Case No 95 · UFO Afrinews No 11, Feb. 1995
Rex Taylor's measured observation from the Cutty Sark deck
1994 · Deck of the Cutty Sark Hotel, Kariba, Kariba, Zimbabwe
What was reported
Rex Taylor of Kariba Yacht Safaris watched from the Cutty Sark Hotel deck with a group including two aviators. He timed it at about 20:15, which puzzled Hind. It first looked like a rocket, then showed a fiery sparking tail, a faint trail, a regular row of green lights like windows lit from within, and a second smaller rocket alongside. There was no noise. Heading about 195 degrees magnetic, it passed 20 degrees east of the vertical and the larger rocket flared and burnt as it vanished southward. Overhead it spanned about 30 degrees nose to tail and a fifth of that top to bottom, measured against his arm and checked next day by compass. The aviators reasoned the silence placed it at the atmosphere's edge; at 88,000 ft that would make it 12 km long. Duration about 15 seconds.
What Hind made of it
Hind calls it an excellent observation; the 20:15 timing against everyone else's 20:55 either means watches failed, which she doubts, or supports her theory that UAPs affect time.
Explanation offered
Rocket at first glance; the aviators placed it at the edge of the atmosphere, borne out by its being seen as far south as Johannesburg
In their words
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The green lights were in a regular pattern, almost like a series of windows lit from within.
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There was no noise.
Cross references
- 11-05-1 umbrella entry for Case No 95
- 11-06-2 Alexander L at the same hotel
- Figure 1
Connected
Lake Kariba reports: fishermen, warden, video and the Cutty SarkCase fileSame place
Alexander L (in 11-06-2) and Rex Taylor (11-07-1) both watched from the deck of the Cutty Sark Hotel at Kariba on the same night, and 11-06-2 cross-references 11-07-1 by name. One vantage point, so the two accounts are not observationally independent even though the testimony is separate. Their descriptions diverge sharply all the same: a dark centre ringed by about fourteen flashing lights taking over a minute to pass, versus a rocket with a sparking tail and a row of green window-lights gone in fifteen seconds.
Lake Kariba reports: fishermen, warden, video and the Cutty SarkCase fileSame witness
Hedged. 11-06-2 puts Alexander L at the Cutty Sark around 21:00 and 11-07-1 puts Taylor on the same deck with a group including two aviators; 11-06-2 also carries 'an aircraft pilot and a company managing director' who called it an aircraft on fire. The same hotel party is very likely the source of several of the witnesses counted separately across the two entries, which would inflate the apparent number of independent Kariba accounts.
Zimbabwean Flap of September 1994: Lake Kariba houseboatCase fileSame window
Both are the night of 14 September 1994 at Lake Kariba. They are irreconcilable on the central facts: Taylor timed fifteen seconds on a compass-checked bearing of 195 degrees, Garry and Jenny tracked their object for about six minutes from the horizon to the Kariba hills. Either two different stimuli were seen, or duration estimates from an unprepared witness are worthless here.
Lights over KaribaStorySame window
The story and the case are the same nationwide fireball of 14 September 1994, two nights before Ariel School. The story says that in Kariba people said it stopped and hovered; the one compass-measured account from Kariba says it flared, burnt and vanished southward in fifteen seconds. The hover is the claim the whole cluster turns on, and it does not appear in the best-documented account of the same event from the same town.
Source
Cynthia Hind, UFO Afrinews No 11 (Feb. 1995), spread 07
In the archive
This case became a story on this site.
Nearby
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