Every so often since they set up the page, I take a peek at the [NARA Records Related to UAP](https://www.archives.gov/research/topics/uaps) to see if there’s any new additions, or to peruse already-released records that I might’ve glossed over. This one might have been there before, but it just caught my eye this morning and I figured I’d share.
The September 3, 1965 [Incident at Exeter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exeter_incident) isn’t a new or unknown case, but 59 years later, we don’t, in my opinion, have a satisfactory explanation for it.
[The official Memorandum for the Record from Air Defense Command, Ent AFB, dated 8 September, 1965, can be found here.](https://catalog.archives.gov/id/311003081)
There were four notable witnesses to this event:
**An unidentified woman:**
>1230am: reported to Exeter police she was “chased” by an unidentified object
**Norman Muscarello** – perhaps the most publicized witness, who spoke about it for years after and stuck to his story until his death in 2003, most often associated with this case:
>0200am: reportedly was hitchhiking to Exeter on Route 101 when the UFOB came close enough to him \[…\] so as for Muscarello to dodge and fall to the ground so as not to be struck. Object reportedly featured flashing and “zig-zagging” red lights without noise.
**Police officers Eugene Bertrand and David Hunt:**
>0200am: Bertrand reportedly witnessed a bright hovering object, from a 1/4 mile distance, that hovered very close above a house. Object displayed flashing red lights of high intensity in a diagonal plane.
>0230am/0300am: Hunt and Bertrand, responding to a local UFOB sighting call, came upon “the scene” and as they arrived the UFOB also arrived. Both patrolmen were said to have simultaneously observed the UFOB for about 15 to 20 seconds. UFOB was noiseless, of bright intensity, and featured blinking red lights in the diagonal plane. It moved away at extremely fast speed.
Muscarello was allegedly [‘hushed up’ by AF investigators following the event](https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1cjvj1j/in_1965_an_18year_old_norman_muscarello_spotted_a/).
Initially, assessments from the Air Force/Blue Book and the Pentagon were conflicting. The press was told by the Pentagon that “the three men had seen ‘nothing more than stars and planets twinkling … owing to a temperature inversion'”. Blue Book attributed the sighting to planes from NORAD training mission, Operation Big Blast. The two Exeter police officers continued writing letters to the Blue Book office, reiterating that their sighting took place after the Big Blast exercise was over, that what they observed had no wings or tail and made no noise. They received [a response in 1966 from Lt. Col. John Spaulding](https://archive.org/details/1965-09-9373271-Exeter-NewHampshire/page/n39/mode/1up) that said, based on the additional information provided and sent to the office at Wright-Patterson, they were unable to identify the object they observed.
Decades later, in 2011, Skeptical Inquirer published a[ piece from Joe Nickell and retired AF Major James McGaha](https://skepticalinquirer.org/2011/11/exeter-incident-solved-a-classic-ufo-case-forty-five-years-cold/) proposing that the witnesses had seen planes being refueled in flight by a KC-97 tanker. While their analysis has some fair points, and it’s very possible there were still planes in in their after the ‘conclusion’ of Operation Big Blast, it still fails to adequately explain away this case in the way they claim it does, IMO. Especially when witness, police officer David Hunt, noted to a journalist that “You could tell the difference” between the UFO and the bomber, “there was no comparison.” Conveniently, the SI article was published just months after Hunt, the last surviving witness to the incident, had passed away.
[An additional HuffPo article reflecting on the incident, also published in 2011.](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/exeter-new-hampshire-ufo-sighting_n_951064)
Just thought I’d share some info on this historical sighting in light of stumbling upon the memo in the NARA records this morning, for those unfamiliar with it.
by stranj_tymes