March 14, 1997 - Art Bell
03:07
| 
| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| It's about three minutes and ten seconds. | |
| It comes out of Luke Air Force Base within hours of the event over Phoenix. | |
| Here we go. | |
| Let me start the tape and I'll put a timer on. | |
| For the record, it's 0320 hours on Friday, the 14th of March, 97. | |
| I'm talking with a gentleman. | |
| We're just calling from Phoenix. | |
| Okay, sir, go ahead. | |
| Right. | |
| Luke Air Force Base is actually in a loose field. | |
| I got our ship set up 30 minutes ago. | |
| At 815, the radio alert at Luke Air Force Base, which is in the 2015s that we keep on radio alert, | |
| they're part of the Air Force One and the Air Force Two protection group to protect them when they come west of the | |
| Iraqi run over the President or any dignitaries on board. | |
| They were launched because all hell broke loose, basically. | |
| Currently, we got a call from Prescott Valley Airport, a small airport north of us. | |
| I'm sorry, north of us. | |
| And reporting an object that had a near-miss with a small Cessna aircraft. | |
| The call came out to launch the railroad approximately 8.32 from my understanding. | |
| They encountered something over the sky, over Phoenix, Arizona, over the area of 7th Avenue and Indian School Road. | |
| They don't know what it was. | |
| The description that one of the pilots stated that they had a visual on it, they've got a gun camera film of it, they have no radar tape of it. | |
| It scared the hell out of them. | |
| I've never seen... This is the guy I'm talking about? | |
| He's a command pilot of this particular flight. | |
| He'll never talk. | |
| He's a real professional. | |
| I've never seen this man... I've never seen this man scared. | |
| Are you familiar with the term white noise, flexing out radar? | |
| My understanding is that's what they got, was strictly white noise. | |
| His statement was that they followed this aircraft, it went on a straight-line course, heading towards Vector Harbor Airport, which is one of our main airports here, and it entered the pattern, Sky Harbor Airport, crossed the pattern of the outbound runways, the outbound runways at that time. | |
| The wind was coming in from the west. | |
| They encountered going in originally two 737s and a DC-10 taking off from Sky Harbor. | |
| We have an American West up here, so we've got a lot of space left. | |
| Actually, this aircraft's data, it was, um, his understanding was that it was at approximately 18,000 feet descending to 10,005. | |
| When it got to Angels 10, 10-5, it completely went dark. | |
| He doesn't know if it was one aircraft or several aircraft. | |
| He saw five distinct lights in a triangular pattern. | |
| The first three lights were in a tight triangular formation. | |
| One of the rear lights was covered at about, he said that it was at 200 yards, and then the other light was at about 400 yards, also on the east side of the triangle, if you will. | |
| Instantly, he said this might have been more than one aircraft. | |
| He could not describe the aircraft. | |
| All he could say is that there were lights, there were no strobe lights. | |
| It was light, he said, as bright as a star, not like the North Star. | |
| Right now, Mars and Jupiter are very bright in the sky. | |
| This was not very bright. | |
| They dimmed, and when they dimmed, you realize landing lights generally do not have that capability. | |
| They then went, and they dimmed in unison. | |
| Upon, after dimming, they went completely dark. | |
| The aircraft then passed into the pattern. | |
| They came back on, followed a straight line of 7th Avenue, which cuts right through Phoenix. | |
| And they kept on going, they turned into the pattern. | |
| Wow! |
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