Hi folks,
Here's an 'on this day in history' blog post covering the Phoenix Lights event in 1997. I like to hark back to historical events on the day they happened, it connects us with our past...and who doesn't love a real-life X-File?!
There have been numerous and varied UFO sightings and recorded incidents throughout time, many in the last decades, some are well documented, however few are witnessed by huge groups of people at the same time. But on the evening of March 13th 1997 that is exactly what happened, thousands of people saw unidentifiable lights in the skies over Arizona and Nevada.
The Phoenix Lights were two separate events, the first occurring roughly between 7.30pm and 8.45pm which featured a huge, triangular or V-shaped formation of lights - the number of which varies depending on individual reports. The lights were said to “cruise across the sky” from southwest Nevada, over Phoenix, Tucson and towards southeast Arizona. The second event happened a bit later that evening with reports at around 9.15pm onwards, this set of sightings involved a line of stationary, glowing orb-shaped objects which appeared in the sky over the Sierra Estrella mountain range.
One famous witness of the lights, actor Kurt Russell was flying in to land at Phoenix Sky Harbour International Airport when he saw the V-formation and reported it to air traffic control. However, despite thousands of such reports, no official investigation was ever conducted. The reason so many witnesses saw the Phoenix Lights is due to the fact it was a clear night with no moon, and people were already watching the skies as the Hale-Bopp Comet was visible at the time.
The widely accepted explanation (by sceptics and officials) is that the lights were from military operations being carried out that evening. The first V-shaped formation of lights was said to be a group of A-10 Thunderbolt jets flying in formation as part of pilot training programme called ‘Operation Snowbird’, this does make sense, although the statements of some witnesses describing a ‘set-square’ type shape, solid, with lights imbedded into it should not be discounted. The second sighting of the stationary orbs was put down to a flare-drop exercise from another set of A-10 jets.
Being a more recent sighting, there is quite a lot of decent photography and video footage from that night in 1997, a search on Youtube will bring plenty of results for example. Whether it was planes, flares or something else, it is always worth glancing up at the night sky in case a spectacle is occurring above our heads!