And the fact that Jamison has allowed his claims to "evolve" under the care of Robert Hastings tells us that he has merely related a story that has no firm basis in human reality, let alone his own mind. He has changed important details of his story over the years. And the fact that he has done so in response to critical assessment indicates for any responsible thinker that he is a source of information that cannot be trusted or otherwise relied upon as a foundational reservoir of facts.

Robert Salas, who was the original claimant of UFO interference at Malmstrom AFB, tells a different story in this reference. He is very exact. He claims that all ten of the missiles failed at Oscar Flight on March 24, 1967, but this claim cannot be verified, because it did not happen. The details are complete fiction, and as such cannot be relied upon. Wikipedia Editors would have realized this almost instantly had they attempted to confirm any of the details involved in his claims. There are no missile failures on the record, and the USAF has never recorded any missile failures at Oscar Flight, although they certainly recorded and discussed numerous other missile failures, including the failure of ten missiles at Echo Flight in 1967 and the falure of three missiles at Alpha Flight in 1966. Colonel Frederick Meiwald, the commander of Oscar Flight, who was present with Robert Salas at Oscar Flight on all of the dates during which Salas served duty, also refuses to confirm these claims (although Hastings, in a remarkably dishonest appreciation of recorded facts, continues to insist that Meiwald confirms Salas' tale of UFOs and ten missiles failing; these conclusions will also be examined in this presentation).

Let's look at Robert Salas' claims a bit closer instead of merely accepting the claims made as factual. At http://www.theblackvault.com/encyclopedia/documents/MUFON/Journals/1997/January_1997.pdf we can find a copy of his first article regarding his experiences in 1967. At this time, however, he was claiming that he was actually at November Flight, not Oscar Flight. Prior to this, he was telling the world he was at Echo Flight. He was at neither one, the facts of which Frederick Meiwald had already verified for Salas before he published this article, a detail that strongly suggests a component of deceit in these ridiculous claims. Salas, at the time of his writing of the article under examination ("Minuteman Missiles Shutdown" by Robert L. Salas, MUFON UFO JOURNAL, January 1997, No. 345, Page 15), was in possession of a letter from Frederick Meiwald that he later published [see: The October 1, 1996 Letter http://timhebert.blogspot.com/2012/03/oscar-flight-mystery-fred-meiwald.html for a reproduction of this same letter]. This letter states very clearly that Salas was at Oscar Flight, a point of view that Salas himself would not affirm for another three years. This letter fails to even mention the failure of missiles, and merely discusses a UFO incident that Meiwald was not directly involved with, one that he learned of second-hand. The letter, however, establishes that Salas was aware of his November Flight error three months before his article was published, showing a propensity for the dishonest approach. This letter also refutes nearly every detail of Salas' claims; Meiwald even apologizes for not being able to help Salas establish the points Salas wanted to prove.

In Salas' article, he makes the following claims regarding Col. Meiwald, his commander: "I immediately woke my commander who had been taking his rest period and started to relate the phone conversations. Within seconds, our missiles began shutting down from "Alert" status to "No-Go" status. I recalled that most, if not all, of our missiles had shut down in rapid succession."

In the same article, he also states, "My own MCCC [Meiwald] confirmed my recollection of events with the exception that he recalled that about five of our ten missiles shut down in rapid succession. My own recollection is that it was more than five." Meiwald's letter proves that he did NOT confirm Salas' recollection. Every point Meiwald addresses is a refutation of Salas' claims; he doesn't even mention missile failures. Not that this would be necessary, as Salas states clearly that Meiwald refused to confirm the failure of all ten missiles, establishing only that Hastings' claims in his article -- the only reference for the sentence under consideration -- has never been confirmed, and cannot be verified. Salas alone claims that all ten missiles failed -- nobody else; and it took him about ten years to eventually do so, ind8icating his favored approach to fact: his claims evolve into the details he wants to affirm, not the details he can actually establish with reason and a firm resolve to address such matters consistently.

The reference used to establish the claim that "On March 24, 1967, ten of the base's Minuteman ICBMs known as Oscar Flight became inoperative, allegedly after UFOs were seen hovering over them" is an assumption that has not been confirmed, one that even Salas admits is in contention as a result of his own commander's testimony. It should also be noted that Hastings' article states clearly that he was the prime instigator of the date proffered. It was Robert Hastings -- a man who witnessed nothing and has no faithful commitment to adherence to fact and it's established basis in human reality -- who persuaded all of the other witnesses to adopt his analysis, an analysis that pointedly ignores the evidence proving the fallacies and errors of fact that he's been forced to affirm upon deciding to let his needs dictate the details of story instead of the facts originally addressed by his witnesses. The fact that he gathered all of these "witnesses" together and convinced them to tell the same story in relation to date and location is not an admirable trait -- it reeks of fraudulence and irresponsible assessment. These men were consistent up until Robert Hastings addressed the need for them to make similar claims as a means to confirm the tales they've tried to establish as truthful. This isn't research -- it's management with the intent to commit fraud, and if he were in a courtroom, he would been thrown out for even attempting these acts!

