Calvine Photo Hoax Theories

Well...I guess someone has to refute all the wild stuff that gets made up about it.
well.. technically you're making stuff up too. like when you claim the photographer must know of its "fame". and what the writings in a personal memo, with no date or authorship, means etc.

Don't get me wrong it's fine if you want to join in on the brainstorming of ideas and opinions, i just don't think it's cool to criticize others for also being interested in the topic.
 
In so doing, I have to peruse enough of it to at least know what they are claiming

Well that's just it. You really do have to watch all the interviews with Colonel Charles Halt, Sgt Jim Penniston, etc, etc, to really gain a sense of what was and is going on with the Rendlesham incident, for example. To do so is to be pretty certain that something more than a lighthouse was behind the story. And yes the story has been very much embellished over the years....with Penniston even being caught out when his 'notebook' ( allegedly recorded on the night ) contained the same wrong date for the incident that was in the Halt memo. It's only when one is aware of a story in meticulous detail that the loopholes really emerge.

The Rendlesham incident has a huge amount of detail and statements ( and changing stories ). By contrast the Calvine incident could not be more sparse. No original witnesses identified. Just a single poor quality ( for the 1990s ) photo and a bunch of hearsay plus an MOD 'note'. And in fact the photo is really not even the best hoax...if it is one. The McMinnville UFO, with its two photos, is much better.
 
well.. technically you're making stuff up too. like when you claim the photographer must know of its "fame". and what the writings in a personal memo, with no date or authorship, means etc.

Not really. I'm just applying Occam's razor most of the time. Nobody really has any idea how the Calvine photo was created...and in the absence of the witness coming forth I doubt anyone ever will...so I tend to go for ' what is the easiest way it could have been created ?'.

What I mean by that is, a method that results in the least amount of 'but the clouds are upside down' or ' you can't really be suggesting that's a man in a rowing boat' or having to argue over the fine details of 3D reflections or trying to find an island on a lake or find the right Xmas decoration or spot the string or...whatever.

To me the simplest is either an image placed on a piece of glass...or...a photo of a photo, with the UFO stuck on. I think it has been demonstrated here that both of those work.
 
Not really
yes really :)

.so I tend to go for ' what is the easiest way it could have been created ?
i know. i still think the easiest way is to go to an airshow and hang a moldy ravioli from a tree. (ok maybe not a moldy ravioli specifically, i just like saying that phrase)

But people brainstorming other possibilities is ok too. and its ok for you to refute them once or twice.
 
My attitude to UFOs as aliens is not that they 'can't' exist but that there is precious little evidence that they do.
And yet there are people well-versed in physics who can tell you that the behavior of some sightings can't occur as described in our atmosphere. The unmistakable conclusion is that those events are either completely misunderstood, mis-described, deliberate inventions, or hoaxes. These are the kinds of people you might be inclined to think of as "diehard skeptics", but they're not; they're speaking from their knowledge of facts.
 
@enilc

Come on, enilc, tell us what you really think without telling us what you really think.
IMG_3166.jpeg

:D
 
I have long suspected that the Rendlesham incident, 10 years earlier, was a cover story for something else. Perhaps a nuclear missile falling off a plane and into the forest.
...To do so is to be pretty certain that something more than a lighthouse was behind the story.

Well, going off-topic; re. the Rendlesham Forest sightings (thread https://www.metabunk.org/threads/rendlesham-forest-ufo-incident.13457/) there were other factors- Colonel Halt's questionable actions, the failure to interpret a radiation monitor's output appropriately, several other things- but there is no reliable evidence of any type of cover-up of a dramatic physical cause.

If a store or component had been lost from a USAF aircraft from RAF Woodbridge or RAF Bentwaters, it is inconceivable that Col. Halt, deputy base commander at Bentwaters, would be unaware.
Had a bomb or missile been lost, it is again inconceivable that UK authorities would not be informed. Accidents happen, and the Thatcher government was highly supportive of US foreign policy. The USAF would have no authority to independently conduct retrieval operations outside of its bases in the UK (notwithstanding any hypothetical agreements about final handling).
Had someone been seriously injured or killed by a falling store, or a lost store later detonated, the fact that the USAF had contacted Suffolk police to report a UFO sighting would not go down well.
However, the fact that local police were contacted- and attended, and documented their findings- suggests (as the PCs suspected) nothing dramatic was going on.

RAF Woodbridge hosted arguably the best possible unit for rapidly retrieving a sensitive lost store from a wooded area, the 67th Air Rescue and Recovery Squadron:
External Quote:
The 67th ARRS operated Lockheed HC-130H/N/P Hercules fixed wing aircraft, and heavy duty HH-53 Jolly Green Giant helicopters, and was assigned an air rescue and special operations mission.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAF_Woodbridge.
The HH-53 would have been capable of lifting any store carried by the A-10s of Woodbridge and Bentwaters, or indeed any single store carried by F-4s or F-111s, also stationed in the UK at that time. For instance, the B-61 nuclear bomb, which F-111s could have been tasked to carry, weighs approx. 715 lbs/ 324 kg. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikorsky_MH-53.
There is no indication that the unit, or its personnel, were involved in any way with the "UFO" events.

