1971 to 1980: Assorted UFO Events From China

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1971 to 1980: Assorted UFO Events From China
Posted On: May 6, 2022

This is a compilation of seven UFO sightings over China from 1971 to 1980. Each incident is short and to the point.


ONE


1976: Qilou Spherical UFO


On September 9th, 1976, in an area south of Qilou, Longwangmiao, Shan County, Shandong Province, a worker at the Liangshan Cotton Mill observed a spherical flying object at 45 degrees elevation and 3 to 4000 meters distance. The upper part of the object was bright silver in color while the lower part was dark gray.


The UFO hovered motionless and then moved in the direction of the sun at 3:00 p.m., after Mao’s obituary was broadcast.


The object was not seen again that night, but it reappeared the following day, when it seemed larger. Then it shrank in size toward noon and finally appeared like a twinkling star in the full daylight sky. It reverted to its former size in the afternoon and then, in full view of more than 1000 witnesses, flew away abruptly and disappeared at 5:00 p.m.


The report was not circulated in China at the time and neither did it appear in the Western press.


TWO


1977: UFO Terrifies Large Crowd


On July 7th, 1977, at about 8:30 PM, in the Zhangpo County in Fujian Province. Nearly 3000 people were watching an openair showing of the Rumanian film Alert on the Danube Delta when a section of the audience suddenly saw two oblate orange-colored luminous objects descending toward the crowd.


The objects passed so low over the spectators that they almost touched the ground, emitting a vivid glow and flying only a few meters apart. Heat could be felt and a low humming sound was heard. Panic spread and people threw themselves to the ground.


In the ensuing stampede, two children were trampled to death and 200 more were injured.


The UFOs ascended rapidly and disappeared in seconds. Lin Bing- Xiang, a doctor at the county hospital, and Chen Caife, an officer of the County Public Security Bureau, and another official have corroborated this sensational incident.


The authorities, suspecting an optical illusion related to the film, reran it, but nothing unusual showed up.


THREE


1977: Astronomer Sighting


On July 26th, 1977, there were many sightings of UFOs reported from Chengdu City, Sichuan Province, and the most detailed account was made by the astronomer Zhang Zhousheng of the Yunnan Observatory:


"At 9 to 14 minutes past the 22nd hour, Beijing time, on 26 July 1977, I observed a very astonishing and unexplainable aerial phenomenon, in the northern suburb of the Chengdu Municipality. My eyes were suddenly drawn to a strange spiral object in the air. Because of the peculiarity of its appearance, I at once called some other persons to observe it. At the same time, those people who were cooling themselves in places tens of meters away from me had also noticed this strange phenomenon. In appearance, the core of the object was a yellowish bright star; its luminosity was second magnitude, with the core as a starting point, a big Archimedes spiral line (of light) was developed, whose brightness was very evident even under moon light and whose color was blue and somewhat green. As the spiral line was drawn out from the core, the core could not have been a star, but a comparatively small object. The line wound about the center 3 or 4 rounds. The whole spiral was actually an ellipse (from my point of view), of not very great ellipticity. The diameter of the major axis was about 5 degrees. Its elevation angle with the horizon was about 60 degrees. This strange object was not only big, but it moved in the air in a straight line. It moved with a constant speed, about 10 degrees per minute. Simultaneously with the motion of the core, the spiral line also moved horizontally. No change occurred to the luminosity, size, shape or the various angular measurements, that is to say, the spiral line did not make any rotating displacement and did not leave any traces in the sky. Until 14 minutes past the hour, when the spiral object was covered up by clouds 10 degrees above the horizon, my observation lasted 5 minutes altogether.


From the material supplied by Beijing Planetarium and other agencies, I learned that there were many reports about this phenomenon from various places. The localities were distributed over a north to south belt at least 180 kilometers wide. Our record showed that an earlier position observed was to the east of the Pole Star, 40 degrees above the horizon and with a space displacement of 90 degrees. The duration of the observation was 10 minutes. What was especially important was that, at a distance of 180 kilometers apart, the records about the direction of movement of the strange aerial body in space, made independently by at least two different observers, were basically the same. To the present time this strange phenomenon has not been satisfactorily explained, yet there were thousands of good observers who had seen it. We can only let time decide what it really was."


FOUR


1978 – 1979: Flying Instructor’s Sighting


On July 26th, 1978, at about 9:40 p.m at Shanxi Airport, Shanxi Province, flying instructor Sha Yongkao as piloting a plane with a pupil at 3000 meters altitude when they saw two glowing objects circle the airport twice before moving off. Yongkao tried unsuccessfully to pursue the objects before radioing his report, and was told that no other aircraft were in the vicinity and that nothing was tracked on radar.


On a day in February, 1979, at about 9:10 p.m, Sha Yongkao was flying a night fighter over Hou-Ma in Shanxi Province when he saw an extremely bright luminous object shoot across the sky from south to north, apparently flying supersonic at an altitude of 1000 meters.


