Sun 9 May 93 19:49 By: Charles Mielke To: Don Allen Re: Bonafides ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ As a new user to this conference, I thought I might introduce myself and present my bonafides. I'm not so vain as to feel that my history is particularly interesting - but still, I would find similar intros by others very interesting, which is why I am being so bold. (g) An additional caveat: while I will be presenting a few stories in the future, they will be of only marginal interest, since they don't involve any eyebrow raising, attention getting stories. Some of these stories involve my sightings, others will involve other people. First, let me just say that I am, basically, just your average person who is mystified by all the stories of other people's sightings. I won't knock their accounts, nor will I support them, either - as I am, basically, an open-minded skeptic. I will, however, question statements or reports which appear to be in conflict with my knowledge. (such as it is - {g}) I would like to see improvements in the reporting of sightings, and to that end I will seek some discussion of this in a future post. I flew Air Force Fighters for 30 years, starting in 1954 and ending with my retirement in 1984. At Nellis AFB, in 1955, I received air-to-air and air-to-ground training. Later, in the late 70s, I flew several Red Flag missions in the various training areas North of Nellis. With regard to Groom Lake, also known as Dreamland, we were simply told not to overfly the restricted area, and that if we did so, we would be sent home to our home units along with a "nastygram". We were also told that if we experienced an emergency, that we could land at Groom Lake if need be, but that we would be kept there a few days to undergo a briefing. Presumably the briefing would be to impress upon us the necessity of keeping our mouths shut as to what we saw. We didn't waste a lot of time speculating or trying to guess what was there. Obviously, it was something secret, and our chances of finding out what it was was nil. We all figured that what it was ranged from a squadron of Migs, to a squadron of USAF exotic aircraft, to actual alien craft. Or possibly all three. In my flights near Dreamland, the restricted area was so wide that one could barely make out that something was there. I don't recall being able to make out specific buildings, or even to spot the runway. Certainly no aircraft of any sort were visible. Possibly one of the reasons for this is that during my Red Flag sorties, too much time had to be spent in actually maintaining my position in our tactical formations, navigation, trying to keep from running into the ground at 500 knots and 100 feet, and trying to keep from running into various mountains while maintaining formation integrity and all while still keeping a cross check going into the cockpit for instrument indications, RHAW indications, and back out of the cockpit to look out for "enemy" aircraft. So, there wasn't a heck of a lot of time left for sightseeing. (g) NEXT: a UFO sighting.