Hastings tells the world that it's all very honest, and that all of these witnesses have recorded legal affidavits in regard to their claims. What he fails to divulge is the fact that these "witnesses" of his write out a new affidavit every time he decides that a change is necessary, a little detail that has been confirmed more than a few times in the past. As for his insistence that these are "legal" affidavits, it's just more of his crap. Legal affidavits are filed with the courts and record every change made over the years. He refuses to present the filing dates and court associations, and has repeatedly refuses to answer questions in regard toi the changes he has dictated over the years -- a fact that anybody wishing to conduct a little basic research would be aware of had they merely attempted to determine the legality of documents that only Robert Hastings contends are "legal". A simple examination of the documents themselves as published over the years proves that there have been too many changes to accept them as truthful accounts. In fact, the very first thing Robert Hastings instructed these witnesses to complete prior to gathering them all together to present their stories to the public at a press conference designed for that purpose on September 27, 2010 was to rewrite all of their "legal affidavits" so the stories matched, thereby magically appearing to confirm the details each of them wanted to maintain. Now they all match, and they all have the dame date! At least they would have, if they had left things alone. Unfortunately, they continue to change the details of their stories every time critical assessment highlights another point of fact that tends to reveal the dishonesty inherent to their claims. These frauds change their affidavits as often as they change their socks.

The date, the number of missiles, and even the location as dictated in the Wikipedia entry have never been verified by any other witness. Importantly, there is no USAF record, allusion, or suggestion that this incident ever occurred, and although missile failures are mentioned in numerous excerpts from the command history, there is not one mention suggesting missile failures at Oscar Flight in March 1967. There is one statement in the command history relevant to this issue [for details and facsimile of the actual history, see page 72 of http://www.scribd.com/doc/26641522/Americans-Credulous-by-James-Carlson]:

"Echo Flight incident was approached in four ways in the investigation:

1. Review of events on or near 16 March 67 and of flight configuration.
2. Investigation, and where possible elimination, of circumstances which may have been responsible for the incident.
3. Investigation of means of causing the results which were noted at the time of the shutdown.
4. Investigation of similar events."

In regard to paragraph, d., the investigation (which continued for another year) neglected completely to conduct an examination of similar missile failures at Oscar Flight. In addition to the full flight failure of missiles at Echo Flight, an incident at Alpha Flight in which only three missiles failed is discussed. However, nothing suggestive of missile failures at Oscar Flight has ever been affirmed at any level by any command or administration even peripherally associated with Malmstrom AFB.

While Salas was attempting to invent his story of missiles and UFOs in 1996, one of his first goals was to gain the cooperation of researcher Raymond Fowler, a contractor who at the time [i.e., 1967] was involved with the construction of the first Minuteman II missile squadron at Malmstrom AFB some 220 miles west of Oscar Flight. Fowler was convinced that UFOs were involved with the failure of missiles at Echo Flight and Alpha Flight, and his research represents the only real contemporary investigation of these matters that did not immediately discount all UFO references with just cause. He was, however, unable to prove any association of the details current at Echo Flight due to his lack of a security clearance and his insistence that UFOs were sighted when they clearly were not. Due to his failure to to gain clearance and his lack of "need-to-know", he didn't even get the date of the incident correct, a fact that anybody could have proven had they requested the documents after 1979, when they were all declassified. Fowler was unable to prove any UFO sightings anywhere at Malmstrom AFB for the date of the Echo Flight or Alpha Flight failures, even though he was a NICAP investigator who was actually on the scene. This didn't stop him from asking a lot of baseless questions, none of which were answered, because there actually were missile failures at Echo Flight and Alpha Flight that were still being investigated and were highly classified as well. In fact, there is mention in the command history of UFO rumors -- completely UNCLASSIFIED, we should add -- that he was almost defintiely the primary instigator of [see: http://www.scribd.com/doc/42303580/Echo-Flights-of-Fantasy-Anatomy-of-a-UFO-Hoax-by-James-Carlson for a more detailed discussion of this point]. The command history itself notes: "Rumors of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO) around the area of Echo Flight during the time of fault were disproven" [see page 76 http://www.scribd.com/doc/26641522/Americans-Credulous-by-James-Carlson].

Unfortunately for Fowler's claims, the only leads Fowler ever received were a couple of second-hand rumors that originated with some of the men he worked with. It's very likely these men were simply playing around with him, a conclusion reached as a result of Robert Salas' attempts in 1996 to contact the only individual in this little group he was able to track down. This individual told Salas he had no idea what he was talking about, and emphasized that he possessed no knowledge whatsoever in regard to a UFO at Malmstrom AFB in March 1967 [see same source above: "Echo Flights of Fantasy - Anatomy of a UFO Hoax" by James Carlson].

During the course of Salas' investigations at this early stage of his attempts to substantiate a complete work of fiction as a work of fact, he and Fowler exchanged a number of email communications, the body of which Fowler was kind enough to make available to researchers in the mistaken belief that they would help corroborate Salas' claims. Two of those emails are of direct interest to us as describing the issues under examination.

The first email was sent by Robert Salas to Raymond Fowler on 96-08-14 11:27:16 EDT. In this email, Salas mentions that he contacted "the man who was my MCC on the day of the incidents. I spoke with him by phone, briefly. He certainly recalled the incident in the sequence I outlined with one exception. He believes we 'lost' four LFs instead of all." This is a direct refutation of the number of missiles lost as detailed in your current article. Please note that the number here is again different from the number Salas actually referred to in his article. He has been equally inconsistent in other articles. Nowhere, however, is there another confirmation said to originate with Meiwald. I have asked Meiwald to clarify these matters and he has refused to do so, although he has claimed that he personally doesn't believe in UFOs. Although Salas states Fowler in the email referred to above that Meiwald "certainly recalled the incident in the sequence I outlined", every statement that Meiwald has made proves this to be untrue, including statements he made directly to Robert Hastings that Hastings has since published, articles used as a source for other claims made in your general article under examination.

Eric D. Carlson, the commander at Echo Flight in March 1967 has insisted firmly that he believes there was no failure at Oscar Flight. In an interview published at http://www.realityuncovered.net/blog/2010/09/an-interview-with-malmstrom-afb-witness-eric-carlson/ the following exchange should be noted:

"Ryan: Do you have an insight or experiences to report related to the reported Oscar Flight incident where allegedly another UFO was sighted which reportedly sent the missiles into “no-go” status?

