Is "Improved Instrumental Techniques...", Nolan, Vallee, Jiang, Lemke 2022 a useful paper?

[John J.]

The power line and the pole with the microwave antennas are key landmarks.

I think we're very nearly there if Moore's memory is correct- but not next to Gilbert's pond as I thought, or at 1900 N Eighth St.

The antenna is sited on top of a building west of Big Lake Road. It looks like it might be on the site of Pottawattamie County Jail (if not, a neighbour to its north):

The middle dish appears to be pointing very roughly north, the top and bottom dishes south, maybe SSE.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

I'm confident they are on this slope. The white gate, the railroad bridge, the bare railroad embankment, the poles. Everything matches. I was just trying to nail it down to the foot. As far as the address goes, 1315 Big Lake Road seems to be the most accurate.

This just points out how garbled the info in this case has become...

-On a levee off Big Lake.
-1900 N. Eighth St.
-Half a football field from the tracks
-Near the levy adjacent to Gilbert's Lake in Big Lake Park
-A half-mile east of N. 16th Street near Big Lake Park

Of all of these - "on a levee off Big Lake" - is the best. "Off" means close but not awfully close. Off in the distance.

Even this new documentary has introduced another bit of garbled info.

It's Big Lake Park, goddamn it. Big Bear Lake is in S. Calif. Some guy from California probably made this mistake, substituting a familiar name.

 

[F.Moon]

A wider view.

View attachment 82698

You got it! This is the place, according to Mike Moore. The double sign had confused me, but I can now see the "support" for the second sign in the Google Street View images. The second sign hadn't yet been installed, or had been temporarily removed, when the Google images were captured:

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

Anyway, I'm settling on the story of the dumped smelter slag as I outlined in post #80. I could try to save my railroad spill scenario but I'm of the opinion that I myself got caught up in constructing a needlessly complicated and entertaining story. The flying saucer story, the thermite hoax story... also needlessly complicated and entertaining. Just littering, a small grass fire and some silliness.

 

[John J.]

The yellow ring indicates the bar gate. It is on the top of the levee running left to right across the top of the picture (roughly indicated by the green lines).


I had mistakenly thought that any reference to a levee or dyke must relate directly to the shore of the pond, Big Lake etc.

I didn't realise the nature of the extensive levees around much of Council Bluffs until finding the Council Bluffs Levee Program PDF; see also Active Levee Projects.
Moore and friend have parked up roughly where Big Lake Road crosses the levee (the gate is aligned approx. north-south with the 'triangle' end of the gate at the north end). The body of water in the picture above is Gilbert's Pond.

- in Google Maps 'satellite' view, if you move your cursor to that general area and click, an info box opens at the foot of the screen saying N 8th St .

...but click on that box's Street View option, and you get the view of the gate as posted by @F.Moon, with the address found by @Z.W. Wolf, 1315 Big Lake Road.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

Partially based on this screenshot, and also from reviewing the others, I've refined my estimate.

One has to keep in mind that this is staged. It feels very spontaneous... but how does the camera guy get into different positions? These guys are doing a bit of loosely scripted amateur acting, of course.

I've put them standing farther up the slope.

This puts it more in line with this puzzling description:
https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=ff12dbcb7692a1f9c92a78454497b2beda66ac87#:~:text=scattering debris over several acres,ny

It fell at a point 16 feet from the paved road and 6 feet from the top of the levee, burning an area 4
feet wide by 9 feet long. There was a secondary burn area 27 feet away on the side of the dike, measuring about 2 by 4 feet.

At first this makes no sense. The paved road is at the top of the levee. But if the top of the levee is defined as starting where that dirt road is - the dirt road running east and west that is gated off - it makes more sense.

Six feet to the north from the dirt road and 16 feet to the west from the paved road. That makes sense.

It also squares with my idea about cold smelter slag being dumped down the slope from the end of a pickup truck... or something similar. A trailer? Whatever.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

This brings up another possibility. What if the slag was still hot? No where near molten hot but just hot enough to ignite dry grass? No one would have to carry it by hand. Or in a wheelbarrow. There's easy access to this spot for a motor vehicle. Just have a trailer or pickup or a dump truck with a metal bed. Or a square yard of bricks if you insist. Or sand. And dump it out as illicit waste.

The UFOniks would protest that there was no active smelter in the vicinity... but they know everything that was going on for the last few days before that? They have perfect infallible knowledge? They seem pretty fallible to me. This slag could have been cooling down for days for all we know.

What if was from a small smelter across the river in Nebraska? They don't have a slag yard so they dump it temporarily on the ground. It cools down to the point you could use a skip loader to put it in a dump truck. The driver is supposed to haul it to a distant, legal dump site, but he figures, "Ah screw it. I'm not driving that far. I'll dump it in Council Bluffs, and beat it out of there. Those rubes won't know where it came from."

I doubt this scenario, but it's not impossible.

 

[Gary C]

This brings up another possibility. What if the slag was still hot? No where near molten hot but just hot enough to ignite dry grass? No one would have to carry it by hand. Or in a wheelbarrow. There's easy access to this spot for a motor vehicle. Just have a trailer or pickup or a dump truck with a metal bed. Or a square yard of bricks if you insist. Or sand. And dump it out as illicit waste.

The UFOniks would protest that there was no active smelter in the vicinity... but they know everything that was going on for the last few days before that? They have perfect infallible knowledge? They seem pretty fallible to me. This slag could have been cooling down for days for all we know.

What if was from a small smelter across the river in Nebraska? They don't have a slag yard so they dump it temporarily on the ground. It cools down to the point you could use a skip loader to put it in a dump truck. The driver is supposed to haul it to a distant, legal dump site, but he figures, "Ah screw it. I'm not driving that far. I'll dump it in Council Bluffs, and beat it out of there. Those rubes won't know where it came from."

I doubt this scenario, but it's not impossible.

And has the advantage of not violating any known laws of physics.

 

[John J.]

I did wonder about a rail repair team doing something similar with thermite- it's Saturday evening, the bosses are already back home or maybe queueing for the local opening night of Close Encounters, the real work's been done but now a couple of the guys have to go back to the depot and sign the unused material back in, until those immortal words
"I have a cunning plan..."

 

[JMartJr]

until those immortal words
"I have a cunning plan..."

Down here it would be "Watchis!"

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

Two patches of grass fire were reported at the site.


https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=ff12dbcb7692a1f9c92a78454497b2beda66ac87#:~:text=scattering debris over several acres,ny

It fell at a point 16 feet from the paved road and 6 feet from the top of the levee, burning an area 4
feet wide by 9 feet long. There was a secondary burn area 27 feet away on the side of the dike, measuring about 2 by 4 feet.

This is the kind of thing that sets spotty grass fires. But rather than the grass fire being the source of the light show, it's more likely that the witnesses saw the sparks and flames from the locomotive itself.



Grass fire. I think there have already been water drops from helicopter.




More diesel locomotives spitting flame and sparks.









Brief summary: Cold smelter slag was illegally dumped down that slope. There it sat for some time. On the night of Dec 17, 1977 a locomotive shooting flames and sparks from its exhaust stack passed by. The sparks and flames that the witnesses saw came from that locomotive. Sparks - burning bits of carbon - set two small grass fires. The scraps of smelter slag just happened to be in one of the patches of grass fire. Jack and Mike Moore made some observational errors and cause and effect errors. Further distortions have entered the story over the years.

The locomotive headlight may have played a role; causing the flashes of white light that have been reported in some articles. Those flashes might be later embellishments or distortions.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

Here's a good one. I think this is what is happening:
The turbocharger seal is starting to fail, which lets engine lubricating oil leak into the exhaust manifold. The oil flares up when it hits the air.

But there has also been a gradual build up of soot (carbon particles) in the exhaust system during the long hours of normal operation. The exhaust system is an oxygen poor environment but there's enough oil burning inside to cause vibration and it's shaking the soot off the walls of the exhaust system. Those flaring carbon particles are the sparks.

The seal fails completely and more oil is dumped into the exhaust system. More unburned oil and carbon are ejected and there's a flareup. At that point the engineer powers down the engine and the flames and sparks die down.

My guess is that burning oil droplets are more likely to be the source of ignition for grass fires than the carbon particles. Oil would burn longer and cling. The pressure from the flareup would serve to push the oil droplets up and out laterally. So the fires would tend to happen where the flareups happened. And a good number of yards from the tracks.


All of this is my guess based on having read a lot of comments in train fan videos over the years.



The important part is that this eruption can happen suddenly.