FIVE


1978: Air Force Multiple Witness Sighting


On October 23rd, 1978 at about 20:00 hours, a large luminous unidentified object appeared in the sky directly above Lintiao Air Base in Gansu Province. This is Air Force pilot Zhou Qingtong’s eyewitness account:


“The pilots of our brigade and several hundred other persons in the airfield district were watching a cinema film in an open-air theater. Several minutes after the show had begun, that is at 4 minutes past the 20th hour, there was a flurry of disturbance in the audience and we all looked up at the sky which was cloudless and full of stars.


I saw a huge object flying from east to west. It first appeared in the eastern sky at an angle of 60 degrees above the horizon, then flew over our heads and was cut off from our view by the row of buildings 60 meters to the west. The object had a very peculiar appearance. It was an immense oblong object but was not clearly visible. It had two large lamps, like searchlights, in front, shooting out white light forward, and a luminous trail issued from the rear. Both the front and rear light beams were changing in length and brightness at times, illuminating the space around the object like a mass of smoke or mist.


The speed, was not very great, and it progressed in a straight line. It was of a huge size, occupying about 20 to 35 degrees of arc of vision. It was in sight for 2 or 3 minutes. It was clearly not a meteor, nor a swarm of locusts or birds, nor an airplane. As we are all fighter pilots we could say this with some certainty. It was not very high above the ground. After many days we were still talking about it. Someone said, alas! If we only had a camera and had taken a photograph, the question could be solved.”


Chinese UFO researchers speculate that since there are some similarities in the description of objects, there may be a connection with the sighting by pilot Frederick Valentich over the Bass Strait, Australia, two days earlier, who disappeared together with his plane immediately afterward.


SIX


1979: Power Failure And A Close Encounter


On September 12th, 1979, at about 20:45 hours the witnesses in Xuginglong and Huaihua City in Hunan Province noted a complete power failure in their area. Fifteen minutes later a bright flying object appeared overhead, emitting a vertical stream of white rays. The object flew upward at an angle and vanished soundlessly a minute later, leaving two masses of semi spherical luminous clouds about 100 meters across.


Perhaps because of their controversial (and anti-Marxist?) nature, alleged close encounters with UFO occupants have also not been widely reported so far in China. Yet a few cases have now come to light since the easing of restrictions in 1980.


On 13 December 1979 at 4:00 a.m. near Longwangmiao on the Lanxi-Xin’angiang Highway, two truck drivers in separate vehicles observed an extraordinary sight. Wang Dingyuan (of the Weihus Steel Construction Plant) was driving in the front truck when he noticed a powerful vertical beam of light and two “unusual human beings” standing beneath it on the highway. Both drivers came to an abrupt halt and the apparition vanished.


The men discussed the incident, although the second driver, Wang Jianming (of the Jinhus Chemical Works), had seen nothing, so it was decided that they should swap positions, with Wang Jianming driving in front. After five or six kilometers the front driver noticed a beam of light and figures standing beside the highway about 200 meters ahead. The figures were 1.5 meters tall, wore helmets on their heads and “space apparel,” with something like a thermos bottle slung across their shoulders and a square pack on their backs. Each was apparently holding what looked like a “short cudgel” in his left hand, and a red light emitted from the top of the helmets.


Wang Jianming stopped his truck, turned off the headlights, and then turned them back on. The figures were still there, even when he repeated the procedure. Wang then dismounted with a crowbar in his hand, and at that moment both the light beam and figures vanished.


SEVEN


1980:  Tientsin Airport Tracks UFO


In early August 1980 hundreds of thousands of witnesses saw UFOs for several days running in the skies over Tientsin and the Gulf of Zhili (now called Bo Hai).


On October 16th, 1980 in the evening at Tientsin Airport, radar officers and technicians of the Tientsin Civil Aviation Bureau were observing the movements of Flight 402 on their radar screens when suddenly an unexplained echo showed up. When the airliner was about two kilometers from the runway, the plane’s bright dot of light on the screen veered out of contact for seven seconds or so.


The radar operators had presumed they were watching Flight 402, but when the controller contacted the aircraft and asked for its position they realized that the echo on the screen did not relate to the plane. Flight 402 had taken off from Peking and its flight path would have taken it across Tientsin, crossing the airfield from east to west. Another anomaly was that the radar azimuth was 20 degrees, but at the time the unexplained blip showed up on the radarscope, Flight 402 was bearing about 80 degrees, north of the runway and out of range of the directional radar.


At 21:53 hours, when Flight 402 had crossed the airfield to a point thirteen kilometers from the runway, on its final approach, the unexplained echo showed up again in the same position on the radarscope, moving from west to east. It was simultaneously visible on the screen together with the aircraft. A few seconds later it vanished.


