COMPARISONS WITH ADAMSKI’S INITIAL ENCOUNTER
The description by George Adamski of the ‘man from Venus’ he claims to have encountered in the Californian desert in November 1952 (Chapter 6) closely resembles Léger’s account. In his first book, Flying Saucers Have Landed, co- authored with Desmond Leslie, Adamski described the ‘Venusian’ as follows: His hands were slender, with long tapering fingers like the beautiful hands of an artistic woman. In fact, in different clothing he could easily have passed for an unusually beautiful woman; yet he definitely was a man. He was about five feet, six inches in height . . . and I would estimate him to be about twenty-eight years of age, although he could have been much older.
He was round faced with an extremely high forehead; large, but calm, grey- green eyes, slightly aslant at the outer corners; with slightly higher cheek bones than an Occidental, but not so high as an Indian or an Oriental . . . As nearly as I can describe his skin the colouring would be an even, medium- coloured suntan. And it did not look to me as if he had ever had to shave, for there was no more hair on his face than a child’s. His hair was sandy in colour and hung in beautiful waves to his shoulders . . . His clothing was a one-piece garment . . . Its colour was chocolate brown. . . A band about eight inches in width circled his waist . . . I saw no zippers, buttons, buckles, fasteners or pockets of any kind, nor did I notice seams as our garments show . . . He wore no ring, watch, or any other ornament of any kind.
In spite of some differences in attire (the man’s, for example, was not tight- fitting) and footwear (he wore unusual shoes, as opposed to ‘boots’) from that described by Leger, there are some extraordinary parallels. It is of course possible that Leger fabricated his story, based on Adamski’s account: Leger was very well versed in UFO literature, having 90 books on the subject (in French).
From the end of the war, he was driven by an irresistible desire to read anything concerning aerial mysteries. Asked for his opinion of Adamski, he replied immediately that he thought Adamski’s first meeting was authentic, but that since then he had gone on to tell fanciful stories. This may well be the case, as I shall discuss later.
Leger’s experience, like so many other contact stories, contains apparent absurdities. Yet Jean Sider is convinced by the witness’s account. ‘I would like to stress the fact that during our first meeting on June 25, 1989, I got a very strong impression that I could rely on him,’ he reports. ‘At no time did he give me the impression that he was fabricating . . . His account is very hard to believe, I must confess. But it was given by a man who appeared to me to be very down-to-earth. He was sixty-seven years old in 1989, but still very active, both physically and mentally. He was quite frank and possessed an intellectual honesty, and he escaped from a few small traps I set for him to see if he would contradict himself at some point. Furthermore, I doubt that his intellectual faculties — and I must stress that they are really modest — would have allowed him to fabricate such a complicated case . . :
AN ENCOUNTER ABOVE THE WORLD’S FIRST ATOMIC PLANT
Rolan D. Powell was serving at the US Naval Air Station, Pasco, Washington, in the summer of 1945, training new pilots in preparation for aircraft carrier operations in the Pacific. In addition, he and other pilots were detailed to protect the top-secret Hanford Engineering Works, the large plutonium-production facility, located 60 miles away from Pasco. Although few of the pilots expected a Japanese attack on the plant, aircraft were kept in a state of constant readiness.
At noon on a certain date, estimated by Powell to have been about six weeks before the Japanese surrender on 2 September, Pasco radar detected a fast- moving object that assumed a holding pattern directly above the Hanford plant.
Six Grumman F6F Hellcat fighters were scrambled to intercept. In an interview nearly fifty years later with Walter Andrus, a US Navy electronics technician programme instructor during the Second World War and currently International Director of the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), Powell, a war hero who later became a test pilot for McDonnell Douglas, described the object as at an estimated altitude of 65,000 feet and ‘the size of three aircraft carriers side by side, very streamlined like a stretched-out egg and pinkish in colour’. Powell also reported that some kind of vapour was emitted around the edges from portholes or vents, which he speculated was for the purpose of camouflage.
The Navy pilots were unable to believe what they were seeing. Under orders, they forced the Hellcats to 42,000 feet — well above their rated ceiling of 37,000 feet — but were unable to reach the unknown object’s altitude and so returned to base. After hovering in a fixed position above the Hanford plant for twenty minutes longer, the object disappeared vertically
https://scienceandspace.com/ufos/later-developments-part-1/