Note: In this video a horizontal band has formed, because the locomotive moves forward and the oil slows down when it hits the air. The oil is not atomized as would be by a fuel injection system. It's in drops and globs, which burn slowly. You can see flaming oil that burns for a quite awhile. It forms a long trail. The oil is not moving backwards of course, it's just moving more slowly than the locomotive, which is leaving it behind. We can also see the brighter flaring carbon particles that burn faster and brighter.

When the flare occurs there's a brighter vertical column. More oil and more carbon.

It would be a strange sight at night in the distance. Who would know what they were looking at?







The seals.... What the heck are we talking about?

A turbocharger in a diesel engine has oil seals that prevent engine lubricating oil from leaking into the air intake or exhaust side of the turbo. These seals are usually carbon rings or piston-style seals that rely on tight clearances and pressure balance, rather than direct contact, to keep oil contained.

This is where one of the rings fits...

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

I'd like to gather together witness descriptions of what the strange lights looked like. We have to separate secondary descriptions from primary descriptions. In other words, I'd like to get direct quotations.

From Allen Hendry's UFO Handbook - Compounding errors

Errors compound every time the story is retold. So much of our info comes from articles.




https://www.thehistoricalsociety.org/h/ufo.html

At 7:45 p.m. Saturday evening three young people on their way to the Richman Gordman store on North 16 Street noticed a reddish object about 500-600 feet in the air falling straight down. It disappeared behind the trees of Big Lake Park followed by a flash of bluish-white light and two "arms of fire" shooting over ten feet in the air suggesting an impact. The three drove to the park and got out to investigate, arriving to see a glowing orange blob with a bluish crystalline substance in its center on a dike about sixteen feet from the road. One of them noted it "looked like a great big sparkler." Lava-like material was running down the dike appearing to slow as it cooled. It was too hot to touch and ignited a small grass fire.

The Drakes, apparently. Leaving out Randy James.

But this article - "Close Encounter" at Big Lake Park - is a fairly recent - 2007. Did the author interview these people? What's his source? I suspect he's doing "Secondary Source History." He's rewriting a secondary source.

Some fragments are placed within quotation marks. But most of the info is in what's called narrative summary.

It disappeared behind the trees of Big Lake Park followed by a flash of bluish-white light and two "arms of fire" shooting over ten feet in the air suggesting an impact.

Why make a narrative summary without giving complete witness quotations?

I suspect that the author of this particular article didn't have transcripts of witness testimony. I suspect that he's making a new narrative summary based on an older narrative summary. And that older narrative summary was itself introducing assumptions and errors. Compounding errors.

And it's well known that when a UFO story changes, it always changes in the direction of strangeness.


Do we have direct, transcribed, quoted testimony from the Drakes? Or is all of their testimony in the form of secondary and tertiary sources?

Ditto for the Moores? This must be them.

A couple in their early 20's saw "a big round thing hovering in the sky below the treetops" and also drove to the park. They summoned the fire department.

A third couple also came forward reporting "a bright red object" rocketing to the ground at Big Lake.

Who?

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

From the 1998 Vallee article.

https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=ff12dbcb7692a1f9c92a78454497b2beda66ac87#:~:text=scattering debris over several acres,ny.

The initial witnesses were Kenny Drake and his wife Carol, and Kenny's 12-year old nephew Randy James. Two other witnesses, Mike Moore and his wife Criss, reported seeing a hovering red object with lights as they crossed 16th street on their way downtown along Broadway avenue. Criss reported "a big round thing hovering in the sky below the tree tops. It was hovering. It wasn't moving." She added that she saw red lights around the perimeter of the object, blinking in sequence. A middle-aged couple who saw the event spoke to the investigators by telephone, stating that they had seen "a bright red object rocket to the ground near Big Lake" but refused to be identified. Four teenagers in a small foreign car spoke to the Drakes at the time of the incident but did not make a report.

Quotation - Criss [Moore] reported "a big round thing hovering in the sky below the tree tops. It was hovering. It wasn't moving."

Narrative summary - She [Criss Moore] added that she saw red lights around the perimeter of the object, blinking in sequence.

Altitude of object - "hovering in the sky below the treetops"

What does this mean? The treetops close to her, or distant treetops? Ambiguous.

Description - a big round thing, not moving; red lights around the perimeter, blinking in sequence

Duration - not stated


This next bit is a mixture of narrative summary and quotation

A middle-aged couple who saw the event spoke to the investigators by telephone, stating that they had seen " a bright red object rocket to the ground near Big Lake" but refused to be identified.

I suspect that Vallee took this from a police report and I further suspect that the words he puts into quotation marks were not spoken by the witness but were a narrative summary written by whoever it was who took the report. It's also possible that Vallee took this from a secondary source describing the police report.

Altitude - Unstated and ambiguous.
Rocketing to the ground... from how high? Someone making a narrative summary might assume it was rocketing down from hundreds of feet. But that's nothing but an assumption... in the direction of strangeness.

Duration - not stated

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

Article in The Columbus Dispatch, 2011. The author apparently interviewed Mike Moore in 2011.

https://www.dispatch.com/story/lifestyle/2011/02/09/offutt-mass-molten-metal-leaves/45409349007/

"We saw this big ball of red stuff in the sky," he [Mike Moore] said.

Moore thought the light was probably an airplane from nearby Eppley Field in Omaha, but it didn't act like an airplane – it hovered. Whatever the light in the sky was, it dropped something into the park. Something on fire.

"All I seen was this ball coming down," Moore said. "It was pretty high in the sky when I seen it. I just seen a big ball of flame." Then the hovering object flew away.

Description of first object - probably an airplane, didn't act like an airplane; it hovered; it dropped something into the park; it flew away [sounds just like an airplane, with hovering illusion]

Description of second object - "big ball of flame" ; "this ball"

Altitude of both - pretty high in the sky

Description that might refer to either the first or second object, but probably to the first - " big ball of red stuff"

Altitude - "in the sky"

This interview suffers from another factor. It was taken many years after the fact. Memories change. They usually change in the direction of strangeness.


This account sounds to me like a cause and effect error. The first object was an ordinary aircraft. The second object was near ground level and unrelated. The movement has been inferred. Moore saw this transient event, while driving... 36 years before this interview.

It might not even be that Moore saw an airplane at the time and inferred, at that time, that it dropped something. That detail - an object dropped another object - may be confabulation.

An anonymous couple told computer programmer-turned UFO investigator Dr. Jacques Vallee they had seen, "a bright red object rocket to the ground near Big Lake."

At least the wordage hasn't been changed. But I doubt that Vallee ever interviewed these people. A witness put in an anonymous police report in 1977. How would Vallee track him down when he wrote the article in 1998? an error has crept in. Imagine if another author quotes this error? I becomes canon.

The Drakes told Jack Moore they'd seen, "something red fall out of the sky to the southeast, hit the ground and explode into flames."

There's no reason to believe that the author spoke with Jack Moore or has access to something written by Jack Moore. This is apparently a narrative summary told to the author in 2011 by Mike Moore. Not reliable at all. Compounding errors.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

From:
Improved instrumental techniques, including isotopic analysis,
applicable to the characterization of unusual materials
with potential relevance to aerospace forensics.

2021

The first report came at 7:45 pm from 17-year-old Kenny Drake and his nephew, 12-year-old Randy James, who were driving on North 16th street. Kenny's wife Carol, 16 years old, was also in the car. All three saw a "reddish ball" at an estimated altitude of 500 to 600 feet. It fell "straight down" and impacted within Big Lake Park (see map). There was a bright flash and what appeared to be "flames shooting into the air, 8 to 10 feet high." While these witnesses only observed the dropping object, others (see below) had observed a stationary flashing object that was in the area from where the reddish ball originated.

There is no explanation as to the source of this testimony. One might think that it's from a police report. But is it really? Or is it from a narrative summary provided by someone else long after the fact? I'd like to see the police report if it exists.

The report came from 7:45... Is that when they made the sighting or when the report was made? Why the ambiguity?

Description - reddish ball, fell straight down

Altitude - estimated altitude of 500 to 600 hundred feet

While these witnesses only observed the dropping object, others (see below) had observed a stationary flashing object that was in the area from where the reddish ball originated.

Important, because this in is in conflict with the account that Mike Moore later gave in that 2011 interview as described above in Post 95.

Also, this phrase makes no sense:

...others (see below) had observed a stationary flashing object that was in the area from where the reddish ball originated.

This implies that the reddish ball originated from the stationary flashing object that was in the area. But Drake/James said it fell out of the sky from an estimated 500 to 600 feet but the others (the Moores) describe a flashing object that was hovering at treetop level, and don't say that anything fell from the sky. How could the Drake/James object fall from 500 feet from the Moore object hovering at treetop level?