"Eric: The event at Echo became what could be referred to as the talk of the town. Everyone knew about it and many crew members kidded me about it. There was never any talk, at any time, about a similar event at Oscar. I can only conclude from that that it never happened."

The deputy commander at Echo Flight, Walt Figel, Jr., has also firmly denied such an incident [see: http://www.realityuncovered.net/blog/2010/09/the-echo-flight-ufo-debate-continues/].

"Bob Salas was never associated with any shutdown of any missiles at any time in any flight and you can take that to the bank. Just think about this for a split second. He is a person wrapped up in UFOs to the Nth degree. Yet he could not remember he was not at Echo. Then he thought he was at November – wrong again. Then he thought he was at Oscar – wrong again.

" ... There is no record about anything happening at November or Oscar except in people’s minds that are flawed beyond imagination. Salas has created events out of the thin air and can’t get the facts straight even then. My best friend to this day was the flight commander of the 10th SMS at the time. He and I have discussed this silly assertion in the past couple of years – he thinks it is all madeup nonsense for sure. I put both Salas and Hastings in touch with him and he has told them both that an incident at November or Oscar never happened. In addition he was subsequently stationed at Norton AFB where the engineers tested the possible problems. No little green men were responsible."

It's a point of fact that not one witness has ever come forward to confirm any Oscar Flight missile failures. In addition, any examination of forum websites established by missile command veterans -- many of whom were attached to various squadrons at Malmstrom AFB in 1967 -- reflects an almost universal sentiment that such an incident never occurred.

We should note here as well that Raymond Fowler, who worked as a civilian contractor at another sight associated with Malmstrom AFB in Marcg 1967, was made aware of the Echo Flight failures due to his position. Although he lacked both the clearance and the need-to-know necessary for access, his proximity to the event was enough for him to absorb some local information, but little else. At no time did Fowler uncover or was otherwise made aware that an incident such as that described for Oscar Flight ever took place, and he was actively searching for such information. There was no mention of an incident of any sort involving missile failures at Oscar Flight by anybody anywhere at any time, and to date, the only witness to make such a claim is Robert Salas, a man who defines the label of unreliable. The incident was never recorded, there was no message traffic generated anywhere to suggest that such an incident may have occured, and there was no investigation ever implemented in response to such an incident of failures. It did not happen, and we have yet to examine the issue of UFOs causing it.

In regard to the date of the alleged missile failures -- March 24, 1967 -- the following discussion applies [for a detailed discussion, including facsimiles of all relevant documents, see: http://www.scribd.com/doc/42303580/Echo-Flights-of-Fantasy-Anatomy-of-a-UFO-Hoax-by-James-Carlson].

The only USAF Blue Book investigation of a UFO reported in the month of March 1967 was the one conducted by Col. Lewis D. Chase, the Malmstrom AFB operations chief, and UFO officer, in relation to a UFO reported March 24, 1967 just outside of Belt, Montana, a small town some fifteen miles east of Malmstrom AFB. It is this UFO sighting that Hastings and Salas have tried to associate with the alleged missile failures at Oscar Flight. Due to the UFO rumors instigated by Raymond Fowler, the Foreign Technology Division at Wright-Patterson AFB (later changed to National Air and Space Intelligence Center), requested clarification of the investigative report originally written by Col. Chase. FTD was Chase's direct superior in the chain of command, and had authority covering everything having to do with UFOs, including what technological responses might be necessary should a UFO incursion actually occur.

FTD's request to Chase was very specific: "Our office has been informed that during the sightings there were equipment malfunctions and abnormalities in the equipment. One individual stated that the USAF instructed both military and civilian personnel not to discuss what they had seen as it was a classified government experiment. Request information on the validity of such statements. If some type of experiment did occur on or about 24 March 1967, please advise.” These details match perfectly with the questions being asked by Ray Fowler at the time, so the fact that FTD was unaware of any such incident to an extent requiring clarification of the investigative report filed by Chase suggests that the "rumors" had no real basis in fact. The "One individual" referred to in this memo was almost certainly Ray Fowler, as the very same details mentioned in the memo are included in his 1967 notes, originating, according to Fowler, with another civilian contractor he worked with. Nobody else has ever mentioned these details, which in turn suggests that Fowler was the victim of a hoax. In any case, the USAF had no knowledge of these details, and therefore requested clarification of the investigative officer, Col. Lewis D. Chase. While it's true that these references apply to Echo Flight alone (Fowler had no knowledge in regard to other missile failures), it's also true that Fowler believed the Echo Flight incident had occurred on March 24, 1967 instead of its actual date, March 16, 1967. It's true as well that Fowler knew nothing about missile failures at Oscar Flight, since they never occurred [for a detailed discussion of these communications, please note page 70 of http://www.scribd.com/doc/42303580/Echo-Flights-of-Fantasy-Anatomy-of-a-UFO-Hoax-by-James-Carlson ; the original records, of course, have been archived by the USAF under Blue Book Project addenda].

Col. Chase responded to FTD immediately: “This office has no knowledge of equipment malfunctions and abnormalities in equipment during the period of reported UFO sightings. No validity can be established to the statement that a classified government experiment was in progress or that military and civilian personnel were requested not discuss what they had seen.” Very simply put, the original report was complete, there were no equipment failures, and we don’t know anything about such an experiment being conducted. And if there were no equipment failures on March 24-25, 1967, as Chase clearly confirms, there was no Oscar Flight incident on March 24-25, 1967, as Salas and Hastings insist.

