Reports of Unidentified Flying Object: Important Sightings in August 1987
Another sensational UFO event took place from August 27 to 31 , 1987. Although this story does not belong to 1988 news, there was a recurrence of it on January 22, 1988, therefore the following report, from the Journal of UFO Research, is relevant.
From August 27 to 31 , 1987, an unidentified flying object was observed simultaneously in the areas of Jiansu, Zhejiang, Fujian, Anhui, and Jiangxi provinces, with China’s largest industrial city, Shanghai, as center, and also in Beijing, Tianjin (Hebei Province). Many thousands of people were witnesses to the spectacle, including workers, peasants, People’s Liberation Army men, technical engineering specialists, university students, high school students, graduate students, workers in the news media, university students, high school teachers, and so on.
According to incomplete figures, the editorial department of the Journal of UFO Research received 600 eye witness accounts. The reputable news media organization New China News Agency, People s Daily, Literary News, Liberation Daily, New People s Evening News, Zhejiang
Daily, and Shanghai television and radio stations, all re ported this incident from different perspectives.
Shanghai
Zhang Zhengyong, a teacher at Shanghai’s Guanghua High School, reported:
“It was a cloudless sky with excellent visibility on the evening of August 27th. Around 7:55 p.m. , Beijing standard time, an unidentified object flew from the north-west toward the south-east. The flying object was orange, and consisted of a ring of light revolving around an extremely bright focal point. Surrounding it was a hazy glow in the form of a spiral with three twists, spinning in a clockwise motion about once every two seconds. The glow was a pale earthen orange color, and the flying object was noiseless and flying very rapidly, disappearing in probably half a minute . . . “
Wuxi City
Three aviation engineers at Wuxi Aviation Bureau Convalescent Hospital No. 738 reported that af7:57 p.m. , an unidentified object flew across the sky. “At first, it covered a diameter of observation of about 300-400 millimeters,” they said. “It was flying across the sky on a spiral course, leaving a trail of red and orange light behind it. At the center was a circular point of light. “
Hangzhou City
On the evening of August 27, the busy airport was quiet after the 10: 15 p.m. flight had left. Ping Xiaojun, an Air Force air controller, was leaning on the fence outside the control tower, looking into the clear night sky. “Suddenly, I noticed an unusual glowing object hovering about 900 meters from the end of the runway, ” he said. “It was giving off an orange glow. Because of its rather small size and the dazzling brightness of the light, I cannot describe its shape precisely. “
New China News Agency 8/28/87
Our correspondent in Shanghai reports that quite a number of Shanghai residents observed an unidentified flying object yesterday evening. Eyewitness descriptions , of the shape of the object varied. Some said it was a spiral beam of light scattering sparks behind it, some said it appeared to be an oval disc of light, while others said it looked like a comet with a tail shaped like an umbrella.
According to reports, the unidentified flying object was orange, spinning clockwise, and moving rapidly from west to east, with only a few seconds from the time of its appearance to its disappearance. According to another report wired in from Shengsi county, Zhejiang Province, when the UFO flew over that area, the Shengsi county electric generator was suddenly cut off, even though the switch for its turbine was set as normal, and the island was instantly thrown into darkness. The majority of people ‘s wristwatches stopped [Editor’s italics] . Just then, the object, shaped like a coiling snake , was seen to spin across from the north-west toward the south-east. Its trail was as bright as day. Because the electricity was cut off, the majority of military and civilian residents on the island noticed the spectacle .
Air Force Pilot’s Sighting
According to the Liberation Daily of August 30, Mao Xuecheng, an Air Force pilot stationed at Shanghai , pursued a UFO for nearly three minutes on the evening of August 27. As he related to reporters:
“I had orders to fly at 7:35 p.m. on the 27 , and to return to base after completing air patrol duty. As I was approaching the airspace above the Yangtze river, I suddenly observed that ahead of me to the right, above Jiading county, was a very bright, dazzling flying object. I immediately hit the throttle hard and pursued it closely from an angle of 110 degrees at a rate of 900 UFOs in China 1.987-88 141 k.p.h. At that time, the clock was showing a little past 7:57 p.m.
“I observed carefully and noticed that the unidentified object was descending, the focus of light was an orange spot, and the spiral tail it was trailing was also orange. At 7:59 p.m. it went from descending to ascending, and its speed was now much faster than when it had been descending. After 45 more seconds I was unable to keep up with it, so I requested permission to land. “
Following the August 27 incident, a spokesperson for the Chinese Academy of Sciences observatory expressed the following opinion:
“Judging from the shape and mode of movement of the UFO, we may be certain that it was neither an air plane, nor a shooting star, nor a comet. It is also extremely improbable that it was an alien visitor. It is possible that UFOs are man-made flying objects, because they come in many different shapes and sizes, and perhaps while spinning at a height of a few hundred kilometers, they can shine by reflecting sunlight. In addition, we cannot rule out the possibility that UFOs are a natural phenomenon produced by the earth and the air”
James Oberg of NASA was equally convinced that the sightings had a rational explanation. “The UFO which appeared in the sky around Shanghai on the evening of August 27th was actually a large quantity of fuel released by a rocket launched by the Japanese, ” he commented. ”Three hours before the incident, Japan launched an H-1A rocket 600 miles east· of Shanghai, which flew over the Shanghai vicinity twice. ” This explanation was quoted by People ‘s Daily in September, and newspapers everywhere quickly spread it.
The mystery of August 27 appeared to have been solved. ”Was the UFO which appeared on August 27th a carrier rocket launched by Japan? ” the newspapers asked. “Was it mass hallucination? To put it differently, have the UFO phenomena observed all over the world up to now all been discarded carrier rockets or other aerial objects created by human ingenuity, or figments of the imagination? There are different schools of thought on these questions. Investigation and research is continuing, and the controversy is far from finished. “
Lu Feng, in a submission to the Journal of UFO Re search, stated that the Japanese rocket explanation was invalid, for the following reasons: Out of the 112 eyewit ness reports collected from Shanghai, two said they had seen portholes on the object, and several had seen the object stop in mid-air. Most importantly, a pilot with many years experience reported that he saw the object gradually lower an auxiliary object, and from the way the object rose straight up, he further surmised that it was self-propelled. As an afterthought, he added that the way the electricity was suddenly cut off while the generator mechanism was working normally when the object passed through Shengsi County, Zhejiang Province, was a typical case of an electricity blackout when a UFO passes. Many such incidents had occurred throughout the world.
This incident was discussed for months in the Chinese press. Just when discussion was dying down, at 11 :30 p.m. on January 22, 1988, a similar object flew over Shanghai. The sighting lasted half a minute. This time, however, there were not many witnesses. It was seen only in Shanghai and all the events were the same as before except that there was no electricity blackout. Commented Zhang Yunhua of the Shanghai UFO Research Association: “Spiral UFOs over China are not rare. Since 1977, flying objects have passed over a number of provinces on many occasions. There have been three cases when the objects were seen by thousands of people [including the August 27 case] . The first case took place on July 26, 1977, and the second on July 24, 1981″