I think the author is trying to fit the pieces into a single narrative. But the pieces don't fit.

The real situation, it seems to me, is that the witness testimony doesn't match and there's no way to reconcile it.

Officer Dennis Murphy arrived and took several pictures with both a Polaroid color camera and a 35mm SLR camera equipped with color film. (Note: Four Polaroids shown in Supplementary Figure 3, original Polaroid photographs are in the authors' case file). The recount of the incident by Drake and James before the officers did not deviate from the story they first told.

What's the source for this statement? Who says so?

Further south on Broadway Avenue, 24-year-old Mike Moore and his wife Criss had been driving east toward downtown, crossing the 16th street intersection when she first saw the object, described as round with "red lights blinking in sequence around the periphery." Mr. Moore saw it when they reached the Broadway viaduct (Figure 6, point #3), as a "bright-red thing at treetop level." He described it as "a big round thing hovering in the sky, below treetops. It was hovering. It wasn't moving."

Mike Moore in this article from 2021

Description of single object - bright-red thing; big round thing hovering; it was hovering; it wasn't moving

Altitude - treetop level, in the sky



Mike Moore in the 2011 Columbus Dispatch article

Description of first object - probably an airplane, didn't act like an airplane; it hovered; it dropped something into the park; it flew away

Description of second object - "big ball of flame" ; "this ball"

Altitude of both - pretty high in the sky

Description that might refer to either the first or second object, but probably to the first - " big ball of red stuff"

Altitude - "in the sky"


For clarity, here's the two complete descriptions placed together

2021 Article

Mr. Moore saw it when they reached the Broadway viaduct (Figure 6, point #3), as a "bright-red thing at treetop level." He described it as "a big round thing hovering in the sky, below treetops. It was hovering. It wasn't moving."

2011 article

"We saw this big ball of red stuff in the sky," he [Mike Moore] said.

Moore thought the light was probably an airplane from nearby Eppley Field in Omaha, but it didn't act like an airplane – it hovered. Whatever the light in the sky was, it dropped something into the park. Something on fire.

"All I seen was this ball coming down," Moore said. "It was pretty high in the sky when I seen it. I just seen a big ball of flame." Then the hovering object flew away.

This later testimony sounds as if it has taken elements from the Drake/James testimony.

What's going on here?

Drake/James - a single red ball that dropped down

Mike Moore in 2021 article - A single bright-red thing that hovered at treetop level.

Mike Moore in the 2011 article - Two separate objects. A light that looked like a plane but didn't act like a plane because it was hovering but later flew away, dropped a flaming red ball that fell to the ground.


What's going on here? Which one are we supposed to believe?

I suspect that Moore's story in the 2021 article is the older version. Possibly told to Vallee in 1998, or something Vallee ran across in 1998. The 2021 authors used Vallee's material from 1998.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

What's going on here?

Recap from Vallee's 1998 article.

Two other witnesses, Mike Moore and his wife Criss, reported seeing a hovering red object with lights as they crossed 16th street on their way downtown along Broadway avenue. Criss reported "a big round thing hovering in the sky below the tree tops. It was hovering. It wasn't moving." She added that she saw red lights around the perimeter of the object, blinking in sequence.

2021 article

Mr. Moore saw it when they reached the Broadway viaduct (Figure 6, point #3), as a "bright-red thing at treetop level." He described it as "a big round thing hovering in the sky, below treetops. It was hovering. It wasn't moving."

So which one is describing it here? Criss or Mike? The 2021 article seems to be recapping Criss's testimony, changing a few words and crediting it to MR Moore - Mike.

So which one is more correct - 1998 or 2021? Is this MRS Moore's description or MR Moore's description? Or did they agree on the details?

Jesus.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

Here's another discrepancy.

https://www.savannahnow.com/story/lifestyle/2011/02/09/offutt-mass-molten-metal-leaves/45409349007/

After the metal cooled, the fire department loaded most of it onto a truck and took it to the station.

"When they left I kind of hung around and picked up a few pieces that were left," Mike Moore said. "I still have boxes of it in my shed. I've got torches. All the torch did was heat it up. A grinder won't cut it. You can't even bend them."

This implies that the fire dept came to the area and put out the fire, then loaded most of the 1,000 pounds of slag onto a truck, and Mike Moore was there the whole time.

From the 2021 article

Drake and James drove to a local store and called 911. The call was given to Jack Moore, Assistant fire chief for the Council Bluffs fire department, who responded in his personal fire car. No fire-fighting crews were required,

Or did the fire dept come out there the next day to pick up a half ton of scrap? And Mike Moore was somehow there too, watching them? Why would the fire dept. be tasked with collecting slag? Wouldn't that job be given to a road crew or the sanitation dept. or the parks dept.?

It doesn't make sense.


And we're supposed to believe that they called 911 years before it existed in Iowa.
See post 2: https://www.metabunk.org/threads/is...-lemke-2022-a-useful-paper.13286/#post-307567

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

BTW there are photos of the site. Here's Polaroid #3 of 4 taken that night. This is figure 4 in the 2021 article

This is supposed to be molten metal that dropped from the sky and started a grass fire? I'd like to see the other 3 before making a judgement ... but it looks to me like there is undisturbed green grass growing up between and over this mass of separate pieces.

Is there green grass in Iowa in Dec. ? I've never lived in a frozen hell section of the country.

The perspective is odd, I can't decide whether we're looking upslope or downslope.

Officer Dennis Murphy arrived and took several pictures with both a Polaroid color camera and a 35mm SLR camera equipped with color film. (Note: Four Polaroids shown in Supplementary Figure 3, original Polaroid photographs are in the authors' case file).

The supplementary figures aren't included in the PDF version provided in Post 1. Can we find these supplementary figures?

 

[John J.]

[I started compiling this some hours ago, since when @Z.W. Wolf has made points which are in effect repeated here, particularly regarding the Moores:

This later testimony sounds as if it has taken elements from the Drake/James testimony.

Totally agree.]

My take follows.
Apologies to anyone involved in the Council Bluffs "incident" who might feel I've misrepresented them, but people misidentify things, young people sometimes get up to mischief, people will go out of their way to help friends and family.
I feel that, when extraordinary (and potentially important) claims are made, it is sometimes necessary to consider alternative explanations, even if they might be at odds with the accounts given by the claimants.

Many of the points are contestable but all, I think, are compatible with at least one of the accounts.
Different sources have contradictions, so there's some unavoidable cherry-picking of what details I think might be correct, likely, or possibly relevant.
Or maybe gooseberry-picking, because I like cherries but gooseberries not so much.
From a mixed bag of very old gooseberries, from a variety of providers, some of whom with maybe questionable records in the provision of fresh fruit. Any and all might be sour, overly hairy and unfit for consumption.

Examples of contradiction include details re. the role of Mike and Criss Moore, and their location after their initial sighting.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Boring digression about Mike and Criss Moore, whose involvement puzzles me. Skip to below next line if not interested.

Further south on Broadway Avenue, 24-year-old Mike Moore and his wife Criss had been driving east toward downtown, crossing the 16th street intersection when she first saw the object, described as round with "red lights blinking in sequence around the periphery." Mr. Moore saw it when they reached the Broadway viaduct... as a "bright- red thing at treetop level." He described it as "a big round thing hovering in the sky, below treetops. It was hovering. It wasn't moving."

Nolan, Vallee et al., pg. 6 col. 2 4th para., their italics.
There is no mention of the Moores contacting the fire department (and what are the firemen supposed to do with a hovering UFO, hose it down? Send a bloke up a ladder?)
There is no mention of Mike and Criss Moore driving to the location (and what would they do with a hovering UFO?) or contacting local police, or nearby Eppley airfield, or the USAF base at Omaha, who might have more of an interest in hovering UFOs than the fire department.
The USAF Offutt Air Force Base (Wikipedia) is one of the most important airbases in the USA, home of U.S. Strategic Command. It is 16.1 miles, 25.9 km from Council Bluffs.

The Moores were travelling on West Broadway and over the Broadway viaduct. This is a major thoroughfare in Council Bluffs
(population 60,300 in 1970, 56,400 in 1980 https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/iowa/council-bluffs).
It is part of a direct route, along with a section of I-480, connecting downtown (central) Council Bluffs and central Omaha.
It is hard to see how Criss Moore could have seen a minor fire on the ground on the far side of a levee in Big Lake Park from her location (although in fairness that was not her claim, which was she saw an object with red lights hovering at treetop level).
Mike Moore claimed to see something similar from Broadway viaduct, a raised structure which might have allowed a view over the northern Council Bluffs railyard to the park. The current viaduct is not the same structure as the one in 1977, so Street View etc. is of limited use in establishing this.

