The Calvine object – a secret US reconnaissance platform?

[Todd Feinman]

And evidence that is THAT poor is not going to do much to establish an amazing new phenomenon previously unknown to science!

A lot of speculation soup has been made with that stone --er model --er thingamajig. Unless someone else got a pic of the event from a different view, I don't know how you could squeeze any more juice out of it.

 

[Andreas]

I think the "could it be genuine" question is a serious one, not merely a lack of skepticism.

I understand what you mean, but it's almost always possible to construct a chain of events that makes something seem possible. When some people see a fishing line holding a UFO in place, their first approach is to explain it away as a scratch on the negative. In the Calvine case, I'm sure the photo could, in fact, be genuine. It's possible that the witness saw something in the sky and took a few photos of it. But for this to be true, we need to construct a long chain of assumptions to explain the parts of the case that don't add up.

Both Clarke and Pope argued somewhat along the lines of, "Sure, it could be a hoax, but if not, then it could be…" And we could do the same thing with Adamski and Meyer. Once the possibility of a hoax is set aside, suddenly a case like Calvine seems much more interesting. But in reality, it isn't.

To summarize: we don't know who took the photo, we don't know when or where it was taken, and we don't know why the Daily Record didn't find it interesting enough to publish. But after studying the case thoroughly, I'm quite sure about one thing: the MoD didn't take it seriously and made only a minimal effort to investigate what really happened. And with such a weak case with few known facts — and a photo vague enough to effectively hide all traces of a hoax — asking whether the case could be "genuine" is the wrong way to approach it.

 

[Ann K]

And with such a weak case with few known facts — and a photo vague enough to effectively hide all traces of a hoax — asking whether the case could be "genuine" is the wrong way to approach it.

I disagree. We have a pretty good grasp of things like physics and how objects behave in our atmosphere. When something is seen that is described in a way that defies those laws, we do not first react to think "Whoa, this thing breaks the laws of physics. We better throw out all the long-established laws of physics!" No, any scientist would first look for an explanation for that behavior, one that doesn't require the extraordinary proof that would be needed to support the extraordinary claims. In such a case "could it be genuine" is exactly the right question, and when it is resoundingly answered in the negative, we have no need to search for sci-fi explanations.

 

[NorCal Dave]

In such a case "could it be genuine" is exactly the right question, and when it is resoundingly answered in the negative, we have no need to search for sci-fi explanations.

I think you @Andreas are basically saying the same thing. He's saying, that given the amount of info we have, there is no need to even entertain the idea "is it genuine?". I agree with you that if something being genuine throws out long established laws and observations, there is a problem. I think in this case, there is really nothing to challenge those laws, aside from a vague, anonymous, unsubstantiated 2nd or 3rd hand story which could be a complete fabrication. There is no evidence that any laws of physics are being violated, it's just a slightly out of focus photo with an unconfirmed backstory.

Both Clarke and Pope argued somewhat along the lines of, "Sure, it could be a hoax, but if not, then it could be…"

In your conversations did you get the impression Clarke puts a lot of faith in his anonymous sources? The on-the-record sources he quotes say it was a hoax, but it's his anonymous sources that supposedly claim this was a US secret aircraft and the Brits knew what it was.

This is so similar to much of UFOlogy. We have people claiming they have learned of UFO programs and aliens from various "high ranking" people, but we never learn who they actually are. In many cases we can cross match stories and claims and get a good idea of who or where certain claims come from, but we never get to draw a straight line from claim to the actual person that could substantiate the claim.

I could even see Pope being a source, as we have similar situations in other UFO claims. People that are supposedly connected to programs or know of secret stuff making public claims, then making anonymous claims behind the scenes. Pope usually maintained the UFO aspect of the Calvine photo publicly, but I wouldn't be surprised if he was then telling Clarke something different "off the record" as an anonymous sources because of an NDA or something. Not saying he did, just we see this kind of thing. Just speculation, but after decades of hyping up this unseen photo, it turns out to be rather meh and Pope doesn't say much about it.

 

[Ann K]

I think in this case, there is really nothing to challenge those laws, aside from a vague, anonymous, unsubstantiated 2nd or 3rd hand story which could be a complete fabrication.

(@NorCal Dave )

The Calvine story was split into so many sub-threads that I'm unable to locate the one we started with and the story originally told by the photographers. To the best of my recollection they claimed it silently hovered for a number of minutes then suddenly flew upwards. Can anyone pinpoint the right thread for me?

(@Mick West , the search function doesn't seem to limit itself to titles only when asked, although I'm not sure if that makes a difference since the threads have later been broken up into several based on our interpretations. All of them seem to "start in the middle of the story".)

 

[Mick West]

I think in this case, there is really nothing to challenge those laws, aside from a vague, anonymous, unsubstantiated 2nd or 3rd hand story which could be a complete fabrication.

(@NorCal Dave )

The Calvine story was split into so many sub-threads that I'm unable to locate the one we started with and the story originally told by the photographers. To the best of my recollection they claimed it silently hovered for a number of minutes then suddenly flew upwards. Can anyone pinpoint the right thread for me?

(@Mick West , the search function doesn't seem to limit itself to titles only when asked, although I'm not sure if that makes a difference since the threads have later been broken up into several based on our interpretations. All of them seem to "start in the middle of the story".)

Search by title will also include tags, so sometime pulls in threads wihtout the word in the title.

They get listed by date, I think, and the older one is:
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/claim-1990-calvine-ufo.11574/

 

[Andreas]

To the best of my recollection they claimed it silently hovered for a number of minutes then suddenly flew upwards.

We have the handwritten note released by the MoD, and it doesn't mention whether the craft made any noise or not. Then we have Nick Pope. On page 176 of Open Skies, Closed Minds, he claims that the witness heard a "low humming sound." Then there's the claim that the craft was silent, and to the best of my recollection, that's something claimed by Craig Lindsay. But if so, those are obviously 30-year-old recollections and should be taken with a large grain of salt.

Regarding Pope's claim, he confessed to me in an email shortly before he passed away that he didn't have any Calvine-related information that wasn't already available in the public domain. In other words, the description in his book was purely based on the now-declassified documents, and the "humming sound" was likely added for dramatic effect.

In other words, we know that the witness most likely claimed that the craft was hovering for about ten minutes before taking off vertically at great speed. The rest is just guesswork, I would say.

 

[Andreas]

In your conversations did you get the impression Clarke puts a lot of faith in his anonymous sources?

Both yes and no. I asked him about this specifically in an email and he replied:

"Like you I struggled with the US secret platform but I think that we don't know enough about the type of prototypes that existed or were bring tested to be definitive."

He also wrote somewhat later:

"Like you I found it difficult to accept what the intelligence officer said about it being a US platform. I actually said to him at the time that I found that difficult to believe, e.g. that they could keep something secret for 30+ years.
But if it is true it does explain some of the unexplained aspects of the story."

In other worlds, it's hard to say what Clarke actually believes. But obviously he want to keep the mystery alive.