The above discussion proves that the sentence "On March 24, 1967, ten of the base's Minuteman ICBMs known as Oscar Flight became inoperative, allegedly after UFOs were seen hovering over them.[16]" is completely untrue. It has not been confirmed by anybody and cannot be verified as a point of fact.

Regarding the sentence "Personnel who have reported witnessing the UFOs include Captain (then First Lieutenant) Robert Salas,[17][18] Colonel Frederick Meiwald, First Lieutenant Robert C. Jamison,[19] and Staff Sergeant Louis D. Kenneweg.[20]", there is also no confirmation, not even in the references proffered, and the claims cannot be verified. The sources [17-18] applied prove nothing, and merely repeat the claims made by Salas and Hastings. They do not qualify as original research -- they simply repeat the claims made. The assertion that "Personnel who have reported witnessing the UFOs include ..." is misleading. There are no eye-witnesses to any UFO mentioned, and the witnesses included in the list have not presented any facts at all to support the claims made.

Robert Salas is the only real witness to the incident, and his claims are fallacious, and have never been confirmed by his commander, Frederick Meiwald, mentioned in the offending sentence. This has been confirmed in an interview that Hastings conducted with Meiwald [see: http://www.theufochronicles.com/2011/06/echo-flight-ufo-incident-not-unique.html]:

"RH: Okay. Now, when Bob, I think moments [after] he woke you up, or you got up and sat down at the commander’s console—he of course had received a call from the Flight Security Controller, saying that there was a bright red, oval-shaped object hovering over the security fence gate—my understanding is that is what he told you as soon as you were at your console, that he had received this call and, uh, that of course coincided with the missiles beginning to malfunction. Do you recall him telling you that?

"FM: I really don’t remember that portion of it, relative to the bright object. I remember an unusual condition [but] as far as the details, uh, I can’t elaborate on that."

A later reference from the same interview again confirms Meiwald's point-of-view, as well as his refusal to confirm a UFO at Oscar Flight (or, for that matter, at Echo Flight):

"RH: Okay. He of course has also said that you two were, uh, when you were back at Malmstrom, you were debriefed by OSI and required to sign non-disclosure statements. Do you remember that?
"FM: I remember being directed to do that. But that was no problem. I’ve been one of these people, when told to forget something, I forget it—eventually [inaudible].
"RH: Right, well, is that a polite way of saying that you really don’t want to discuss this, even though you know more than you’re saying?

"FM: No, I’m saying I don’t remember."

How does any of this qualify as a confirmation? The only thing Meiwald confirms is Hastings' and Salas' dedication to establishing a UFO presence using any means possible, including inventing this entire incident from nothing. This is the entire case in a microcosm. The commander at Oscar Flight refuses to confirm Salas' story. The only way anybody would consider Meiwald as confirmation for an Oscar Flight incident would be their failure to examine any of the evidence provided, a response to these silly little claims that Hastings and Salas are obviously depending on.

Robert Hastings has himself admitted that Meiwald cannot confirm a UFO incident at Oscar Flight [see: http://www.realityuncovered.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1688&start=435]. In reference to his own interview with Meiwald, he states:

"Meiwald then elaborated and said that he couldn’t support everything Salas has said about the incident because he had been resting/sleeping when the first missile or two dropped offline—which occurred moments after Salas received a report from the Oscar Flight Security Controller about a UFO hovering over the Launch Control Facility’s front gate.

"Although Salas had quickly told Meiwald about that telephone conversation, Meiwald says that he can’t remember it."

Is this what qualifies as a confirmation that Meiwald "reported witnessing the UFOs", as the paragraph under examination states? This is a complete travesty, and nothing else.

The article also states that First Lieutenant Robert C.Jamison, and Staff Sergeant Louis D. Kenneweg confirm the UFO at Oscar Flight, but even a short examination of the references proves that this is not a true statement. Let's examine those references.

The single reference for Jamison's claims is his 2010 affidavit. This affidavit was produced immediately prior to Hastings' press conference of 27 September 2010; in fact, all of the "witnesses" at this conference produced new affidavits specifically for this event. Jamison, however, had been interviewed by Robert Hastings in 1992, and the conclusions he reached are somewhat different than the 2010 document [for a detailed discussion of Jamison's testimony, please note the article at http://timhebert.blogspot.com/2012/04/oscar-flight-mystery-robert-jamison.html].

In 1992, Jamison was "certain" that the incident had occurred at one of the flights near Lewistown, MT on a date he could not pinpoint (perhaps at Oscar Flight, but could also apply to Echo Flight, November Flight, or Mike Flight) [please note: http://www.nicap.org/babylon/missile_incidents.htm for a 2006 summary of these claims]. In 2010, his affidavit states plainly that the incident occurred at Oscar Flight. Which claim is the more accurate? Keep in mind, that the assessment of Oscar Flight is not a determination made by associated witnesses. Hastings has merely persuaded these witnesses that Oscar Flight on March 24, 1967 was the location and date of the claims being made. The witnesses themselves originally told different stories. The new affidavits from 2010, therefore, are more reflective of Hastings' needs than anybody else's, making them essentially useless for determining fact or consistent testimony. When a group of witnesses gets together to formulate accounts that can confirm each other -- stories different from previous claims made by the same witnesses -- the new testimony becomes worthless. If such testimony was delivered in a forensic, courtroom environment, the case and any associated arrests would be thrown out for cause. That is exactly the case here.

