NUFORC Sighting 31179

Occurred: 2003-08-30 23:55 Local
Reported: 2003-09-03 08:34 Pacific
Duration: 5 mins.
No of observers: 10

Location: McGregor, MN, USA

Shape: Other
Characteristics: Lights on object, Aircraft nearby

Large V shaped aircfaft slowly flying overhead while other planes scramble to catch up.

The craft in question came out from behind the tree line above and out in front of us heading NNE. If I was to hold my fingers out at arms length and about 2 1/2 inches apart, that would be about the size it appeared in the sky. The sound was a low rumble like you would hear from a jet liner going over, except that the sound was coming directly from the source, as opposed to trailing the aircraft, which makes me think that it wasn’t very high in the sky, but yet I would estimate it at between one and two miles. It turned to the east and continued on until it was out of sight. As far as the shape, I would say it was like a B2 bomber but would have had to have been bigger. A little before we saw this my brother and nephew had noticed a couple smaller aircraft flying around to the north of the lake. As the big one turned to head east, the two screamed across the sky and met up with it a ways out. We could not hear the smaller planes so they must have been pretty high up. On a normal night we may only see one to four planes on average, and knowing how slow they move across the sky I thought that the two planes must be jet fighters because they crossed the sky quickly. Within an hour later 2 smaller planes came back from the east and we watched them thinking that it may be the same two that had caught up and escorted the big one. They had made a couple of turns, which again made me think that they were not commercial planes ( again, what we normally see up there are commercial planes that fly high over head in a perfectly straight line.) Anyway then we heard planes overhead and saw four planes flying in "V" formation and trying to follow the same route as the big craft flew. The formation looked like they were trying to make it look like it was what we saw earlier, but was obviously not. After a while and seeing a few more planes jetting around the sky I went to bed, but was told that everyone that stayed up saw one more display of the "V" formation a little later.

A few key points to myself are.

1) We normally will only see one to three planes per night. We sit out at the campfire every weekend looking up at the stars and counting satellites, so it’s not like we don’t look up. On this night we saw in excess of 20 planes, all after 11:45 p.m.

2) The big craft appeared to be flying too slowly for something that big.

3) The fighters that screamed across the sky to intercept or escort.

A couple of questions.

1) What was this large craft? 2) Would the airforce admit to flying "training exercises" or anything else? 3) Is it possible that this large craft was below radar and the other planes were waiting for it to show itself, and we saw it as it was going up and the two smaller craft streaked toward it when they picked it up again.

Lastly I would like to mention one thing that may have nothing to do with this but may be worth mentioning. About an hour earlier than the sighting of the big craft, we heard loud commotion back in the woods maybe a mile or more that sounded like many coyote’s or wolves howling or fighting. This went on and off for about a half an hour or so and ended shortly before seeing the big craft. These sounds were coming directly in the area of where we saw the craft come from. Probably just a coincidence



NUFORC Note:

The date of the sighting was August 30. We have amended the data above. PD


Posted 2003-09-04

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