No-one found any indication of an impact site or a clear-up; no unusual movements of heavy vehicles in the forest was recorded: the areas of the supposed sightings, and Halt's expedition, were accessible to the public at all times.
No police or military cordon of any sort.
A small number of Suffolk policemen and a local forestry worker who visited the site at the time/ shortly after saw no unusual signs; the forester explained some trees had axe-marks indicating they were due to be felled, so presumably he or his colleagues had been working there not long before, and would be familiar with the environment.
 
Last edited:
You'll have to be more specific. I disagree with a lot of what you post.

Edit to add: I'll just mute your posts so that I don't hurt your feelings anymore.
You missed the point. I'm asking YOU to be more specific.
 
s/he doesn't know/remember which comment you are referring to.
It's a general statement referring to a number of posts; enilc has a habit of downvoting posts (not just mine) with no explanation of exactly WHAT he disagrees with. He is the phantom dissenter, seldom posting anything except his downvotes, and playing the chameleon by not clarifying his own position on anything.
 
I've always found it tricky to understand what we're actually seeing in the photo—and for once, I'm not talking about the blurry diamond-shaped object or the "jet." What about the surrounding landscape, and most of all, the fence? Something really looks off, probably because of the rather minimalistic composition. I still think the whole scene could be a reflection in water, but if it's not, it's worth trying to figure out a few details. The fence is definitely the most intriguing element.
IMG_1686.jpeg

At first, I just assumed the photo showed a large portion of the fence, but I've since realized that's not the case. To get a better sense of the scene, I created an "expanded" version of the photo in Photoshop—imagining what the view might have looked like to the photographer. I used rough estimates based on the typical height of farm fences to construct the image.
IMG_1675.png

IMG_1676.png

Of course, this is just a wild guess. But the fence reconstruction isn't entirely speculative—it's based on the approximate dimensions of similar fences, along with Robinson's estimate of the width of each section. The actual fence could have been slightly taller or shorter, but probably not by much. (I doubt a knee-high fence would make sense in this kind of setting.) The angles of the individual fence posts are also taken directly from the original photograph.
IMG_1663.png

That said, I still think the most likely explanation is that the photo was staged using a small cardboard UFO silhouette attached to a sheet of glass, with the scene deliberately composed to avoid any distinguishable landmarks that could reveal the location.
IMG_1670.jpeg

But without that subtle hint of a fence and a few branches, the composition would have looked even less believable—perhaps explaining why it was arranged this way in the first place.

Just my humble opinion.
 
If the picture shows a water surface (reflection hypothesis) then my guess is the fence sits higher than the water, over a slope or escarpment and the whole scene is taken looking downwards. Else, if the picture shows the sky (no reflection) then I find @Andreas' reconstruction in post #453 to be quite good and plausible.
 
It's hard to explain how the "land" at the bottom looks exactly like water ripples.

They do look a bit like that. But I feel there's a possible suggestion of land contours as well.
What might be ripples at the left of the picture might be bushes or the crowns of copses.

IMG_1686.jpeg


The photo's so damn ambiguous.
 
They do look a bit like that. But I feel there's a possible suggestion of land contours as well.
What might be ripples at the left of the picture might be bushes or the crowns of copses.

View attachment 79476

The photo's so damn ambiguous.
I think somebody mentioned this before, but to me much of that "Distant hilltops" or "water ripples" looks like lengths of wire no longer under tension but still loosely attached to the fence. The temporary stake to the left hints at some damage to the fence at a prior time.
wire fence 2.jpg
wire fence 1.jpg


IF that is the case, it's a thinner wire than what is still well-anchored on the fence...

But yeah, the pic is bad enough that almost everything in it can be interpreted several ways.
 
I think somebody mentioned this before, but to me much of that "Distant hilltops" or "water ripples" looks like lengths of wire no longer under tension but still loosely attached to the fence. The temporary stake to the left hints at some damage to the fence at a prior time.
View attachment 79480View attachment 79481

IF that is the case, it's a thinner wire than what is still well-anchored on the fence...

But yeah, the pic is bad enough that almost everything in it can be interpreted several ways.
IMG_1634.jpeg
I agree. I think we're looking at a combined barbed wire and electric fence, and that the "knobs" on the top (electric) wire are either insulators or wire tensioners.
IMG_1735.png

IMG_1735.jpeg

And yes, I do believe we can see loose wires hanging down from the fence. As for the strange-looking "landscape" that resembles a shoreline, it might actually be a distant landscape. The reason it appears so odd could be that the scene was photographed through a sheet of glass.
 
They do look a bit like that. But I feel there's a possible suggestion of land contours as well.
What might be ripples at the left of the picture might be bushes or the crowns of copses.
Recently, I was out photographing cranes in the Swedish countryside and couldn't resist taking a shot of a fence with a partly cloudy sky in the background.
IMG_1063.jpeg

The location looked like this. The fence was slightly above where I was standing, with hills and trees in the background.
IMG_1064.jpeg

My point is that it's absolutely possible for a background landscape to appear as soft, organic shapes behind a fence—even when there are both hills and trees in the distance. I held the camera at face height, so there was no need for low angles or anyone lying in the grass.
 
Back
Top