Regarding Jamison, the following points need to be considered:

1. Upon arriving at the hanger, Jamison overheard other targeting teams discussing rumors of a UFO connection...supposedly all ten missiles at Oscar Flight off alert after a UFO reported in the vicinity of the LCF. His testimony concerns only admitted rumors. This simply does not qualify as testimony, whether true or not. He does state that "a Non-Commissioned Officer (NCO) confirmed these reports, telling me that Air Police guards at the stricken flight had in fact reported a UFO moments before the missiles malfunctioned." He does not identify the alleged NCO, however, and nobody -- Air Police guards included -- has ever come forward to confirm this point. It cannot be verified. In addition, while he has been establishing his claims since 1992, the alleged confirmation of the unnamed NCO was not mentioned until 2010. His credibility suffers as a result, because this element of his claims was only drafted prior to the September 27, 2010 press conference, and was done so in concert with Hastings and Salas to provide a confirmation that did not exist prior to the publication of this affidavit.
2. While waiting to dispatch, Jamison overheard two-way radio traffic about a second UFO which had landed in a deep ravine not far from the base. In other words, according to Jamison, all of the details involving UFOs consist of second-hand associations, in this case one that was overheard on a two-way radio. Without context addressed by actual witnesses, there is no way to confirm or verify any of these claims. While this "second UFO" is a matter of record as a result of Col. Lewis Chase's Blue Book investigation, no report was ever filed by anybody in regard to a UFO near the eastern flights. According to the sheriff of Belt, Montana [as related in Chase's investigation summary], radio reports of a UFO sighted at and west of Belt, Montana resulted in hundreds of people going outside to actively look for UFOs. Not one was reported east of Belt, Montana [toward Oscar Flight], and all of these people were actively looking for UFOs.
3. Upon being deployed into the field for maintenance of the launch facilities, Jamison's team never saw any UFOs. All of the "evidence" he presents is hearsay. There is no first person testimony, and nothing in Jamison's story has been, or can be, confirmed.
4. Jamison's team restarted three to four missiles; he can't confirm that the entire flight went no-go (necessitating the introduction of a new "witness" to establish this claim discussed at no. 1 above); again, he did not see any UFO activity while out in the field, and has presented nothing to prove his new, group formulated testimony regarding the NCO "witness".
5. None of Jamison's assertions in regard to a "special UFO briefing" has ever been confirmed, not even by Salas.
6. Jamison's testimony regarding his discussions with "several people, mostly Security Alert Team guards, who personally witnessed these events" has never been confirmed, and none of these alleged individuals have ever come forward. This appears (once again) to be a detail formulated specifically for the September 27, 2010 press conference organized by Robert Hastings. Jamison is simply bolstering his claims with the testimony of eye-witnesses that don't appear to exist. In addition, this detail of his claims was not mentioned in his original assertions; it was created to suggest the presence of additional witnesses that cannot be verified, and very likely did not exist, even in one's imagination, prior to 2010.
7. This "affidavit" was never filed with the courts as required of legal documentation, and is merely a notarized statement that cannot be verified and does not speak to the honesty of the individual making the claims. For establishing truth, it is useless.

Once again, we see that Hastings has had a hand in "managing" all of the testimony used to assert his claims. They have been changed where necessary, and new details have been added in order to evoke some form of credibility. The only thing actually presented, however, is a silly little story with nothing to back it up, and no one to to confirm the claims made. It's interesting to note that both Jamison and Salas have now presented new and independent testimony that the stories they are telling have been confirmed by unnamed "witnesses", one of whom (not the same -- two different individuals) "broke down and began weeping." Neither of these two stories has been or can be confirmed.

The testimony of Staff Sergeant Louis D. Kenneweg is referenced in a 2006 article by Robert Hastings entitled "UFO Sightings at ICBM Sites and Nuclear Weapons Storage Areas". This testimony is also pointless to examine, but we shall do so nonetheless. Please note the following points:

1. Kenneweg is "uncertain" in regard to the date. He says nothing at all in regard to what flight may have required use of the maintenance kits he managed. He establishes nothing in regard to Oscar Flight on March 24, 1967. His testimony is essentially useless.
2. He claims to have witnessed a light in the sky that he originally thought was a private plane or helicopter. He was allegedly told by an unnamed Air Police sergeant [a lot of those unnamed witnesses pop up in Hastings' little folk stories] that helicopters didn't have radar and and didn't fly at night. Oddly enough, Salas has claimed that an injured guard at Oscar Flight was evacuated by helicopter on the same night (supposedly). I wonder which statement is true.
3. Kenneweg was assigned tasking to distribute maintenance kits to outgoing teams; he remembers doing so for a large number on the same night (date unknown). Hastings concludes that "a lot of missiles were either undergoing routine maintenance, and/or had gone off Strategic Alert for another reason, all at the same time." This certainly is not a confirmation of anything at Oscar Flight on March 24, 1967.
4. Kenneweg also makes the following claims:

"One of the guys mentioned to me that some very weird things were going on that night,” said Kenneweg, “It takes two guys to carry the T.O. kit, and there were other guys behind him, waiting in line to get checked in, and they were all nodding their heads in agreement. But this guy said that he couldn’t talk about it right then. He said he would tell me all about it back at the barracks. Well, like I have said before, I was busy working [a second job] at the Red Lion Supper Club and didn't really have that serious sit-down conversation with that particular airman. But the barracks was buzzing. Stories about how when they got to the [missile silos] and found no damage, and how all the batteries were dead. I also heard a story that [UFOs] were seen on radar, then they were gone.

"Our missile sites each had a tertiary power system. The main power source was delivered by Montana Power. Telephone poles, transformers and wire. The second system was the diesel generators, and the third was the battery back-up within the silo itself. Numerous reports came back saying that they had found no damage to the fences, wires, transformers, microwave intrusion system, locks on the three-foot-thick concrete blast doors, or to the batteries. So, no evidence of damage from intruders or animals, lightning or fire. Just three sources of power vanished and the batteries were dead.”

