Southern Africa Unexplained

Case No 93 · UFO Afrinews No 11, Feb. 1995

An Early UAP in Zimbabwe: the R. family and the Vampire jets

1975 · Road between Gweru and Selukwe, near Guinea Fowl School, Gweru, Zimbabwe

What was reported

Passed to Hind by Vic Forward's Matabeleland UFO Research Group. One evening in August 1975 the R. family, driving home from Harare on the Gweru to Selukwe road near Guinea Fowl School, stopped when one of them spotted an unusual object. It looked round, with blue and white rotating lights flashing top and bottom like welding, and a dark central line that rotated the opposite way. It rose and lowered and moved from side to side. Without warning three Vampire jets roared over their heads at incredible speed towards it, showing no lights, which the family put down to the war. The object accelerated upwards at tremendous speed and vanished. Home by 19:49, the parents agreed to tell nobody for fear of ridicule, but at 22:00 two shaken friends knocked with their own story.

What Hind made of it

Hind notes Mr R. is an amateur astronomer with extensive knowledge of the night sky but very limited UAP knowledge, never having heard of Roswell, and that the family stayed silent for fear of ridicule.

In their words

  • The object then accelerated upwards at a tremendous speed and disappeared.

    Cynthia Hind, spread 16

  • The family thought it strange that the aircraft had no lights

    Cynthia Hind, spread 16

Cross references

  • 11-17-1 Aubrey and Russell, same night
  • Vic Forward, Matabeleland UFO Research Group
  • Figure 7

Connected

  • Aubrey and Russell: car stops on the Selukwe strip roadCase fileSame witness

    Mr R. is the hinge of both. Aubrey and Russell arrived at his house at 22:00 on the same August 1975 evening, three hours after his family's own sighting on the Gweru-Selukwe road. The two reports are 29.8 km apart and reached Hind as one package.

  • Aubrey and Russell: car stops on the Selukwe strip roadCase fileSame window

    Same evening, August 1975: the R. family home by 19:49, Aubrey and Russell leaving Gweru about 21:00. The tightest temporal link in the cluster, but the two accounts are not independent of each other, the second exists only because the first household was already talking about it.

  • Aubrey and Russell: car stops on the Selukwe strip roadCase fileNamed person

    Both came to Hind through Vic Forward's Matabeleland UFO Research Group in Bulawayo, 150 km away, not through a Midlands source. The routing, not the Midlands, is what these two have in common.

  • Vanishing 'bus' on the Shabani strip road (Authers and Sealy)Case fileSame window

    09-14-3 is firmly dated 17 August 1975 at 18:10; 11-16-2 is only 'one evening in August 1975'. They may be the same night or three weeks apart, Hind never fixes the R. family date, so the apparent August 1975 wave rests on one dated account plus one undated one.

  • Zimbabwe Air Force jets chase a French weather balloonCase fileSame behaviour

    The only two accounts of military jets engaging an object over the Gweru area: the Air Force pair chasing what Hind identified as a French balloon, and the three unlit Vampires roaring over the R. family. One of the two ended in an identification, which is the most useful thing the pairing offers.

Source

Cynthia Hind, UFO Afrinews No 11 (Feb. 1995), spread 16-17