The 'flying bullet' near Port Elizabeth

What was reported

Hind offers this as a specimen of the detailed lights-in-the-sky reports that filled her early files. At 23.45 on 9 July 1974 two men, Alan Johnson and Bob Sonderup, watched a bullet-shaped object pass roughly 500 metres above the horizon near Port Elizabeth. It had a very dark cone-shaped nose, four port-holes lit brightly from inside, an illuminated tail and a silverish body, and Hind reproduces their sketch as Figure 1. Looking back she wonders whether it was the nose cone of an experimental space probe, but says it stayed unidentified because nobody at the time had the knowledge or the communications to check; she adds that only candour among nations about failed probes would let UAPs of this type become IFOs.

What Hind made of it

Hind speculates in retrospect that it could have been the nose cone of an experimental space probe, but it remained unidentified at the time for lack of knowledge and communications; she uses it to argue that honesty between nations about failed probes would turn such UAPs into IFOs.

Explanation offered
nose cone of an experimental space probe

In their words

• it remained unidentified at the time due to lack of knowledge and communications

Cross references

• Figure 1, spread 3

Source

Cynthia Hind, UFO Afrinews No 1 (July 1988), spread 3