I'm guessing the 1977 viaduct was well-lit, any lights in the vicinity of the probable burn site would be approx. 2.9 km/ 1.8 miles to the left of Mike, 90 degrees to his direction of travel. Light from a modest fire on the ground on the far side of a levee might be observable, but I doubt memorable, and unlikely to be mistaken as a hovering UFO. Considering the view would be over the length of the railyard with a line progressing northward, maybe an incident involving a train might have been a more likely identification (and possibly correct).

No-one else using West Broadway, the direct route between Omaha and downtown Council Bluffs, 19:45 on a Saturday, ever came forward as having seen anything unusual, on the ground or in the air.
Only the son and daughter-in-law of the Assistant Fire Chief who attended the burn. What are the odds?
No-one using Avenue G, parallel with West Broadway but over 500 yards/ metres closer to the burn site sees anything either.

Nolan, Vallee et al. do not state that Mike Moore is the son of Jack Moore, the assistant fire chief who attended the incident.
Which is a strange oversight; relationships between claimed witnesses of extraordinary events are usually seen as potentially important, and at least one author (Vallee) is aware of Jack being the father of Mike.

The Historical and Preservation Society of Pottawattamie County and Popular Mechanics, May 2001 (pg. 67 of PDF) accounts, the latter assisted by one Jacques Vallee, give the Moore couple a broader role; the Historical Society has them driving to the park and then contacting the fire department, apparently overlapping with the role played by the Drake/ James family, at odds with the Nolan, Vallee 2022 narrative. Popular Mechanics specifies that Mike is Jack's son, and that the Moores saw an object falling towards the park, which is not featured in the account of their supposed sighting by Nolan, Vallee et al.
Popular Mechanics has "onlookers" arriving at the site of the burn but doesn't state that Mike and Criss went there or that they contacted the fire department.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Kenny Drake, 17, and his 12 year-old cousin Randy James, 'phoned the fire department from a payphone (probably inside or near the Richman Gordman store) and say they saw a red light shoot to the ground in the vicinity of Big Lake Park from a height of five or six hundred feet.

They claim they had been driving northwards to the Richman Gordman store with Kenny's wife Carol, 16, and they continued to the park where they found the material, burning brightly.
(In one of the lesser errors in the 2022 paper, Nolan, Vallee et al. refer to "Richmond Gordman Store", penultimate para. pg. 7).

...when Kenny Drake was making the 911 phone call, authorities were also contacted by a middle- aged couple who were travelling north on 16th street... They reported seeing a bright red mass "rocket to the ground near Big Lake". They refused to be identified on the record.

Nolan, Vallee et al.
(1) @Z.W. Wolf has pointed out the 911 system didn't exist in that area in 1977, another Nolan, Vallee et al. error.
(2) Who are the "authorities"? I'd suggest police, perhaps not the fire dept., who had taken Kenny's call.
(3) Why 'phone, and describe yourself/selves as a middle-aged couple, but refuse to be identified?
(4) How did "the authorities" ascertain that the caller(s) were (a) a couple, (b) middle-aged?
(5) The caller claims they were driving on the same road, in the same direction, as Kenny Drake and family. No calls from travellers who had been on Interstate 29, Joslin Avenue, North 15th Street (or Big Lake Road, although it might have been quiet at night in December), all of which have stretches as close or closer to the likely site of the burning material. No calls, or later claimed witnesses, from anyone else actually at the large-ish Richman Gordman store/ its car park, 19:45, Saturday evening, 8 days before Christmas.
(6) The call is made at about the time that Kenny is in the vicinity of a payphone.

On that day, at 19:45 CST (0145 GMT) a red, luminous mass was observed by two Council Bluffs residents as it fell to earth near the northern city limits... ...The first report came at 7:45 p.m. from 17-year-old Kenny Drake and his nephew, 12-year-old Randy James, who were driving on North 16th street. Kenny's wife Carol, 16 years old, was also in the car.

Nolan, Vallee et al. 2022.
I know this is 1977, but surely a young woman's account is at least as useful as a 12 year-old boy's?

The three drove to the park and got out to investigate, arriving to see a glowing orange blob with a bluish crystalline substance in its center on a dike about sixteen feet from the road. One of them noted it "looked like a great big sparkler." Lava-like material was running down the dike appearing to slow as it cooled. It was too hot to touch and ignited a small grass fire.

https://www.thehistoricalsociety.org/h/ufo.html

Drake and James drove to a local store and called 911

What's happened to Carol? She doesn't seem to subsequently feature at all. The only evidence of her presence is from Kenny (and maybe Randy's) accounts.

Drake and James claim that while they (and Carol) were in the park,

...watching the glowing mass, a small car stopped and four young men, about 18 years old, asked if they had seen "that thing fall out of the sky," after which they drove away

Again, these four young men have never come forward or otherwise been identified. They are known only from the Drake/ James account. How does Drake know the car is foreign? He doesn't state a make or easily identifiable model (Beetle, Mini. Fiat 500).
Having been asked the above question, it doesn't seem to occur to the Drakes or James to say "Yes, we think this is it". And the young men don't stop to look at the "...glowing orange blob with a bluish crystalline substance in its center" that "looked like a great big sparkler." Not even a "Cool, dude!" They just drive off, presumably on Big Lake Road.

Anyway, Drake calls the fire department:

The call was given to Jack Moore, Assistant fire chief for the Council Bluffs fire department, who responded in his personal fire car. No fire-fighting crews were required, however, while the police, who had intercepted the call, dispatched a cruiser car to the scene, driven by Assistant chief Moore. He requested an officer from the Identification section to join him with a camera to photograph the material that was "running, boiling down the edges of the levee. The center of it was way too hot to touch."

Nolan, Vallee et al., my italics.
Likely another Nolan, Vallee et al. error, unless both the local fire and police departments have each sent an Assistant Chief Moore.

Officer Dennis Murphy arrived and took several pictures with both a Polaroid color camera and a 35 mm SLR camera

Ah. Dennis Murphy (no other police officers, certainly no Assistant Chief Moore) is mentioned in Vallee's 1998 paper, PDF attached in OP.
The somewhat confusing passage makes most sense, I feel, if Jack Moore requested a police officer with a camera, and Murphy (good name for a US policeman!) attended; the quoted description of the material is from Moore.

By all accounts Jack Moore is puzzled (impressed?) by what he sees. There is a minor grass fire associated with the burning/ melted material, which does not require further fire department involvement.
There is precious little (read: none, AFAIK) further police involvement either.

My suspicion is:

It's December 1977. The big thing in cinema is Close Encounters of the Third Kind, opening that very weekend at theatres across the US. Maybe in Council Bluffs.

Kenny Drake drove to Big Lake Park with his nephew. No Carol, whose presence was invoked to make the subsequent claims somehow more credible.

He tips approximately 35-55 pounds (15.9-25.0 kg) of fine metal scrap and thermite onto the ground on the north side of the levee, and lights it. It is possible all the material was an improvised thermite.
The pie charts in Nolan, Vallee et al. might support this if they are broadly indicative of the relative amounts of material present in the (inhomogeneous) subsamples, although this is questionable, see OP.
Some trace elements possibly detected by Kayser (University of Iowa at Ames) and Nolan, Vallee et al. might be explained by the inclusion of a small volume of electrical/ electronic component scrap, again discussed in the OP.
Although by no means impossible, slag containing small amounts of tungsten and tantalum, maybe germanium, in a mass composed mainly of similar-ish quantities of aluminium, iron and silicon would be quite exotic, I think; what was being smelted?

There's no small foreign car with four young men, no-one sees Drake and James.

Drake and James drive to the Richman Gordman Store.
Drake 'phones the fire department. He says he, his wife and nephew saw something fall etc. etc. etc.
(The description of the burn itself, including the "great big sparkler", is honest; it describes ignited, reacting thermite).

Then he 'phones "the authorities" (police?) claiming to be a middle-aged man who was driving with his wife when they saw etc. etc.

Drake and James return to the park.
Assistant Fire Chief Jack Moore arrives.
His description of the material is also consistent with a recent thermite reaction and melted metal.

There is no need for further fire department involvement. Jack Moore contacts the police, requesting an officer with a camera to document the scene.

