OPINION|
In 1958, U.S. Army Capt. Jack Hembree saw something at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico that he couldn't explain then and he can't explain now.
Hembree, 94, for approximately two minutes witnessed an unidentified flying object that hovered near a Redstone missile prior to a test launch.
The Redstone was the first large American ballistic missile. It had a range of 200-250 miles and carried either a conventional warhead or a nuclear warhead. It made its first successful flight in 1953 and became operational in 1958. It was in service in West Germany until 1964.
Hembree is the only person I know who has convinced me he has seen a UFO.
I wrote about his bizarre encounter in 2021 while at the Springfield News-Leader.
Since that story, Hembree has been working with Linda Chipperfield, of Florida, an artist and his daughter-in-law, to come up with an accurate graphic rendition of what he saw that early morning 66 years ago.
Hembree contacted me recently to show me the finished product. I stopped by his house in Springfield. I sat at a table with him and his wife, Carolyn, and looked at the drawings.
It made no noise; it gave off no heat
The missile launch had a 33-hour countdown. It was Hembree's task as the control and safety officer to go to the launch pad to ensure things were going according to plan. He was alone.
Other crew members were in a nearby block house, from where the launch was controlled.
The gantry, or launch tower, was on railroad tracks; it had been pulled away.
It was dawn — dark with a hint of light.
“As I was on the launch pad checking the missile, a movement and light coming around the gantry to my right stopped me,” Hembree said.
At first, he thought it was a fireball. It wasn't.
The light moved east to west. It consisted of several overlapping spheres of different sizes. Each sphere had what appeared to be individual points of light that looked like bulbs.
Each sphere contained horizontal and vertical bands; it looked like the bulbs, if that's what they were, were attached to the bands, if that's what they were.
The spheres were at eye level and transparent.
It made no noise. It gave off no heat. It moved without any indication of how it was propelled. The earth and sand beneath it remained still.
Some of the crew were sleeping, others asked what he'd been drinking
Hembree was not scared. He did not become ill. The object had no physical, mental or emotional impact on him. I guess what I'm trying to say is that he did feel bliss or enlightenment. Nor did he get a headache or lose his short-term memory.
It hovered near the missile and then accelerated as it moved west without making a sound. It flew over the housing barracks where Hembree's wife and two young children were and then disappeared behind the Organ Mountains.
The spheres elongated as the object sped away.
I ask Hembree if he made a report.
Yes, he says, he told his superior officer.
Maybe, I say, that document still exists.
It was an oral report, he tells me.
Did he tell the others in the block house?
Yes, he says. Some of them had been sleeping, and those who weren't asked Hembree what he'd been drinking.
At the table, Carolyn asks the same question I asked a few years ago and the same question everyone asks.
“What do you think it was?”
“That's the $64,000 question, isn't it?” he says.
Maybe it was high-tech espionage from a foreign foe. Maybe it was extra-terrestrial.
“I don't really know what it was,” he says.
This is Pokin Around column No. 160.
