LUBBOCK, Texas – On August 25, 1951, four Texas Tech professors witnessed silent moving lights in the sky one night, according to the Alien UFO Blog.
EverythingLubbock.com interviewed a Senior Lecturer in the Department of History at Texas Tech, Dr. Richard Verrone about the Lubbock lights on Monday. Dr. Verrone studies UFO phenomenon and teaches an upper-division course on the Phenomenon for the department.
These Lubbock lights were seen by many. A Texas Tech student even took pictures of them with his 35-mm camera. His photos reveal the lights in a perfectly symmetrical V-shape.
Witnesses stated there were two or three flights of lights per evening, with one hour to ten minutes in between each one. UFO Blog said witnesses noticed the lights moved from north to south and did not make any sound.
There are a few possible reasons for the Lubbock lights. Some believe they were birds or an Air Force aircraft. Witnesses said the speed at which the light was traveling was too fast for birds and the lack of noise was too quiet for an aircraft.
It could be possible that it was an Air Force Aircraft. The Reese Air Force Base just a few miles outside of Lubbock, reported that there were no planes in the area at the time. However the Air Force base could have not told the truth because they were doing flight testing, UFO Blog said.
The Air Force investigated the phenomenon and many others under “Project Blue Book.” Project blue book was a program run by the Air Force that investigated UFOs. From 1947 to 1969 while the program was run, a total of 12,618 sightings were reported and 701 remain “Unidentified,” said the National Archives.
Dr. Verrone stated that Project Blue Book representatives “did a very thorough investigation” of the Lubbock lights.
Chief investigator for Blue Book at the time, Lieutenant Edward Ruppelt released a statement about the findings of the Lubbock lights. “The lights that the professors saw…have been positively identified as a very commonplace and easily explainable natural phenomenon,” said Ruppelt. Dr. Verrone stated, “You can see that Blue Book actually refused to comment on a definitive conclusion.”
Blue Book ruled out the possibility that it could be “birds, an airplane, a meteor, a weather anomaly, etc.” said Dr. Verrone. However, Dr. J. Alan Hynek, the lead scientist of Blue Book, later attempted to promote the USAF’s bird cover story. Dr. Verrone said Hynek “confirmed that the professors admitted that they saw birds, something that they did not do.”
Project Blue Book shut down in 1969 because it was a “public relations burden,” said the Condon Report released November 1968. The Condon Report released in 1969 stated that the government closed Blue Book because it didn’t “advance science.”
The lack of transparency from the Blue Book’s investigation leaves the Lubbock lights a mystery. Dr. Verrone said, “I can say with confidence that the Lubbock Lights does not have a conventional explanation and, more likely, is a true unknown which, by definition, does not rule out the extraterrestrial hypothesis.”
Related story: Lubbock Lights: 70 Years Later