Officer Murphy arrives, takes photos. Speculation: Murphy, and/ or his boss, are not as impressed as Moore seems to be.
It's a Saturday night, and the police have been called to attend a minor, self-limiting fire and possible case of fly-tipping (max. 55 Ibs, 25 kg) in a park, by an assistant fire chief who has already determined that no further fire department involvement is necessary. The fireman is apparently associating the burn with the story of something falling from the sky that the teenage boy is telling.

At some juncture- maybe not that evening- word gets back to Jack Moore, through some channel or another (maybe not official) that the police department was not entirely impressed, and was not wholly accepting of the metal-from-the-sky theory.

And at some juncture, Mike and Criss Moore, son and daughter-in-law of Jack, remember seeing a red thing, or a thing with red lights, hovering over the area of the find (but no-one else using the same major thoroughfare does).
Again, the chances of this- witnesses being the son and daughter-in-law of the attending assistant fire chief- must be low.

One active hoaxer, one other person (his 12 year old nephew) observing.
A man who believes him and who thinks something unusual has happened, Jack Moore.

A Kenny-caused hoax eliminates the mystery of the four young men in the car who never came forward, and the anonymous phone call from the middle-aged couple who never came forward.
It also explains why no-one except the above, except Mike and Criss Moore, ever reported seeing anything, in a town of over 50,000 people on a Saturday evening.
Mike and Criss Moore's extraordinarily fortuitous sighting, not corroborated by anyone else in Council Bluffs that Saturday evening (even Kenny Drake and Randy James' account is different from the original Moore account, as far as we can tell) vindicates Mike's father, Jack Moore.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

Good internal consistency. You're saying that the Drake/James pair pulled the prank, Jack Moore was hornswoggled, and later Mike Moore wanted to get in on the fun. So he invented his own sighting that was in some way related to the testimony that Drake/James gave, but wasn't entirely consistent. Later he tried to bring it more in line with the Drake/James version. Maybe a little bit better. Something in the sky dropped this stuff.

It may well have been Vallee who invented the idea that a flying saucer ejected this stuff. That would be circa 1998. The contemporary articles don't say anything about a second object dumping this out. Just that a single object was seen falling from the clear sky. And maybe Mike Moore wanted to bring his story into line with that?

The 4 kids in the small car were inventions and Drake called in the hoax report from the middle aged couple. He probably made his voice deeper, slower and pompous, and introduced himself, "Hel-lo. I'm a middle aged solid citizen. And I believe it's my duty to report..."

The lady folk in both cases were not actually involved. Was Mike Moore even present at the scene that night?

The sticking point to me is this: I don't think metallurgists would be fooled into thinking the residue left by the proposed thermite scenario was smelter slag. I think they'd know the difference. There have to be details we don't know about but that they do.

More importantly I don't think the scenario you've described is possible: An uncontained thermite reaction heating 40 pounds of scrap metal on the cold ground? The ground would conduct heat away; the result would be too inconsistent.

Let's try another way.

Some high school kids get their hands on cold smelter slag from across the river in Nebraska. It's slag from a smelter that processes scrapped cars. Not at all hard to do. You can buy the darned stuff.

On Saturday night they illicitly use the gas fire furnace in the metal shop of Jefferson High School (founded 1921) at 2501 W Broadway - 3.1 miles and 8 minutes away from 1315 Big Lake Road according to Google Maps.

I'd think there would be more than two kids involved. More like 4. The two kids who called in the hoax were the front men. The younger kid was there because he would be seen as more innocent.

They load a crucible with about 40 pounds of slag and heat it up to about 2,000 F. About the limit for that kind of furnace. The slag won't be molten but it will be plastic and glow red.

Now that we know where the site is the whole game has changed. There is easy access to a road-going motor vehicle. The fact that the stuff was 6 feet down the slope strongly suggests a dumped load from the dirt road on top of the levee. That should be easy to picture.

https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/917967-back-yard-sand-casting-aluminum/
Sand casting aluminum in high school metal shop. The furnace is in the background. They lifted the crucible out of the furnace with crucible tongs. One guy is holding the crucible steady and the other guy is using a ladle. I did just this kind of thing at the age of 14. I was a skinny little kid but I could lift the crucible out by myself.

I would use a light gravel trailer with a metal bed. As you can see, you can rent them.

These days the bed tilts, like that in a dump truck, but I don't remember that kind of thing in the '70s. (My Dad rented them in the '60s.) The only way to get those old fashioned gravel trailers to tip would be to unhitch it and lift up the A-frame by hand. But you wouldn't need to do that and you wouldn't want to do that, because you want to make a fast get away.

I'd put a load of sand in the trailer to keep the crucible upright and stable and to insulate the bed from the crucible. When you get to the levee, you back the trailer to the edge and keep creeping back until the wheels of the trailer are on the downslope and the bed is tilted at about 30 degrees or so.

You use crucible tongs to carefully pull the crucible back toward the edge and tilt it over in its supporting bed of sand. You use ladles to pull the stuff out. The hot slag dumps out on to the slope, but the crucible stays in the trailer. (The tailgate flops down all the way, unlike the tailgate on a pickup.)

Then you beat it. The slope is covered with hot, but not molten, slag. That's when the 2 front men take over.

If the crucible did fall out, you just get two guys to grab it with crucible tongs. Which is what you used to get it out of the furnace and into the trailer.

This is dangerous and stupid but pretty easy to do, really. It's just forty pounds of hot slag. You handle 40 pounds of molten aluminum in metal shop. Why not 40 pounds of slag?

It would be pretty pointless to just dump hot slag on a random embankment. The only thing that makes it worthwhile is the BS story of something falling from the sky. That will make a stir.

And this scenario wouldn't necessarily have to involve a high school metal shop. Small shops do aluminum sand casting, and hobbyists do it in their backyard.

 

[F.Moon]

BTW there are photos of the site. Here's Polaroid #3 of 4 taken that night. This is figure 4 in the 2021 articleView attachment 82744


This is supposed to be molten metal that dropped from the sky and started a grass fire? I'd like to see the other 3 before making a judgement ... but it looks to me like there is undisturbed green grass growing up between and over this mass of separate pieces.

Is there green grass in Iowa in Dec. ? I've never lived in a frozen hell section of the country.

The perspective is odd, I can't decide whether we're looking upslope or downslope.




The supplementary figures aren't included in the PDF version provided in Post 1. Can we find these supplementary figures?

Please note what the caption for Figure 4 says (emphasis mine):

Figure 4. Enhanced Original Polaroid of #3 of 4 Police
photographs showing deposited material (gray and green
area).

As for the rest of the photographs, the published version of the 2021 paper refers to this appendix (to which I do not have access):

Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.
org/10.1016/j.paerosci.2021.100788.

 

[Ann K]

Is there green grass in Iowa in Dec. ? I've never lived in a frozen hell section of the country.

Yes, real grass is green all year round, unless there's a drought. It's only in the skin-cancer-blazing-hot-stay-indoors-with-AC-hell states that they plant that nasty Bermuda grass that goes dormant in the winter. I had to laugh when I lived in New Mexico for a while, and there were actually companies that specialized in spray-painting it green. No, I'm not joking about that, ridiculous as it sounds!

 

[F.Moon]

I took a look at the limited information about the Moores' sighting included in Netflix's Investigation Alien (S1 E4). Here is the transcript of the relevant segment (based on the text at https://tvshowtranscripts.ourboard.org/viewtopic.php?f=2385&t=71597):

Mike Moore: I can tell you what I've seen, take you where I've seen it.

Douglas Laux: I'd love that.

[Moore and Laux are now in a car on the road]

Laux: Were you by yourself?

Moore: I had my ex-wife with me.

Laux: So you're driving in the car. You're with your ex-wife. Walk me through what that was like.

Moore: Well, I'm driving along here, and it'd be over here that I would look up and I could see it coming out of the sky.
First, I thought it was a plane coming in, but then I realized it's coming straight down. And there's no lights that would have been on a wingtip or anything like that. And the fact it was coming straight down instead of going on a final approach.

Moore: Then she said she'd kind of looked up and saw something hovering.

Laux: In this same direction?

Moore: Yeah.

Laux: Where?

Moore: Where we're going. Like, going this way. It was up above us.

If we go by his gestures, what Mike Moore saw was to his left, at a low or very low elevation.
He then introduces his ex-wife's sighting, contrary to the sequence described in the 2021 paper (where we read: "...she first saw the object […]. Mr. Moore saw it when they reached the Broadway viaduct").
On the other hand, I find Mike's last response hard to interpret. Does he mean that his ex-wife's sighting took place farther down the road ("Where we're going")? Should we understand that the thing moved closer or/and ascended, since it appeared higher ("It was up above us")?

