SUBJECT: 03/87 SIGHTING IN GAMBELL, ALASKA                   FILE: UFO1376 
 
 
 Report #: 224
     From: UFO INFO SERVICE
Date Sent: 05-10-1987
  Subject: GAMBELL, AK
CASE TYPE:   LRS
     DATE:   17 MARCH 1987
     TIME:   23:55 HOURS
     CFN#:   0346
 DURATION:   UNKNOWN
WITNESSES:   MANY
   SOURCE:   TIMES ANCHORAGE, AK  MARCH 20/1987
------------------------------------------------
Alaska National Guard officials in Anchorage Thursday reported that guardmen
living in Western Alaska made reports of a half-dozen sightings of
Unidentified Flying Objects complete with colored lights and spewing smoke.

Most of the sightings were made a few minutes before midnight on Tuesday. Of
the six sightings, one was dismessed as a Soviet helicopter operating off Big
Diomede Island in the Bering Strait, according to Lt.Mike Haller, information
officer for the guard.

One of the other sightings from Gambell on St.  Lawrence Island in the Bering
Sea - could describe an Air Force AWACS radar surveillance aircraft, Haller
said.   A guard member, relaying a report from another villager, said an
aircraft appeared west of Gambell at about 11:55 p.m.  The object had a black,
round nose, he said, with an object on top of the fuselage.

An AWACS aircrft carries a disk-shaped radar dome on top of the  fuselage.
But the Air Force, which operates two AWACS in Alaska, said neither plane was
in the air that night.  Staff Sgt. Frank Singleton said the planes were flying
only day missions.

Other descriptions relayed to Guard officials consistently described bright
lights and clouds around the object, haller said.   From Elim, on Norton
sound, a villager desribed an object with "very bright aqua and blue-green
lights" about the size of two football fields with egg-shaped clouds around
it.

The night sky was clear throughout the region. The sighting took place at
11:56 p.m. with the object spotted about 5 miles north of Elim.  Three
separate groups of villagers saw it traveling to the southwest, haller said.
In Savoonga, a Guard member received a call from a neighbor at 11:50 p.m. He
estimated an object larger then a jet was flying at 30,000 feet with two
bright lights and smoke moving from front to rear.

In Tununak, about 125 miles west of Bethel on Nelson Island, a Guard member
described the object as a bright white light, such as an aircraft landing
light as seen through fog.  The sky was clear, however . The object was
traveling from west to east over the Island and was estimated to be flying at
30,000 to 40,000 feet.

The reports follow two visual sightings of Unidentified Flying Objects by the
captain of a Japan Air Lines aircraft flying over Interior Alaska.


              
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