In October of 1975, Loring Air Force Base in Maine was invaded by UFOs.
When you read about current sightings of what are now officially called UAPs (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena), it's easy to blame them on drones. Fact is, there are plenty of innovative unmanned craft in our skies. They may be scary because of whose side they are on, or what weapons or surveillance abilities they carry, but they aren't necessarily extraterrestrial in origin.
That's what makes earlier sightings so compelling: in the Fall of 1975, over the vast, isolated flats of northern Maine's Aroostook County, those strange lights in the sky couldn't be drones. Drones didn't exist.
When security personnel at Loring Air Force Base, which occupied this massive plateau miles from the nearest town, saw something flying low over the northern perimeter, there was no obvious explanation.
Yet that's what happened at 7:45pm on October 27. Staff Sergeant Danny Lewis was on his nightly patrol of the munitions storage area when he saw the strange object flying in the sky. He figured it was about 300 feet from the ground, which made it an immediate security risk. The thing had a red light which Lewis assumed was for navigation, along with a white strobe light.
Lewis wasn't imaging it. Staff Sergeant James Sampley was on duty in the control tower and saw it, too. The radar caught it, thirteen miles east-northeast of the base. Assuming it was a plane or a helicopter off course, Sampley attempted to contact it and let it know it was entering restricted air space.
At the time, Loring Air Force Base wasn't just another of the nearly 200 bases in the U.S. It was among the most sensitive and highest security bases we had. It was home to Strategic Air Command, the branch of the Air Force responsible for the nation's nuclear deterrent. As part of that role, Loring housed facilities for the storage, assembly, and potentially deployment of nuclear weapons. Its airfields hid B-52 bombers with nuclear capabilities. So when Sgt. Sampley attempted to tell the incoming craft it was in restricted air space, it was more than a polite warning. This was a matter of national security.
He tried all military and civilian communication bands. Whoever was flying the craft did not respond. Instead, they circled the base, coming within 300 feet of the nuclear storage area. This gave Lewis no choice. He notified the Command Post of the 42nd Bomb Wing that the base had been penetrated by an unknown craft. The base was put on major alert status. The craft was tracked as it circled for an astounding forty-five minutes more, before it suddenly disappeared from radar.
No one had any idea where it went.
But the incident wasn't buried or kept secret. Quite the opposite. Priority messages were sent to the National Military Command enter in Washington D.C., the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, the USAF Forward Operations Division at Fort Richie, Maryland, and Strategic Air Command Headquarters. A UFO had made an appearance, and the commanders at Loring wanted everyone to be aware.
And it didn't end there.
The next night multiple security personnel witnessed the craft approaching the base at 3,000 feet. At first it stayed miles away, seen intermittently over the course of a tense hour. Then it got close, at one point appearing 150 feet over the runway. A crew chief for one of the B52 bombers reported the object looked like a stretched out football. The thing hovered impossibly making no noise, with no visible windows or doors or, disturbingly, any engines or propellors to keep it in the air. It got close enough that the bomber crew was able to estimate it was "four car lengths" in size.
Again, the lights on the craft went out and the UFO disappeared. And again, the base commander reported the incident to all the same authorities.
Turns out, those authorities were getting the same report from other sensitive military bases. Wurtsmith Air Force Base in Michigan reported bright, disk-shaped objects observed both visually and on radar. Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana reported UAPs hovering near missile launch facilities. Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota reported UAP sightings. Finally, a NORAD radar station in Ontario reported tracking UAPs as they flew dangerously close. All of these incidents were part of a 1975 invasion by, well, we don't know what.
When reporters asked the Secretary of the Air Force about the incidents at the time, he confirmed the UAPs were never identified as helicopters, despite being able to hover. And they had no identifiable markings.
This is exactly the kind of incident the public expected would be addressed when the AARO (All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office) Historical Report was released in March of 2024. AARO, of course, is the U.S. Department of Defense office established in 2022 to investigate and resolve UAP (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena) reports. The Historical Report was meant to review the entire historical record of UAP incidents and finally let the public know the truth. You'd be right to expect it would include the legendary sightings in 1975, involving close encounters with our nuclear arsenal.
But it does not.
The AARO report offers no explanation for the incidents at Loring, or any of the Air Force Bases reporting visits from UFOs that year. According to the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies, there were 25 sightings in all.
Why would these incidents remain unexplained? There's always the obvious: the government has the explanation, and they really just don't want to tell us.