In the documentary, drone shots of the car on the road alternate with views from inside the car. If you pay close attention to the road's appearance, you'll notice that the drone footage shows a simple two-way road. However, this isn't the same road where the conversation (and possibly the sighting) took place. In the interior shots, the lanes going in each direction are separated by a central row of trees at intervals. For example, see the following images from successive segments of the documentary:

One final disappointment comes when you take a virtual tour along West Broadway using Google Street View (with images from 2024, likely contemporary to the making of the documentary) and find not a single tree separating the lanes. So, what road or street is the car actually traveling on while they discuss the sighting? Does it have any relation to the street the Moores were traveling on in 1977?

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

I've found a way that the thermite scenario might work. Not an uncontained thermite on scrap metal burn... There is a crucible . The molten material falls out the bottom.

Spoiler: full video

Once again I'd suggest that a trailer would be involved. Maybe a boat trailer with a rigged up frame
But before I get farther into that...


Let's try another, simpler, hoax scenario that doesn't involve hot smelter slag or molten metal from a thermite reaction.

The Drake/James party may be the persons pulling the hoax or they may be innocent hoax victims.

For the sake of argument let's say the witness testimony has elements of truth to it.
-Red burning object falling from clear sky (beneath high overcast)
-Another bright red glowing light at ground level
-A brief display of flames seen from a distance

Hoax set up:

-Dump ~40 pounds of smelter slag on the slope of the levee- slag is from smelter processing scrapped cars.

-Send up at least one parachute signal flare

-Set off a big pile road flares on top of the pile of slag

-Hoaxers may or may not call in phony report




Description of scene by Drake/James party from:
https://www.thehistoricalsociety.org/h/ufo.html

At 7:45 p.m. Saturday evening three young people on their way to the Richman Gordman store on North 16 Street noticed a reddish object about 500-600 feet in the air falling straight down. It disappeared behind the trees of Big Lake Park followed by a flash of bluish-white light and two "arms of fire" shooting over ten feet in the air suggesting an impact. The three drove to the park and got out to investigate, arriving to see a glowing orange blob with a bluish crystalline substance in its center on a dike about sixteen feet from the road. One of them noted it "looked like a great big sparkler." Lava-like material was running down the dike appearing to slow as it cooled. It was too hot to touch and ignited a small grass fire.

From The Daily Nonpareil - 12/18/77 - Page 18 - "Mystery Metal Falls From Sky"

Moore said Kenny Drake, 1723 Second Ave., and Randy James, 1218 N. 22nd St., reported they had seen "something red fall out of the sky to the southeast, hit the ground and explode in flames."

Jack Moore from same source

When he arrived on the scene, Moore said, he found a grassy area about four by six feet on a levee off Big Lake to be covered by a mass of molten metal. "It was running, boiling, down the edges of the levee. The center of it was way too hot to touch." The ground beneath the mass was burned, Moore said.

This description is from the 2021 article. It's unclear which party "the witnesses" are.

When they reached the scene, the witnesses found an area covered by molten metal that glowed red-orange, igniting the grass

Also from the 2021 article

On that day, at 19:45 CST (0145 GMT) a red, luminous mass was observed by two Council Bluffs residents as it fell to earth near the northern city limits, slow enough to enable its approximate trajectory to be noted. A bright flash was seen, followed by flames 8 to 10 feet high. When they reached the scene, the witnesses found an area covered by molten metal that glowed red-orange, igniting the grass. Police and a fireman arrived within 15 minutes and saw the mass (with estimates ranging from35 to 55 pounds) "running, boiling down to the edges of the levee," in an area of about 4 feet by 6 feet. The central portion remained warm to the touch for approximately two hours. No cratering was noticed.

"...it fell to earth... slow enough to enable its approximate trajectory..."

Slow. Like a parachute signal flare?


Mike Moore
https://www.savannahnow.com/story/lifestyle/2011/02/09/offutt-mass-molten-metal-leaves/45409349007/

The center of the metal was so hot it looked like "blue flash bulbs," Mike Moore said.

Full disclosure. I asked GPT what a large pile of burning road flares might look like on a 30 degree grassy slope, on top of scattered cold smelter slag...

Fresh, intact road flares

A large pile of intact, non-expired road flares ignited at night would create a very bright, dramatic, and possibly disorienting scene, both visually and audibly. Here's a detailed description of what witnesses would see, hear, and possibly feel:

Visual Appearance at Night
Color:
Primarily a deep red to orange flame, due to strontium-based colorants (e.g., strontium nitrate or carbonate).
Occasional white-hot flashes if magnesium or aluminum is present in the mix.

Brightness:
Extremely bright and intense light, visible from miles away.
Could temporarily affect night vision of anyone nearby.

Flame Behavior:

Each flare produces a narrow, torch-like column of flame about 1–2 feet long.

In a pile, flames would merge into a roaring, flickering mass several feet high.

The flames would dance and pulse, especially if wind moves through the pile.

Smoke:

Thick, gray to black smoke, rising in turbulent columns.

Possibly tinged red or orange by the glow of the flames.

May carry glowing ash or particulate, visible as sparks.

Glow on the Ground:

Intense red-orange glow on surrounding objects, ground, trees, or slope.

The immediate area would be fully illuminated as if under a floodlight.

Other Effects
Sparks and Ember Ejection:

Some flares eject sparks or small glowing bits of slag, especially on uneven ground.

This may resemble a Fourth of July sparkler, but much larger and louder.

Possible "Flow" or Movement:

If some flares fall over or rupture, glowing chunks may tumble downslope, giving the illusion of molten or flowing material.

Sound
Loud hissing and crackling, often with a roaring jet-like noise as the flare chemicals combust under pressure.

The pile may sound like a campfire crossed with a rocket engine, depending on density and wind.

Heat
The heat output would be substantial, enough to:

Ignite nearby dry grass or vegetation within feet.

Cause thermal discomfort or minor burns within a few yards.

Preheat or scorch metal or slag beneath or nearby.

Expired or broken up road flares

If It Wasn't Burning Properly
A road flare that's:

Cracked open

Water-damaged

Expired

Burning loose rather than in its casing


...could display irregular behavior:

Prolonged smoldering

Partial ignition of layers

Color effects from different components reacting separately

Bright, brief flashes from isolated magnesium or oxidizer-rich spots

Problem: How do you ignite a big pile of road flares all at once?

First, you don't have to . If you had a group of hoaxters you could light them in the usual way and sequentially.

Second, gasoline.

The second might account for the arms of fire shooting over ten feet in the air that the Drake/James party supposedly reported.


Let's add in testimony from the amateur astronomer who took a look at the site the next day.
From the 2021 article

The US Air Force reacted rapidly to Robert Allen's request for their advice. The detailed report he hadsubmitted to them proposed: "It is our theory that (the material) was a piece of space debris which reentered the earth's atmosphere and was not completely destroyed during re-entry. Measurements taken atthe impact point would indicate the object was travelling from the southwest to the northeast on a heading of 109 to 110 degrees."

"...from the southwest to the northeast..." : Consistent with dumping cold slag down the slope by hand from a bucket or sack; not so good for my hot slag dumped from a trailer scenario. Kind of a wash for the thrmite reaction with molten material falling from a hole in the bottom.

Problem: Would the ash and residue be visible the next day? Blown away by light wind or washed away by rain?

Or more likely, witnesses might assume it was ash from a grass fire.



Brief summary: Hoaxters dumped a pile of cold smelter slag down the slope. They sent up at least one parachute signal flare. Then ignited a pile of road flares sitting on top of the scattered cold slag. The light from the flares would be very bright and would illuminate the surrounding area and illuminate the smoke rising from the flares.

The witnesses at the site saw red/orange burning flare material; some it was sliding or tumbling downslope. The pile of flares might have been hot enough to heat up the slag a bit, but no where near molten. The residue/ash itself would be hot and some sporadic burning could happen in spots for some time.

The reports of molten metal running down the slope arose from witnesses making observational errors and cause and effect errors. Jack Moore may have been the first person to make the assumption that there was molten metal running down the slope.



The hoaxters intended to make people think red hot metal had fallen out of the sky. We don't know if they intended it to look like a meteor, a crashed Alien probe, space junk. I would think the meteor would be the most probable.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

Mike Moore - Netflix's Investigation Alien (S1 E4)

When I got here, there were pieces of blue in the metal. They reminded me of the 1950/60 flashbulbs. The blue ones. They were sitting there, and they weren't melting. They were like chunks.

