For those that are interested the "Maritime UFO Files" is on bookstore shelves across Canada. Those wishing to contact me can do so via e-mail

Please don't hesitate to contact me if you have a sighting that you would like investigated.

- Past Cases -

The following are some of the cases dealt with in the book "Maritime UFO Files". As time permits I will be adding more cases from the book to this section and some cases that came to light after the book was published.

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1932-Daytime, East Coast of Greenland:

LTC Peter Grunnet and LT Tage Anderson, Royal Danish Air Force.

THE SAGA UFO REPORT for October 1977 carried an article entitled "UFO Crisis over Greenland" by Rufus Drake. (SAGA magazine like many other magazines in the late 1960s and 1970s, also had a UFO magazine with the same title. Barry Greenwood wrote to several and found that many of the stories originated from letters the magazines received. He had no luck in getting the magazines to show him their material.)

Here is a very interesting -- if true -- report from the article:

The earliest UFO sighting to come to light so far off the east coast of Canada , was made by two Danish fliers. The incident occurred in 1932 when three H. E. 8 seaplanes were dispatched to the east coast of Greenland to conduct a photogrammetric survey.

"In those days, manned aircraft had no heaters, insulation or pressure suits. Only the daring and hardy ventured into the glacier zone in wood and canvas planes, and many failed to return. The pilot during this particular UFO incident was Lt. Col. Peter Grunnet, a supremely rugged figure who lives quietly in retirement today. His copilot was Lt. Tage Anderson, who in later years became Commander-in-Chief of R. D. A. F., and died in 1961.

"We had many adventures flying under primitive conditions in the frozen north," says Grunnet. "But none compared with this."

Huddled under body-length parkas and numbed by the cold, their breath forming clouds of condensation in front of them, Grunnet and Anderson coaxed the trouble-prone H. E. 8 over a mirror like section of sprawling glacier. Suddenly, the copilot spotted a second shadow pursuing the shadow of their seaplane across the ice.

"I looked back and saw something that didn't make sense," Anderson was quoted.

About a mile behind their plane partly obscured by the glare of sun against snow, a flying object was following their flight course. Grunnet eased his throttle forward.The engines of his H. E. 8 gnashed and vibrated noisily as he forced the plane into a shallow turn, to get a better view of the alien object.

"It was nothing like flying machines of that period," Grunnet said, recalling the UFO sighting recently during a visit to the U. S. "It was hexagonal, flat, and seemingly made of aluminum or some other metal, with no breaks in the surface and no rivets.

"At the time, I had a spooky feeling. I can't explain it. It was as if I 'felt' the presence of whoever was inside that craft--and the feeling was hostile. In the years since, I've realized that the craft was 'saucer' shaped, and I believe it really was a flying saucer."

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July 1947-The Day After Roswell:

On July 3,1947 Brenton Clark, a farmer near Augustine Cove on the south coast of Prince Edward Island, reported his own "flying Saucer", the first documented case of such an object in Atlantic Canada.

On a Royal Canadian Air Force letterhead from Central Air Command Headquarters in Trenton, Ontario dated 11 July 47, Air Commodore W.W.Brown sent a memo to the Chief of Air Staff, Air Force Headquarters, Ottawa. The document is File No. 945-2-3, dated JUL 14 1947 and is titled "Flying Saucers"

It reads:

1. The following report of an unidentified flying object was brought to the attention of the Commanding Officer of RCAF stn Summerside by the Summerside Detachment of the R.C.M.P. And confirmend by the Summerside reporter for the Charlottetown Guardian.

2. Brenton Clark, a farmer in the vicinity of Augustive [sic] Cove, saw an object at approximately 10,000 ft east of his position moving southward at a high speed. The time was approximately 17:45 hrs AST 3 Jul 47. It maintained level flight for some distance then apparently dived earthward leaving a trail (apparently a vapor trail) behind it. After the object had disappeared the trail remained for some (sic) time. The object was visible for an estimated 1 1/2 to 2 minutes. The object was round shaped and at the estimated distance appeared to be the "size of an apple". It appeared to resemble a shooting star and there was considerable reflection of light.

3. The above report was confirmed by a local reporter who was advised that he was informed by James Harris, a farmer in the vicinity of Summerside PEI, that he (Harris) and his hired man Herman Linkletter, had seen an object in the same general position at the same time. It was moving southward and there was such a brilliant reflection from it that its shape was indecernable. It was visible for approximately ten seconds.

Annotations on the bottom lefthand corner of the document indicate that it was seen by the Director of Air Operations then passed on to the DIA or the Directorate of Intelligence Airforce. It is interesting to note that the term "Flying Saucers" is used here though it follows less than two weeks after the coining of the phase by some anonymous reporter in the western United States.

The reader will also notice that in the first sentence of the report that the object is referred to as an "unidentified flying object" in lower case. This in fact is a term used for many years by the military of two countries, Canada and the United States, to classify aircraft not yet identified as to friendly or unfriendly. It was an innocent term that was not to gain the notoriety it enjoys now for another 5 years, making it famous throughout the world as a term meaning a possible extraterrestrial vehicle from another world or a UFO.