None of this is very helpful to substantiate anything, let alone a full flight failure at Oscar Flight on March 24, 1967 coincidental to multiple UFO sightings. Kenneweg's assertions, however, suggest that the rarity of the failures, combined with the absence of structural damage in a system with numerous safety and redundant power backups would be so unique as to require an extraordinary cause or associative explanation. This is also a point of view that Raymond Fowler has often espoused, most recently one day prior to the Hastings-Salas press conference in Washington, DC [see the comments section of http://www.realityuncovered.net/blog/2010/09/the-echo-flight-ufo-debate-continues/]:

"Stephen Webbe was told by the Air force that the missiles had gone down due to a local power failure!!! I told Stephen that this was absurd and impossible. The missiles had back-up generators and acid (later Lithium built by Sylvania) batteries to keep the missiles operational. I don’t think that the good colonel was happy when Stephen got back to him. But, the admission that a flight of missiles did go down was very interesting [this refers to the Echo Flight incident of March 16, 1967, the only full flight failure of missiles that occurred at Malmstrom AFB throughout the 1960s; the first mission of the investigative team at Echo Flight was to determine whether or not the capsule crew may have been responsible; since the failure of the missiles occurred coincidental to the blowout of a transformer on the local power network, the next assessment that had to be performed was a series of tests intended to discover whether this local power phenomenon was responsible for the failures; it was not. In regard to these points, please reference the command history already referenced above].”

It should be noted that nothing related by Kenneweg was so unique at the time as to associate it with an extraordinary event. As for Raymond Fowler's claims, he is simply wrong.

According to Bernard C. Nalty’s “USAF Ballistic Missile Programs 1967-1968″, drafted September 1969, and classified TOP SECRET NOFORN until it was declassified in 2004 [see: http://www.alternatewars.com/WW3/WW3_Documents/USAF/USAF_BM_1967-68.htm]:

"During the winter of 1965-1966, the operation of several Minuteman sites was disrupted after storms had severed commercial power lines and the diesel engines that were supposed to turn standby generators failed to start. The refurbishment or replacement of standby power system components began in 1966 with emergency modifications – principally to the mechanism for switching automatically to internal power – in Minuteman Wings I through V. The first series of alterations was scarcely under way when it was discovered that the new switching mechanism was overly sensitive to fluctuations in commercial current. The solution arrived at was to arrange a two-second delay between sensing a change in voltage and shutting off outside power. If the weather or some defect in the commercial system caused a minor variation in current, normal power was expected to return within that time; if the fluctuation persisted, the system would shift to standby power before any damage could be done."

Missile failures of 1-2 in tandem were common at the time, a point of record that Salas and Hastings continue to ignore, stating instead that missile failures of any type were exceedingly rare. In actuality, the only incidents that were rare were full flight failures or the failures of more than three missiles at once. A full flight failure only occurred once -- at Echo Flight on March 16, 1967. Nalty, however, is very specific:

"Interruptions of electrical power had been unusually frequent at the Minuteman II wing at Grand Forks, N.D. During the first six months of 1966 commercial power failed on 450 occasions, and 126 times, almost one in three, the standby system did not work. Although commercial power was usually restored within a quarter of an hour, the diesel-powered system was clearly in need of modifications to make it more dependable. Repairs undertaken included modifying circuit breakers, replacing diodes and relays in generator circuits and switching panels, and providing diesel fuel pressure gauges and shut off valves. When this job seemed likely to last through 1968, the Air Force directed the Ballistic Systems Division (BSD) [*Note: BSD was later absorbed by the newly created Space and Missile Systems Organization (SAMSO) a few short months later.] to schedule the work in conjunction with routine facility updates.

"The repeated failure of the launch site generators also imposed a severe strain on the storage batteries – 32-volt for Minuteman I and 160-volt for Minuteman II – which were used as emergency sources of power. The revisions in plans and delays in overhauling the unreliable diesel system resulted in a continued reliance on emergency power to do what had been planned for the standby diesels and expected a heavy toll in expended batteries. The Air Force soon found it necessary to purchase more batteries in order to replenish a dwindling supply of spares. Recharging exhausted batteries was a normal procedure, though the task required caution. These emergency power sources – especially the heavier one used in Minuteman II – could explode if filled too full with fluid or allowed to overheat."

Personally, I'm not sure that someone who insists that missiles can’t fail “due to a local power failure” when it was happening all the time for a couple of years should necessarily be trusted as some kind of an expert in regard to this matter. But the problems above aren’t the only problems the USAF had with the Minuteman force, not by a long shot.

"By the summer of 1966, the Air Force appeared to have solved an especially serious problem – the unreliability of the NS-17 guidance and control unit used in the LGM-30F missile. The solution adopted included modifying the design, careful handling of the device while in transit to the site, and cautious starting, especially in cold weather, to avoid a “thermal shock” believed to occur when coolant was added too rapidly to a unit being brought to operating temperature. But despite these actions, NS-17′s continued to fail at an alarming rate. By April 1967, for instance, there were 107 fewer units on hand for the Minuteman force than plans called for; the deficit was due to the unexpectedly large number under repair."

And when one of those NS-17s failed, the missile failed, shut down, turned off, whatever you want to call it; it went down due to a guidance and control fault, and that was happening all the time at all of the Wings across the country.