It's unclear whether he's talking about seeing flashes of light, or just using the color of the glass on unused flashbulbs as an example to describe the color of the chunks. The later, I think. I just realized that.

(The blue color was there to help balance daylight film used indoors. Clear flash glass bulbs have a red cast; okay for B&W. In addition, casual amateurs using daylight film indoors would have incandescent lights on, which would be too red for daylight film. So you'd sell bulbs for amateur use that were really blue to help balance out that red light.)


So there were chunks with a blue color that weren't melting.


Interpretation One: Mike Moore was seeing solid pieces of slag in a flashlight beam, as I speculated previously. There may have been occasional flashes as the flashlight beam moved.

Flashlights of the time were white, yellow or amber. They didn't have flashlights with a blue color temperature. Were the chunks actually blue? Probably not. The blue color may just have been a perception caused by contrast with the surrounding orange glowing flare material.



Second Interpretation:
https://www.savannahnow.com/story/lifestyle/2011/02/09/offutt-mass-molten-metal-leaves/45409349007/

The center of the metal was so hot it looked like "blue flash bulbs," Mike Moore said.

In this version, from 2011, Moore's description is different. It's just the center of the metal that's blue.

The center of the metal probably means the center of the metal mass.

Again, I think he's comparing it to the color of the glass on unused flashbulbs.



The Drake/James party
https://www.thehistoricalsociety.org/h/ufo.html

...see a glowing orange blob with a bluish crystalline substance in its center

The center of the mass of flare material would burn with a red light, but the light might be so intense that it was perceived as white; especially in contrast with the surrounding area of flare material that was burning with a less intense red flame.




Third Interpretation; which I think is by far the most likely of the three:

The hoaxters may have thrown in some chunks of magnesium for good measure. Mike Moore is describing burning chunks of magnesium; burning with a blue/white light.

The Drake/James party is also describing chunks of burning magnesium among the burning flare material

...a glowing orange blob with a bluish crystalline substance in its center

This small chunk ignites reluctantly and burns for more than a minute.



Water on a magnesium fire flares up and throws sparks. Water source at the site would be frozen ground.

 

[John J.]

In the documentary, drone shots of the car on the road alternate with views from inside the car. If you pay close attention to the road's appearance, you'll notice that the drone footage shows a simple two-way road. However, this isn't the same road where the conversation (and possibly the sighting) took place.

West Broadway is in a built-up area, and the Broadway Viaduct is a raised structure.

The current viaduct is not the same structure as the one in 1977, so Street View etc. is of limited use in establishing this.

The "new" Broadway Viaduct has a fairly striking sculpture/ art installation,

Millerbernd website https://www.millerbernd.com/transportation-infrastructure under "Broadway Viaduct Bridge"

The former Broadway Viaduct was (spoiler) in roughly the same location. Haven't been able to find a c. 1977 photo, this is from August 1955, looking west from 8th Street.

Courtesy of Council Bluffs Public Library, https://archive.councilbluffslibrary.org/items/show/5868

A distinct lack of trees on the viaduct.

...what road or street is the car actually traveling on while they discuss the sighting? Does it have any relation to the street the Moores were traveling on in 1977?

If Mike Moore is still claiming his sighting was on, or near, the Broadway Viaduct then no, the road they are filming on has no meaningful similarities, apart from being reasonably straight and presumably in the USA.

The location of the filming was not chosen to help inform the viewer about the 17 December 1977 events.

There is no reason (AFAIK) why Mike Moore shouldn't have been filmed driving/ being driven along West Broadway, Council Bluffs.
Instead the program makers chose to film him driving in a truck through what looks like farm country to energetic music.
It's about setting the stage, pushing certain buttons within sections of the anticipated audience.

This isn't (IMHO) at all rare in programs about UFOs, ghosts etc., even from respected production companies.

 

[Ann K]

So there were chunks with a blue color that weren't melting.

My mother was into photography in my youth, including with a flash. As I recall those flashbulbs, they were clear glass with a blue coating of some plastic. They were always partly melted after the bulb flashed, and whatever the use of the blue color for color balance, they also served to keep the bulb itself from shattering and injuring users.

 

[John J.]

Funny that no-one ever mentions Kenny or Carol Drake's occupations.

Wouldn't be surprised if Kenny turned out to be a delivery driver for "Powdered Elemental Metals and Oxides (Council Bluffs) Inc." or somesuch.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

Funny that no-one ever mentions Kenny or Carol Drake's occupations.

Wouldn't be surprised if Kenny turned out to be a delivery driver for "Powdered Elemental Metals and Oxides (Council Bluffs) Inc." or somesuch.

From the 2021 article

The first report came at 7:45 p.m. from 17-year-old Kenny Drake and his nephew, 12-year-old Randy James, who were driving on North 16th street. Kenny's wife Carol, 16 years old, was also in the car.

Two high school aged kids. Kenny's address in the newspaper article from 1977: 1723 Second Ave. Just down the street from Jefferson High School. He was probably a student there.

Side note: Were these two kids - 17 and 16 - really married?

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

Source: https://youtu.be/nhY0xzKcPoE?si=i61InBwpzpAi6wP7

Note the scattered chunks of metal burning with a blue/white light. Could this be what Mike Moore is describing?


Burning VW engine cases seems to be a thing. I've counted 4 other videos of such so far.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

Could we explain the

glowing orange blob with a bluish crystalline substance in its center

as this kind of thing? A large chunk of magnesium that's been burning for some time.

 

[F.Moon]

Interesting...:

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

Good for you for finding this. It looks as though Vallee was right in this case. But he should have cited a source.

These are the three sites.

Red - Big Lake Park - December 17, 1977
Green - Harrison Street and McGee Avenue- July 5, 1978
Blue - Third Street and High School Avenue - July 10, 1978

If there's any pattern it just seems to be someone working their way south to fresh victim territory.

For what it's worth, high school students would be on vacation on all three dates. December 17 would probably have been the first full day of Christmas vacation. July 5 would be in either the first or second week of summer vacation.

These are not industrial spills or dumps. Even a small foundry would let slag cool down before it was illicitly dumped. And why dump in a neighborhood? If some kind of road going transport of hot slag was rigged up, why take these routes? So this isn't a spill either.

Doing this in neighborhoods suggests that you want to get attention. These are pranks. And who is the most likely suspect? A group of boys 20 or younger.

In both cases the splattered metal was so hot it was untouchable for nearly 30 minutes.

It doesn't seem credible to me that molten slag would be cool enough to touch in such a short time. I'd believe 6 hours I guess. That suggests that the metal was not molten when it was dumped in these areas.

Also the two sites in July are on narrow residential streets. Midnight or not, this had to be done quickly and discretely.

There are thermite burn videos on YT in which an improvised crucible of sand is used. The shallow "craters" mentioned in all three cases might suggest such an improvised crucible, which was knocked to pieces after the burn was complete. But to produce ~40 pounds of slag and steel is long process. And noisy. The reaction makes a lot of noise. And light. Just forming the sand crucible takes considerable time.

A portable crucible on a trailer might be used for a thermite burn. Once it was done you could skedaddle, but that's still a long noisy, light producing process. In a neighborhood? How could you do it without getting caught?

The slag could be heated off site and transported as I described in post 101: https://www.metabunk.org/threads/is...-2022-a-useful-paper.13286/page-3#post-349335

Somewhat more believable. But it's still rather elaborate. And I don't think it's necessary. And you still have the issue of cool down time.

I think the most credible scenario involves transporting cold slag. At one time it was molten and it was splattered upon the ground. At which time it took on the distinctive shape of splattered, molten metal. It looks the part.

Scoop out a shallow depression, scatter the pieces in the depression in a realistic way and lay a magnesium VW engine case on top. Or chunks of magnesium. Maybe use road flares as a heat source, a fuse, to get the magnesium burning. It can take a considerable span of time to get it to ignite. In the VW case burn videos I've seen, the cases were placed on wood fires; and of course it's the hot coals ignite it, not the flaming wood. Too elaborate and time consuming for this prank.

Road flares are quick to set off and are hot. You could be long gone before the magnesium starts burning.

It's the quickest and quietist way to get it done.

The "molten metal" wasn't ever molten on site. It was warmed up by the magnesium, which burns away to magnesium oxide powder. Warmed up to maybe above 200 degrees? Just enough to be too hot to touch. But people were meant to think it was. They are nonplussed, wondering how molten steel slag could just quietly appear in their neighborhood. Ha Ha.

