Message posted by gary on September 08, 2001 at 11:40:37 PST:
Joerg did a good job describing what happened at the base, so let me attempt to describe the bombing run at Indian Springs. The bombing took place around 10pm, so obviously all we could see were lights. First we saw the "counter measures" flares that are used to "distract" heat seeking missiles. After a few sets of counter-measure flares, the illumination flares were released. These flares lasted several minutes (perhaps 5 or so) and were very stationary. Joerg was able to find one with the telescope. You could see the smoke rising from the flare. The illumination flares were done in pairs with considerable seperation so as to light a large area on the ground. When the bombs were dropped, we could see the sky light up, showing the mountain ranges in silhouette. The bombing was very far away, so no sound was heard. There were several of these bombing runs, i.e. you would see the pair of illumination flares, then the glow causes by the bombs, then more flares, bombs, etc. It reminded me a bit of watching Desert Storm video from CNN. You can imagine how such lights in the sky could lead to UFO sightings. I attempted to photograph the illumination flares with the camera on a tripod. Of course, if I held the camera in my hand and shaked it around a bit, I could get a photo of strange lights in the sky making impossible maneuvers and sell the photo to the National Enquirer.
There were a few sets of these flares released, including one interesting event where a plane was obviously climbing rapidly and releasing flares, so that there were a trail of perhaps six flares in a near vertical stack.
In Reply to: Live Webcast from Tikaboo and Area 51 test flight posted by Joerg (Webmaster) on September 07, 2001 at 14:43:37 PST:
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