by Charles Lear
Throughout modern UFO history, there have been periods when a large number of reports have come from one area. These were termed UFO “flaps” by Air Force UFO investigators working for Project Blue Book. According to former Project Blue Book Director
in his 1956 book “The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects,” in Air Force parlance, a flap was a state of confusion just below panic that could be brought on by any number of things. This week, we’ll look at a 1965 flap in the Virginia area that involved reported EM effects, creatures, and armed citizens ready to defend the planet.
Newspaper clippings and comments by investigators about the events can be found at the UFO History Group website. The flap actually began in 1964 with the December 21st sighting by Harrisonburg, Virginia, gunsmith Horace Burns. According to the report, he was driving on Route 250 near Fishersville when he saw a huge metallic object in the sky coming from the north. As it landed in a field to his right, his car stalled, and he drifted to a stop.
Burns described the object as shaped like a beehive, 125 ft in diameter, and 80 ft tall. He observed it as it rested for 60 to 90 seconds and then rose up and flew away to the northeast. He was able to restart his car and drive home.
Burns contacted the UFO Investigators Club at Eastern Mennonite College. Club President Ernest Gehman, who was a professor at the College and a member of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, checked the area with a Geiger counter and claimed to have found heavy radioactivity. He also reported that homeowners in the area had complained to the Virginia Electric and Power Co. that their radios and televisions stopped working for several minutes and that their lights dimmed.
Gehman contacted Project Blue book, and Sergeants David Moody and Harold Jones were sent to investigate. They arrived on January 12, 1965, interviewed Burns, and the written report states that he “exhibited no indications of suffering from mental disorders.” They also reported that there was no trace of radiation at the site.
Within a month, the local papers were reporting that many area residents had claimed to have had sightings. A January 18, 1965 article headlined “Flying Saucer Reports: To Believe Or Not To Believe” reports that all books on UFOs had been checked out of both the Staunton and Waynesboro public libraries and that “there is a long waiting list for them.” In an article headlined “Air Force Denies Reports of UFO Sighting in the State” in the January 21, 1965 Newport News Times-Herald, reporter Virginia Biggins wrote that a Pentagon spokesperson stated that they had no records of any report in the area. The article then goes on to describe several sightings and the Air Force investigation of Burns’s sighting.
Another case of cars stalling during a UFO sighting was described in an article titled, “UFO’s Back At Full Tilt” in the January 25, 1965 Times-Herald. Two men in separate cars driving near Williamsburg reported seeing an aluminum colored object, shaped like an upside down ice cream cone, 75 ft above the ground. According to them, their car engines stopped when the object was in sight and restarted as soon as it left.
A dramatic encounter that was investigated by NICAP and described in books was reported to have occurred on January 19, 1965. According to an account on the NICAP website, William Blackburn was chopping wood for some archers at the Augusta County Archery Club near Brand’s Flats, Virginia, when he spotted two objects in the sky. The smaller of the two objects descended and landed about 18 yards from the witness. Three beings around 3 feet tall and dressed in shiny clothes came out of the craft and approached Blackburn to within 12 yards. According to him, their eyes “seemed to look through you.”
Blackburn was frozen in fright holding his double-edged axe when the beings made some sounds that were unintelligible. They then returned to the craft and the craft rose up and “disappeared.”
NICAP investigator Richard Hall went to interview Blackburn after his account appeared in the local press. In an article headlined, “UFO Spotter Held Silenced” in the February 4, 1965 Richmond Times-Dispatch, Hall is quoted as saying that Blackburn had been “instructed explicitly not to say anything and it was suggested strongly that some federal authority had told him this.”
There was another humanoid sighting in the form of a “small green man” reported by three boys on January 26, 1965. According to an Associated Press article in the January 29, Washington, D.C. Evening Star headlined “It’s Closed Season On Little Green Men,” Augusta County Sheriff John E. Kent received complaints that area residents were arming themselves and going out to hunt the creature down. Kent told the reporter that the situation had gotten out of hand and that it was “now dangerous to county residents.” He vowed that anyone out armed with no good reason would “be dealt with according to the law.” He added that, if there really were creatures from outer space in the area, “Who’s got a right to mow them down?” The article ends with the news that a local resident had come forward and admitted that he was attempting to play a joke on a neighbor and that he was, in fact, the “little green man.”
Despite the silliness, a report that got some serious attention was that of two NASA engineers, former Air Force Major John Nayadley and A. G. Crimmins, Jr., both of whom worked at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. Despite being a former Air Force officer, Nayadley reported his sighting to the Newport News, Virginia Daily Press, while Crimmons, Jr. reported his to Langley AFB. The Daily Press ran the story the following day on January 28, 1965. According to the article, Nayadley reported seeing a soundless object with lights around its rim maneuvering near his house in Hampton, Virginia.
Larry Bryant investigated and wrote about it in the June 1968 issue of Flying Saucers. According to him, he talked to Nayadley and found out that his neighbor, Crimmins, Jr., had a sighting near the same time. He contacted Crimmins, Jr. and Crimmins, Jr. told him that he watched an object land on Plum Island, which was an old AF bombing range.
Bryant wrote that he was concerned that no one from the Air Force had contacted Nayadley and that he, Bryant, wrote a letter to Virginia Senator Harry F. Byrd. Byrd wrote back saying that he “communicated” with the Secretary of the Air Force regarding numerous sightings and would present the matter to his colleagues in the Senate Armed Services Committee. Bryant eventually received a reply to his enquiries to the Air Force saying that Crimmins, Jr. had seen a Navy helicopter.
An article in the NICAP March-April 1965 U.F.O. Investigator describes the sightings by the two NASA engineers and the Air Force response when the story came out in the Daily Press. According to the article, the head of Project Blue Book, Major Hector Quintanilla, went to Virginia on a debunking tour. It’s reported the Quintanilla “combined ridicule, evasion or denial of documented facts and claimed not a single UFO report had ever been proved true.”
It seems the Air Force did their best to downplay the Virginia sightings and perhaps that’s why this flap is somewhat forgotten. The very next year, thanks to a remark by Blue Book scientific consultant J. Allen Hynek that some sightings during a flap in Michigan might have been of swamp gas, the Air Force would be dragged into congress and asked to explain themselves.