 

[F.Moon]

More about the "Mysterious Fires":

And a fourth example!:

 

[F.Moon]

This refers to the first incident:

Kayser, an associate professor of material science and engineering at ISU, said he is "reluctant to say it was the re-entry of a man-made object."
He said his analysis showed two separate materials - globs of carbon steel and a light, fluffy material that could be thermite powder that is used in welding.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

Omaha World-Herald
Sat, Jan 21, 1978 ·Page 16

The mystery began about 7:30 p.m. Dec. 17 when three young adults viewed a flaming trail in the sky from their vantage point in a store parking lot at 1800 N. 16th Street.

The Drake/James party

https://www.google.com/maps/place/1800+N+16th+St,+Council+Bluffs,+IA+51501/@41.2797218,-95.8681758,684m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x8793853af018ef83:0x8c086a29d257e210!8m2!3d41.279871!4d-95.8688404!16s/g/11c27kys98?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MDczMC4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw==

Since then, two other couples have told Allen they saw the same thing — one couple viewing from the Interstate 480 bridge about 40 blocks distant.

The Moore party?

Who is the third party?

Sand at the edges of the object had been melted to glass, Allen said.

Okay, with this new info, I'm convinced that the metal was heated on site by thermite.

The most likely scenario: The shallow craters found at each site were in fact a crucible formed of sand. A depression in the soil is dug out. It's lined with sand and the sand is built up in a dike around the edges.. The sand insulates and contains the reaction.

In the case of the Big Lake Park incident the pit was farther up the slope and the metal broke out of the dike of sand and ran down the slope.

I'm still wondering about how quickly this stuff cools. One factor in this that some reports might be exaggerating how thick the metal was. If it were an inch thick and less, rather than the 3 to 4 inches sometimes reported, the rate of cooling might be more credible.


The object in the still sky seems to be a flare sent up by the hoaxers. I haven't seen anything that's inconsistent with that. It's not possible to say whether it was a parachute flare or a free falling flare.


From the article in post 116

A lot of people apparently want some of the material .
Asst. Fire Chief Moore said Drake first reported seeing the object about 7:45 p.m. on Dec. 17.
"By 7 o'clock the next morning sightseers had carried away most of the stuff," he said.

Mike Moore's story about a 1,000 pounds of material and his story of the fire dept. carting it away has been debunked. Did he consciously make it up, or is his memory unreliable?

This raises a question as to whether he went to the correct area in the Netflix documentary and whether we can definitively call that the exact site. And neither can we take any of his eye-witness testimony at face value. It's possible he made up the story about seeing the distant lights, and we may even question whether he was present at the site that night.

Was Randy Drake one of the hoaxers or was he hoaxed? It could go either way.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

Omaha World-Herald
Sun, Dec 18, 1977 ·Page 48

...was fizzing like a big sparkler.

A contemporary source as to what Randy Drake saw.

Let's assume he was not one of the hoaxers...

Evidently the reaction was still in progress. I think this nails down that the reaction was contained in a sand crucible rather than by a solid crucible that was taken away. The hoaxers prepared the site, sent up at least one flare and skedaddled. From what I've seen on YT, magnesium is often used to ignite thermite.

Even if he were one of the hoaxers, this might be a reliable description of what he saw.

 

[F.Moon]

Since a self-confessed hoaxer (or rather, a prankster) has come forward, it's worth finding out whether he can provide new, revealing details to support his claim, or if he'll turn out to be a liar.
In Netflix's Investigation Alien (S1 E4), he's interviewed by a "former CIA Case Officer" (wow!), Douglas Laux, who openly admits he "might have to grill him a little bit." (Judge for yourself below whether he actually does: all he says is "Yeah," "Okay," "Really?"...)
Here is the transcript of the interview, based on the text at https://tvshowtranscripts.ourboard.org/viewtopic.php?f=2385&t=71597:

Douglas Laux: George [Knapp] told me going into this investigation that somebody claimed that this case was actually a hoax.
I'm going to meet a gentleman named Darrell Livengood.
He claims that in 1977, he fabricated the entire story.
I hate going into any interview really suspect and not believing from the get-go. So I'm gonna keep an open mind, but I might have to grill him a little bit.
[Interview starts]
Laux: Hit me with everything, and I'm all ears.
Darrell Livengood: In December, it'll be 46 years.
Laux: Yup.
Livengood: I had come back from college. It was the middle of wintertime, and I met up with three buddies of mine. Two of the fellas had worked for the Union Pacific.
Laux: Oh.
Livengood: Well, they gave me two of these devices. Uh, they called 'em charges, but basically what they were is a thermal welding device.
Laux: Okay.
Livengood: And it was full of phosphorus and powder.
Laux: Right.
Livengood: And what you would do is you'd ignite the fuse. And it was similar to a fountain like you would have at Fourth of July. One of those little cone things that spray for a couple minutes.
Laux: Yeah.
Livengood: But this thing went for about 15 minutes.
Laux: Okay.
Livengood: It shot sparks about 30 feet in the air. That plume of smoke that went up clearly must have dissipated to the point where it looked like a UFO.
Laux: Really?
Livengood: Probably caught the tail end of the burn, so it looked like... the spaceship was shooting flame down instead of really it was shooting it up.
Laux: Shooting flame up? Okay.
[Narrative interjection]
Laux: When he broke it down for me, that he had friends working for the railroad, and he's describing to me the device that the railroads use, and that it's the most common thing used to weld two tracks together. So maybe he did ignite that.
[Interview resumes]
Livengood: You know, we were a bunch of kids out just having a good time.
Laux: Yeah.
Livengood: And the fire marshal's son...
Laux: Mike Moore.
Livengood: ...put the stamp of legitimacy on this.
Laux: Okay.
Livengood: You know, who would doubt his word? And we kept it quiet until I couldn't keep it quiet anymore, you know.
[End of interview]
Laux: His story was pretty credible, but he doesn't have anything tangible.
[...]

Livengood could have been one of the perpetrators, even if he's mistaken about the specific chemicals involved ("phosphorus and powder"...) or is speculating wildly about what others observed (the "plume of smoke that went up clearly must have dissipated to the point where it looked like a UFO", or the -apparently unreported- description of it resembling a "spaceship shooting flame down"). It could still be worthwhile to question him about general and practical details of how they did it, whether he and his three buddies were traveling in a "tiny foreign car," and whether they were involved in similar incidents the following year.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

He's probably talking about a single use crucible. A steel bucket for strength lined with firebrick for heat resistance. As far as I can tell, these are single use. Maybe there are, are were, reusable types.

When you prepare it for use onsite, I'm guessing you put a plug in that hole made of a material the melts or burns away. Maybe as simple as paraffin wax. It holds in the cold material, but lets the molten metal pour out.

It's put on top of a steel framework that's been packed with sand to form a mold.

Problems with the story:
-You can't just put this kind of crucible on the ground. The molten metal coming out the bottom would melt the outside of the container. You have to have a framework for it to sit on. That framework couldn't be the steel framework used on rails. That framework clamps to rails. It has no support by itself. And it must be lined with sand; otherwise the molten metal would weld itself to the framework.

Maybe you dig a narrow slit trench in the ground? And place the crucible on it. I don't think that would work unless the trench was pretty deep and the metal runs downhill without getting clogged up. That doesn't match the description of even the Big Lake Park site; the one on a slope. Let alone the sites that were on flat ground.

You would have to build a framework at the site. Or use a framework you've transported there... and have to take away from the site. That's why I've postulated the use of a rigged up trailer. Maybe a boat trailer. Without the boat, the trailer is just a bottomless frame. You could bolt or weld some kind of frame onto an old boat trailer. The molten metal would just fall out on the ground. When you're done, you just drive away. The Big Lake Park site and all the others had road access.

-The single use crucible is hot after the reaction. Really hot. You can flip it out of the way. But how do you quickly transport it away from the scene? The Drake/James party show up within minutes, yet there's no one there and no framework and no crucible.

in the trailer scenario, you just drive away.



The trailer scenario is my second pick for how this was done.

But a big strike against it: You'd have to stand there until the reaction is complete. You're standing there waiting to get caught committing what must be a fairly serious crime.

In the sand lined pit scenario you can skedaddle just after you get the thermite ignited... with chunks of magnesium.


Back to the story...

Randy Drake describes seeing an active thermite reaction on the ground. There's no one there, and no crucible and no framework.

This guy doesn't seem to be aware of Randy Drake. He talks as if the only witness, and the first witness on the scene, was Mike Moore.


Finally - This guy doesn't talk about the other incidents. He probably doesn't know about them. You could save that by guessing that word spread and it got to be a kind of an underground fad.