December 10, 2007
Bel Air man writes of UFOs in wartime
Research of WWII events uncovers the unexplained
Keith Chester (pictured) wrote his book after talking with Leonard Stringfield, an American flier who reported having a UFO experience in the sky near Japan. (Sun photo by Barbara Haddock Taylor / December 5, 2007)
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The peculiar red orb hung motionless in the summer sky near
Frederick.
A boy at the time, Keith Chester vividly recalls that day in
1966. It was about 6:30 p.m. and Chester was on his way to a friend's house. As
he walked, he noticed a shiny red ball in the sky near the Catoctin
Mountains.
"The hair on the back of my neck stood straight up," Chester
said. "I was so scared that I ran into my neighbor's house. I still think it was
a UFO." To this day, the 50-year-old Bel Air resident has not been able find an
explanation for the object, but incident sparked an interest in unidentified
flying objects.
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In recent years, Chester's interest has grown into a passion
that led him to write Strange Company: Military Encounters with UFOs in WWII.
The 320-page book contains descriptions of UFO sightings by American and British
service members culled from research that included documents at the National
Archives.
The road to writing the book began with that boyhood sighting
of the red object. Chester devoured books about UFOs and became interested in
space. He wanted to be an astronaut until he realized he didn't have the
necessary aptitude for math, so his interest shifted to World War II history.
From 1978 to 1998, Chester portrayed an infantry soldier as a member of the
Military Historical Reenactment Society, taking part in events around the
region.
Over time, Chester's interest in UFOs waned. But it was reignited
in 1989 when he met Leonard Stringfield, who was director of Civilian Research,
Interplanetary Flying Objects, a research group during the 1950s, that produced
books about UFOs.
Stringfield was a sergeant in the 5th Air Force during
World War II and said he had his own UFO sighting.
Chester said
Stringfield told him about how he was among the first people to fly into
mainland Japan after the bombing of Nagasaki. Stringfield said that he was on a
plane flying between Ie Shima and Iwo Jima, when he looked out the window and
saw three luminous, disk-shaped objects flying in formation.
"He told me
that the objects had no outline, no exhaust, and no wings," Chester said, who
works as a freelance artist.
Stringfield heard a commotion in the cockpit
- the engine was malfunctioning. But when the objects disappeared, the plane was
able to land safely, Chester recalls Stringfield saying.
"To hear his
story was mesmerizing," he said.
Chester wanted to learn more about UFO
sightings during WWII. In 1999, he began visiting the National Archives once a
week to study military records for information about UFO sightings during the
war.
Throughout almost four years of research, Chester found documents
detailing sightings described as objects, lights, flares, strange lights or
rockets.
"The sightings that were documented were considered phenomena,"
he said. "The military thought that they knew what they were observing, but the
objects didn't match anything that was known by military
intelligence."
The sightings he found include a silver, cigar-shaped
object that looked like an airship. He also found a preponderance of information
about unexplained objects reported by members of the 415th Night Fighter
Squadron, a former Army Air Forces fighter squadron that fought during World War
II.
"Some of the soldiers thought the objects they saw were beyond the
realm of conventional technology," Chester said. "But there is something
extraordinary happening out there ... and there is a phenomenon that exists, and
I believe that it's extraterrestrial."
At a reunion of the night
fighters, Chester met Harold Augspurger, a commander of the squadron, who
recounted a sighting that Chester details in his book. While flying near the
border of France and Germany, Augspurger said he saw a light in the sky that he
could not pick up on the radar.
"I believe that what I saw was something
from some other space," Augspurger, 88, said in a telephone interview from his
home in Dayton, Ohio. "I think it's real important to document it because it's a
piece of history."
By 2002, Chester concluded he had enough information
to write a book. He was struck by how much documentation existed and figured
most people weren't aware of it. He said he has come across so much material
that he has begun work on a second book.
"The phenomenon was far larger
than ever expected," he said. "I found that the military applied known
terminology and didn't come up with answers. They would call something a flare,
but it didn't act like a flare."
Along the way, Chester has encountered
plenty of skepticism, even from friends. But he said his goal is not to persuade
people one way or the other.
"It's up to the people who read my book to
decide what the objects truly were," he said.
Copyright © 2007, The Baltimore Sun
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