Incident · 2 May 1957 · Askania Site 4, Edwards Air Force Base, California
Edwards AFB Askania photographs
Also known as Edwards 1957, Gordon Cooper Edwards UFO, Blue Book case 4715
Partly explained. Edwards said in 1957 that a tracked weather balloon passed at the reported time and bearings and that the photos showed only small white specks; the cameramen never accepted it, and Brad Sparks says an analysis in the Blue Book file rejects the balloon. (source)
On the morning of 2 May 1957 (3 May in McDonald's account), two Askania cinetheodolite operators at Edwards Air Force Base, James Bittick and John Gettys, saw a golden, domed disc as they reached Askania Site 4 on the test range. They radioed their range director, Frank Baker, who told them to shoot manually since no other station was manned for triangulation, and they took a series of photographs as the object moved off. Base authorities took the photos, and the cameramen were told that day that they had seen a weather balloon distorted by the desert air, which they rejected. The case was reported in the Los Angeles Times and on the wire services that month and went to Project Blue Book as case 4715.
The Air Force's position, set out by the Edwards information office in June 1957, was that a weather balloon tracked with precision instruments passed at the time and bearings the men reported, and that the photos showed only small white specks. The physicist James McDonald interviewed both men and Baker and presented the case to the 1968 House symposium without that explanation; the researcher Brad Sparks says an analysis in the Blue Book file itself rejects the balloon. The case is best known through the astronaut Gordon Cooper, then a test pilot at Edwards, who from the late 1970s said he had sent the crew out, that they filmed a saucer landing on three legs and that the film vanished into the Pentagon. The witnesses describe no landing; Gettys told the sceptic James Oberg he did not think Cooper ever saw the object, Sparks says the crew had never heard of him, and Cooper himself said in 1978 that it was “all second hand evidence”. The photographs went to Blue Book, and two were published in 1976.
Sources: McDonald (1968) · Sparks (NICAP) · Oberg (archived) · Wikipedia — Gordon Cooper
Facts and claims
- claimed Askania camera operators James D. Bittick and John R. Gettys Jr. photographed a golden, domed disc as they reached Askania Site 4 at Edwards; McDonald interviewed both and their range director Frank E. Baker, and all three said the shots taken at closer range were very sharp. — James E. McDonald Source: project1947.com (archived)
- claimed The cameramen were told later that day that they had seen a weather balloon distorted by desert atmospheric effects, an explanation neither accepted; an Edwards spokesman told the Los Angeles Times that “This desert air does crazy things.” — James E. McDonald Source: project1947.com (archived)
- claimed In June 1957 Maj. Robert F. Spence of the Edwards information office wrote that the object was “conclusively identified as a balloon” from a weather unit a few miles west, tracked with precision recording devices past the observers at almost the precise time, bearings, elevations and speed they reported, and that the photographs showed “small white specks”. Source: web.archive.org
- claimed Brad Sparks gives the date as 2 May 1957 and the time as 6:55 a.m., Blue Book case 4715; he says an analysis by a Col. Klein in the Blue Book file rejects the balloon explanation on the basis of the balloon's known tracking, and that the camera crew and their boss had never heard of Gordon Cooper. Source: nicap.org (archived)
- claimed Gordon Cooper said from the late 1970s that he had sent the camera crew out, that they filmed a saucer landing on three legs 50 yards away, and that he sent the film to the Pentagon. — Gordon Cooper Source: en.wikipedia.org (archived)
- claimed Asked about the Edwards case in a 1978 interview for OMNI, Cooper said: “I didn't get to see anything personally, it was all second hand evidence really.” — Gordon Cooper Source: web.archive.org
- claimed James Oberg, who interviewed Gettys and the officer who did the original Blue Book interviews, former Capt. Hubert Davis, concluded that the object never landed, that Cooper had no role, and that the photographs went to Blue Book; two appear in Brad Steiger's Project Blue Book (1976). Gettys told him in 1982: “I am amazed that Gordon Cooper said the object landed -- as far as I know, he never even saw it.” Source: web.archive.org
Connected files
Books
- Leap of Faith: An Astronaut's Journey into the Unknown (subject of) — Cooper's account of the 1957 Edwards photographs, which he says showed a landing
People
- James E. McDonald (investigated by) — His Case 41 for the 1968 House symposium, from interviews with both cameramen and their range director
- Gordon Cooper (reported by) — Cooper later claimed the camera crew filmed a saucer landing; the crew and their boss said they never heard of him
Programs
- Project Blue Book (investigated by) — Case 4715
Videos
- Christopher Mellon on the Joe Rogan Experience (clip, 2021) (discussed in)
Mentioned in this file
- Department of War (Department of Defense) (Organization)
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