Case · C-036

Loring 1975: an unidentified aircraft over the nuclear weapons storage area

Loring Air Force Base, Maine · United States · Oct 27, 1975 – Oct 28, 1975

In flight Military witnesses Radar

What happened

On October 27, security personnel saw a low-flying aircraft, with a red light and a white strobe light, approach the nuclear weapons storage area, while the tower radar tracked, 10–13 miles to the northeast, an unknown aircraft that did not respond to calls and either moved off toward Canada or dropped below radar coverage. The base went on alert, National Guard helicopters were unable to identify it, and on October 28 an aircraft without lights returned over the base; other episodes were reported in the following days, while similar intrusions were being reported from Wurtsmith (Michigan) and then from Malmstrom and Minot. The messages from the base and from the OSI to the National Military Command Center were obtained through FOIA and made public by the press in 1979; the documents were not found online in an official archive in this search.

Proposed explanation

In the official messages the intruder is described as an unidentified helicopter; according to the New York Times (1979), subsequent Air Force investigations did not identify its cause. Some former service members have since described a silent, luminous object that is difficult to reconcile with a helicopter. The skeptical journalist Philip J. Klass (UFOs: The Public Deceived, 1983) attributed the reports of autumn 1975 over Strategic Air Command bases, in the United States and Canada, to stars and planets, a private helicopter and perhaps meteors or birds, noting that they began after the broadcast, on October 20, 1975, of the NBC film about the alleged abduction of the Hills; the review consulted does not specify which explanation applies to Loring.

Official investigation

U.S. Air Force (Strategic Air Command, Office of Special Investigations), National Military Command Center, NORAD

Sources

1. The War Zone, Brett Tingley – the 1975 intrusions over the Loring base (2020) (press)
2. Patrick Gross – the 1975 reports at Strategic Air Command bases, with excerpts from the documents (analysis)
3. Skeptical Inquirer (Winter 1983-84), review of Philip J. Klass's book “UFOs: The Public Deceived” (Prometheus, 1983) (analysis, skeptical)

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