Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon: “Our jets scramble after UFOs” – Toronto Star – 1979

Ever since I/we saw an enormous Unidentified Aerial Object over 30 years ago (Read About it Here) just west of Toronto in the Mississauga area, I've been trying to find the original article to no avail. These words were in the headline, "Dozens of Mississauga residences reported a UFO as big as a football field". If anyone can find this newspaper report, please let me know. It would be greatly appreciated.


However, I did find this article on the main page of the Toronto Star from 1979, "Our jets scramble after UFOs" The full article is just below this image. Enjoy.



Toronto, Ontario, STAR, 20 January 1979


Our jets scramble after UFOs
By Joe Hall
Toronto Star

WASHINGTON - Canadian jet fighters "scrambled" at least twice in one week in an attempt to intercept unidentified flying objects, it was confirmed last night.
The incidents were revealed in previously top-secret documents released in Washington by the U.S. Air Force and the defence department. They were confirmed by a National Research Council official in Ottawa.
The U.S. and Canadian reports said the UFOs were seen near a top-secret Canadian military installation and hovering over a number of nuclear missile launch sites and bomber bases in the United States.
U.S. and Canadian military personnel reported mysterious craft visiting the North American Air Defence Command (Norad) base at North Bay, Ont., and defence bases along the Canadian border in Montana, Michigan and Maine, the records show.

On radar

The sightings, both visually and on radar, at North Bay were described by Dr. Bruce McIntosh of the National Research Council's Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics in Ottawa.
All the sightings were reported in the last few days of October and first few weeks of November, 1975.
The U.S. government records describe the intruders variously as helicopters, aircraft, unknown entities and brightly lighted, fast-moving vehicles that hovered over nuclear weapons storage areas and evaded all pursuit efforts.
The U.S. air force sent fighter planes and airborne command planes aloft on unsuccessful pursuit missions. The released records do not indicate whether the fighters fired on the intruders.
McIntosh said that on the night of Nov. 5, 1975, apparent targets were spotted on the radar at North Bay - part of a chain of command centres on permanent alert to warn of air attacks on North America.
Canadian interceptors were scrambled later that morning when the targets remained on the radar screen. Nothing was found, McIntosh said.
The U.S. records show that several sightings were made in the same period at Loring Air Force base in Maine of objects hovering over the weapons area.
Radar and visual sightings were made and a KC-135 tanker plane took off to oversee pursuit efforts by a helicopter from the Maine National Guard.
The object disappeared toward the Canadian border where Canadian jets were waiting on alert, the records show.
There was no indication in the records that the Canadian planes spotted any craft.
McIntosh's office gets about 200 UFO reports a year from across the country. His planetary sciences office is concerned primarily with sightings of meteors but a UFO file has been kept since 1962.

Lack of evidence

McIntosh says he is not a believer in space ships piloted by alien beings "because there is just not enough concrete evidence."
"If I were a gambling man, I would not place any money on it. But there are lots of things we cannot explain. I would be the happiest guy in the world if one landed in my backyard. Now that would be proof positive."
The U.S. records show that two days after the North Bay incident, at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, Capt. Thomas O'Brien was coming off duty as a missile launch officer when, he said, an aircraft resembling a helicopter approached the silo area.
He and his deputy heard what they thought was a helicopter rotor over the building where they were resting.
The unidentified deputy looked out the window and saw "the silhouette of a large aircraft hovering about 10 to 15 feet above the ground" and about 25 feet from the launch-area fence.
He reported seeing red and white lights on the front, a white light on the bottom and another on the rear.
Darkness prevented him from seeing markings or personnel on the craft which left after a minute or so of hovering.

Lights reported

Military crews at two other nearby launch facilities reported moving lights in the air on the same evening.
McIntosh said one explanation for whatever was spotted on the North Bay radar was that on a clear night a high density of ice crystal layers in the sky could reflect radar beams onto aircraft over the horizon, not normally picked up on radar.
"I looked at the situation at the time - not very thoroughly I must admit - and I talked to the officer on duty at NORAD and satisfied myself that it was a coincidence (the radar sightings) and the UFO," McIntosh reported.
Venus at some times in the year is 10 times brighter than any star and often seems out of place, "sticking out like a sore thumb," McIntosh said.
Having seen targets on the radar, the officer probably went outside expecting to see something in the sky, he added.
Defence department officials in Washington said yesterday that formal investigation of unidentified flying objects ended in 1969 and there are no plans to re-start the probe, which went under the code name Operation Blue Book.

By T. Blank
My Official UAP Report Including My Drawings
I’ve Seen Through The Looking Glass, Outside The Fishbowl
GoogleUFOReports.com