"Because of the importance of these units to the Minuteman II force, the Air Force asked for and OSD provided $13.7 million for modifications to begin in the summer of 1967. This sum, however, turned out to be a little more than a third of the amount needed. Meanwhile, AFSC and BSD investigators studied the performance record of the NS-17 to determine the circumstances under which units were failing and scrutinized both the design and the method of manufacture to identify probable cause of failure.

"In the aftermath of the investigation came improved methods of production and numerous changes in the units themselves. Each group of modifications was identified by a color code, and SAC at one time found itself with yellow, blue, and red dot NS-17′s in stock. By June, 1967, however, the modifications had been standardized so that there were only two types of NS-17′s: the old and the new, with the latter having increased radiation shielding as well as other improvements. As a result of the corrective program, mean time between failure of guidance and control units increased from 1,400 hours in March 1967 to about 2,950 hours in July 1968. Some of the newer units, however, had operated in excess of 4,000 hours."

That's a pretty significant improvement, and it illustrates nicely how component failures in the missile systems could affect the nation's defense capabilities. Had this information been general knowledge in 1967, there is little doubt that the international relationships between the United States, NATO, and the Soviet Union would have been very different from what the history books of today relate.

The above examinations are more than sufficient to dismiss the claims made by Hastings and Salas in relation to Oscar Flight missile failures and the UFO they have injected into the scenario they are attempting to substantiate. The fact that nearly all of the individuals interested in propagating this ridiculous travesty have refused entirely to discuss these matters with the commander of Echo Flight is most telling. I suspect that it may be the result of his own suspicions [please note "Comment by Eric Carlson — September 11, 2010 @ 11:37 pm" at http://www.realityuncovered.net/blog/2010/09/the-malmstrom-afb-missileufo-incident-part-ii/]: "I don’t know if Salas is lying, if he has told the story so many times that he believes it, or he truly believes it, but it is false. There were not UFOs reported and Oscar Flight did not shut down."

All of the documents related to the case support this same conclusion. Rather than address the issues Eric Carlson has presented, Robert Salas simply incorporated Carlson's testimony into the myth he has attempted to generate. At the above mentioned press conference of September 27, 2010 that was organized by Hastings to present the claims made by the "witnesses" above (excepting Col. Meiwald who has decided to ignore the claims entirely), Salas -- in answer to a question asked of him by one of the individuals invited to attend -- stated that Eric Carlson has actually confirmed his claims. Nothing more than this one response to criticism is needed to substantiate the dishonest character of those trying to wrest these fables from the world of their own imagination with the intent to plant them in the soil of known and confirmed American history. Their attempt to do so using the public intervention policies of Wikipedia is merely one more strategy pulled whole from their little box of lies and aggressive story-telling. If they are allowed to make these claims without argument or the prejudice their assertions deserve, the fault will lie with those who have determined to forsake any proper burden of proof, adopting in its place a policy that recognizes the validity of claims established not by the proper appreciation and reliance on confirmed and verified facts, but upon mere statements by the progenitors of such doubtful claims that the elements defining their claims are indeed characterized by confirmed and verified facts (even when they clearly are not).

The bottom line in regard to these claims can be easily summed up: a fact cannot be established simply because the issue involved has been labeled a fact. Evidence has to be presented. If Hastings or Salas or anybody else insists that one witness has confirmed what another witness has asserted, that confirmation still needs to be confirmed in the words of whomever is being relied upon to provide it. It's very easy to claim that any of the three witnesses we've examined have verified the claims being made, but if that witness has refused to make a clear statement of confirmation, we can only assume that the assertions have yet to be proposed. I could publish until the end of the world that Charles Manson is innocent of all the crimes he has been convicted of, and that the body of this claim has been confirmed by the Speaker of the House in Washington, DC, but if the Speaker refuses to discuss the matter or state for the record that the claim is truthful and accurate, than that confirmation has not been presented. In addition, any claims that an individual has "reported witnessing the UFOs", when there were no eye-witnesses to the alleged incident, and no specific validation presented by a "witness", we can only assume that there were no reports regarding UFOs. In this case, credible witnesses have stated outright that the incident did not occur, and that no UFOs in the proximity of the alleged missile failures were ever reported, investigated, or acknowledged until Robert Salas did so in the year 2000, over thirty years after the fact. Add this to contemporary documentation refuting these claims (the FTD memo clarifying the investigation of the Belt, Montana sighting as conducted by Col. Lewis Chase), and the probability that deceit has been incorporated into their assertions increases dramatically. After all, if these Oscar Flight incident claims are true, the investigation of the incident must have been completely neglected by the entire chain of command, a censurable act contrary to written orders and one that would have demanded an end to many Air Force careers in response. The plain fact that no disciplinary actions were even conceived, let alone carried through with leads us to only one inescapable conclusion: there was no full flight failure of missiles at Oscar Flight, and there was no UFO responsible for it, or even reported. It's a complete fiction and nothing more.

James Carlson

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.247.70.229 (talk) 09:16, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Too long, Didn't read, I'm afraid. Can you clarify and shorten at all? Mdann52 (talk) 09:40, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

No, I cannot. Rather, I refuse to do so. Do you have any idea how much effort I've already put into presenting a complete record of the evidence with references and links so you people would have the full story? I've given you everything you have asked for with complete references of salient points, and now you say you're too lazy to examine it? I have yet to come across anybody associated with Wikipedia who has any concern at all that a complete fiction has been published as a fact. You people didn't even bother to read the references used to support the claims made, for God's sake, because if you had, you would have recognized that very little of it supports the case in question.