Augustine Cove is approximately 30 kilometers [18 miles] southeastward of Summerside Air Base, which closed in 1994 but is still viable as an air and industrial park. It is indeed a short distance from what was then an important military defence area at the beginning of the Cold War and so it is not surprising that the RCAF would have taken notice of this and treated it with serious concern. Although only this one document remains it would have probably triggered a search for other possible aircraft in the area, such as American military hardware or some commercial concern. The fact that the C.O. at Summerside took the time to seek other verifications of the sighting through the RCMP indicates some concern; concern that is not evident in the present day Air Force. But that is for later in this book.

Brenton Clark's description of the UFO was and is a classic shape and judging from his estimate of size it was a fairly large object. An object at 10,000 feet [3,037 meters] which was still the size of an apple would indicate an craft of considerable size. At that altitude it would have a birdseye view of one of the largest bases in northeastern North America. Whether that was the UFO's intent or not is a matter of conjecture, but as fifty years of investigations by many capable researchers have found, UFO reports in close proximity to military bases are in the high percentage numbers. The Atlantic area is no exception as will be seen later in this chapter, and chapters to follow.

Whatever its reason for being there the silvery, highly reflective ball soon left the area in a great hurry, swooping downward and to the southwest out over the Northumberland Strait, possibly to seek the security of the waters or to evade radar coverage. We will never know. But this lone UFO had special significance for the Atlantic area in that it was the first officially recognized "Flying Saucer" in "The Age of Flying Saucers".

One other feature makes this sighting a bit special. On the previous day, July 2, about 50 miles southeast of a place called Roswell, New Mexico a flying saucer proportedly crashed in the desert. Adding to the authenticity of the event the United States Army Air Force made headlines by releasing a statement to the press informing them that they had captured a flying saucer which the papers ran on July 5th, two days after Brenton Clark's sighting. The Roswell story quickly sank out of sight when higher ranking officials with the USAAF denied that what had been recovered was a flying saucer but only the wreakage of a weather balloon.

That story was to suffice for twenty years until Stanton Friedman, a nuclear phycisist revived the story through his investigations; a story which has raged on for some thirty years. Friedman, an American, now resides in Fredericton, New Brunswick and is one of the foremost investigators in ufology.

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Summer 1948-Goose Bay, Labrador:

As the reader will see, Goose Airforce Base in Goose Bay, Labrador, a collaborative effort between the Canadian and American military air forces, has experienced more than its share of UFO incidents over the last 50 years. In 1948 Goose was a new base in the practically uncharted territory of the Canadian northeastern wilderness. It would be part of the newly built DEW Line, comprised of radar installations strung across the Canadian north as a first defence Distant Early Warning [hence DEW] capable of detecting any potential intrusion of hostile [read Soviet] bomber aircraft from over the north pole or points northeast or northwest.

In 1961 Major Edwin A. Jerome, USAF (Ret.) supplied the following information to NICAP [Nationional Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena]. Major Jerome was a Command Pilot, Air Provost Marshall for about 8 years and also served as an Intelligence Officer and CID investigator with the USAF. He began his story by stating that his only real contact with the UFO problem was in the summer of 1948 while he was stationed in Goose Bay, Labrador. An incident happened there which is worthy of note.

" A high ranking inspection team was visiting the radar facilities of this base whose mission at the time was to serve as a prime refueling and servicing air base for all military and civilian aircraft plying the North Atlantic air routes. GCA [Ground Control Approach] radar was a critical part of this picture, thus [the reason for the visit of] these high-ranking officers RCAF and USAF, up to the rank of General as I recall.

"While inspecting the USAF radar shack, the operator noted a high-speed target on his scope going from NE to SW. Upon computation of its speed it was found to be about 9,000 miles per hour [15,000 kph]. This incident caused much consternation in the shack since obviously this was no time for levity or miscalculations in the presence of an inspecting party. T Pairman technician was brought to task for his apparent miscalculation. Again the target appeared and this time the inspectors were actually shown the apparition on the radar screen. The only reaction to this was that obviously the American equipment was way off calibration.

"The party then proceeded to the Canadian side to inspect the RCAF GCA facility. Upon their arrival the OIC [Officer in Command] related this [incident of the] most unbelievable target they had ever seen. The inspection officers were appalled that such a coincidence should happen. I was part of the meager intelligence reporting machinery at the base and I was called in to make an immediate urgent intelligence report on the incident. The prevailing theory at the time was that it was a meteor. I personally discounted this since upon interviewing the radar observers on both sides of the base they ststed that it maintained an altitude of 60,000 feet [ 18,350 metres] and a speed of approximately of 9,000 mph [15,000 kph].

"To make this story even more incredible the very next day both radars reported an object hovering over the base at about 10 mph [ 16.5 kph], at 45,000 feet [ 13,760 metres]. The "official" story on this was that they were some type of "high flying seagulls." You must remember all these incidents happened before the days of high flying fast jets and missiles and the now common altitude record-breaking helicopters."

Major Jerome indicated as well that during the early 1960s that he had a tour in Alaska and became very familiar with the early warning and defence systems on the DEW Line and the Alaska Air Defence Sectors. On many occassions high speed, unknown objects were tracked which could not be explained as normal airbreathing vehicles penetrating those sectors.

Jerome stated that, "Many of the citizens of Alaska along the Bering Sea coast have reported seeing missile-like aircraft flying at very low altitudes at very high speeds. The AF [USAF] denied the presence of Russian aircraft vehemently. When it was suggested that they might be extra-terrestrial everyone clammed up."

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