The text you've added to the general article on Malmstrom AFB starts with the assumption that ten missiles at Oscar Flight failed on March 24, 1967, and yet nobody has EVER presented any evidence to support such an assertion. Only ONE witness has ever made such a claim, and his commander, who was in the same capsule with him the entire time, insists that he is wrong! And yet, that commander is actually listed as one of the witnesses supporting the crap you people have published, even though he insists that only four missiles at the most failed. He also says that he doesn't remember the date, nor does he remember anything at all about a UFO! The USAF has no record of such missiles failing, and to date insists that throughout the 1960s and 1970s there was only one full flight failure of missiles, and it wasn't at Oscar Flight, nor was it on March 24, 1967. What they have documented, however, is the fact that there were no equipment failures or malfunctions at all on March 24, 1967 -- the same date that your article now states that an entire flight of ten missiles failed mysteriously while a UFO nobody actually witnessed, reported, or investigated was floating overhead. Now I've spoken to a dozen ex-missileers who were at Malmstrom AFB at the time, and not one of them believes anything such as you've reported actually took place, and we didn't even scratch the surface of the UFO issue! The fact that nobody at Wikipedia has evinced any real concern about this no longer surprises me, given that the only editor to respond seems to think that examining the evidence isn't worth the effort, because there's too goddamn much of it!

I don't know why I should be so surprised. After all, on nearly every single page I've taken the time to look it, it states "Encyclopedic content must be verifiable", and had anybody at all bothered to try and verify anything in the single paragraph that's now been given a home under the heading "Malmstrom AFB", you would have figured out a long time ago that nothing in it could be verified by anybody. Everybody keeps telling me that Wikipedia can be edited by the public if there is sufficient cause, and if that cause is properly presented with full references and links. Well, I did that, and my "editing" was rejected by people who have admitted that they refused to examine the materials presented. As a result, I am no longer involved in the "process" your system has engendered, primarily because it has been made very evident to me that nothing in it will work properly, as it's expected to, unless references and resources are examined. Unfortunately, the only editor thus far to admit a personal role in the mere possibility of examination seems to have found the task too taxing to even begin. I don't know why I should be so surprised. After all, the offending paragraph seems to have been validated by a bunch of people who never actually examined the references used to support the claims in the first place.

Here's an interesting conclusion for the record: in regard to that cute little mantra "Encyclopedic content must be verifiable", I would think a redefinition of terms might be appropriate. Somewhere between the little burbs of what-you-want and what-you've-got, a dictionary or two has been mislaid. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.247.70.229 (talk) 19:17, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

It is an awfully long text, and I have not read it myself either. What I have done though is to add some formatting that will break it up visually, without compromising coherence or otherwise integrity I believe. I hope this will give an additional incentive to Mdann52 and other editors to commence a dialog with James Carlson. __meco (talk) 12:07, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Question

How can I find out who submitted the original Echo Flight and Oscar Flight articles for inclusion in Wikipedia? I have my suspicions, but I would like to have them confirmed, so any information you can provide would be most helpful. If you won't divulge that information, I'd like to ask whether or not you have a formal, enforced policy of anonymity, and if so, why do you have such a policy at an admittedly open, publically accessible reservoir of knowledge?

Thank you, James Carlson — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.247.70.229 (talk) 16:50, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

I don't see any articles called Echo Flight or Oscar Flight, not even deleted ones - are you referring to articles with different names? But on deleted articles, deleted information can only be seen by admins, and admins are not allowed to share deleted information publicly - there are some legal reasons, though I don't know the full details. Regarding anonymity, Wikipedia allows anyone to edit without providing any personally identifying information - it's not so much an "enforced policy of anonymity" as the absence of an enforced policy of identity. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 17:58, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Regarding "Help" request

There were two associated articles: "Oscar Flight UFO/Missile Incident" at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Flight_UFO/Missile_Incident and "Echo Flight UFO/Missile Incident" at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echo_Flight_UFO/Missile_Incident. The Echo Flight article has been deleted. One element of the Oscar Flight article was judged worthy of being merged with the general article on Malmstrom AFB. My reference was to the subject of the articles, not title. This is why I worded it as I did. I wrote "who submitted the original Echo Flight and Oscar Flight articles" instead of "who submitted 'Oscar Flight UFO/Missile Incident' and 'Echo Flight UFO/Missile Incident".

In any case, you answered my question, so thank you. Please note as well the "Help" request associated with "Complete refutation of Oscar Flight UFO claims" above.

James Carlson — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.247.70.229 (talk) 21:28, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Oscar Flight paragraph deleted as provably false, and completely unverified or confirmed

For assessment of cause justifying the deletion, please note "Complete refutation of Oscar Flight UFO claims" above, including references and links. There is no evidence or verification of the claims addressed in the offending paragraph, and there are numerous verified and completely confirmed points of fact establishing the falsity of the claims made in the offending paragraph. The paragraph is completely false and should remain deleted.

James Carlson

For the sake of a full record and to provide necessary clarity in regard to the "talk" assessments and what has actually been published under the Malmstrom AFB content heading "Alleged UFO incident", I want to make clear that the extensive additions I have made to the section above were adopted in order to correct the numerous errors made in the original text. I was of the opinion, as the above discussions make evident, that the best solution to the addition of the offending paragraph to this general article on the topic of Malmstrom AFB was to delete the paragraph entirely. As a result of conversations with Wikipedia editors, I have since reached the conclusion that this is a difficult task to undertake given the standards currently in place at Wikipedia -- standards that I may not agree with, but that I do understand a bit more. In any case, simply modifying the original text in order to correct the many errors in fact that were contained therein has turned out to be a much easier task, and the result is every bit as truthful and satisfactory as deleting the original would have been.

I no longer have any objections to the content of the Malmstrom AFB article.

James Carlson

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.247.70.229 (talk) 05:06, 29 August 2012 (UTC)