Three minutes later, the strange echo reappeared. A second aircraft, Flight 404, was also over Tientsin at an altitude of 1500 meters, but its position was at variance with the echo, and moving in the opposite direction. As Flight 404 was on its final approach, two echoes, instead of one, again appeared on the radarscope. The UFO, from its original position north of the runway, was doing about 250 kilometers per hour. According to the captain of Flight 404, the Automatic Direction Finder (ADF) on his instrument panel registered an anomaly: the indicator needle appeared to lock on to a transmitting source not known on the chart. The captain assumed his instrument was faulty, and asked the radio officer to use his earphones to pick up the radio beacon’s audio signal. This was in order, and two minutes later the ADF returned to normal.


Just before touchdown, when Flight 404 was a few hundred meters from the runway, the assistant controller in the tower heard some interference on the radio and assumed it was either the aircraft or the radio room tuning in. “Who’s tuning in to the tower?” he asked. “We’re working that out, don’t call us!” The aircraft crew and radar personnel also heard the radio interference, but its source could not be identified.


My Take: These incidents are all pretty good. Hard to imagine that they were all Russian or Secret Chinese Military craft.


Resources: Above Top Secret, Timothy Good, 1988



[BACK]
1971 to 1980: Assorted UFO Events From China
Posted On: May 6, 2022

This is a compilation of seven UFO sightings over China from 1971 to 1980. Each incident is short and to the point.


ONE


1976: Qilou Spherical UFO


On September 9th, 1976, in an area south of Qilou, Longwangmiao, Shan County, Shandong Province, a worker at the Liangshan Cotton Mill observed a spherical flying object at 45 degrees elevation and 3 to 4000 meters distance. The upper part of the object was bright silver in color while the lower part was dark gray.


The UFO hovered motionless and then moved in the direction of the sun at 3:00 p.m., after Mao’s obituary was broadcast.


The object was not seen again that night, but it reappeared the following day, when it seemed larger. Then it shrank in size toward noon and finally appeared like a twinkling star in the full daylight sky. It reverted to its former size in the afternoon and then, in full view of more than 1000 witnesses, flew away abruptly and disappeared at 5:00 p.m.


The report was not circulated in China at the time and neither did it appear in the Western press.


TWO


1977: UFO Terrifies Large Crowd


On July 7th, 1977, at about 8:30 PM, in the Zhangpo County in Fujian Province. Nearly 3000 people were watching an openair showing of the Rumanian film Alert on the Danube Delta when a section of the audience suddenly saw two oblate orange-colored luminous objects descending toward the crowd.


The objects passed so low over the spectators that they almost touched the ground, emitting a vivid glow and flying only a few meters apart. Heat could be felt and a low humming sound was heard. Panic spread and people threw themselves to the ground.


In the ensuing stampede, two children were trampled to death and 200 more were injured.


The UFOs ascended rapidly and disappeared in seconds. Lin Bing- Xiang, a doctor at the county hospital, and Chen Caife, an officer of the County Public Security Bureau, and another official have corroborated this sensational incident.


The authorities, suspecting an optical illusion related to the film, reran it, but nothing unusual showed up.


THREE


1977: Astronomer Sighting


On July 26th, 1977, there were many sightings of UFOs reported from Chengdu City, Sichuan Province, and the most detailed account was made by the astronomer Zhang Zhousheng of the Yunnan Observatory:


"At 9 to 14 minutes past the 22nd hour, Beijing time, on 26 July 1977, I observed a very astonishing and unexplainable aerial phenomenon, in the northern suburb of the Chengdu Municipality. My eyes were suddenly drawn to a strange spiral object in the air. Because of the peculiarity of its appearance, I at once called some other persons to observe it. At the same time, those people who were cooling themselves in places tens of meters away from me had also noticed this strange phenomenon. In appearance, the core of the object was a yellowish bright star; its luminosity was second magnitude, with the core as a starting point, a big Archimedes spiral line (of light) was developed, whose brightness was very evident even under moon light and whose color was blue and somewhat green. As the spiral line was drawn out from the core, the core could not have been a star, but a comparatively small object. The line wound about the center 3 or 4 rounds. The whole spiral was actually an ellipse (from my point of view), of not very great ellipticity. The diameter of the major axis was about 5 degrees. Its elevation angle with the horizon was about 60 degrees. This strange object was not only big, but it moved in the air in a straight line. It moved with a constant speed, about 10 degrees per minute. Simultaneously with the motion of the core, the spiral line also moved horizontally. No change occurred to the luminosity, size, shape or the various angular measurements, that is to say, the spiral line did not make any rotating displacement and did not leave any traces in the sky. Until 14 minutes past the hour, when the spiral object was covered up by clouds 10 degrees above the horizon, my observation lasted 5 minutes altogether.


From the material supplied by Beijing Planetarium and other agencies, I learned that there were many reports about this phenomenon from various places. The localities were distributed over a north to south belt at least 180 kilometers wide. Our record showed that an earlier position observed was to the east of the Pole Star, 40 degrees above the horizon and with a space displacement of 90 degrees. The duration of the observation was 10 minutes. What was especially important was that, at a distance of 180 kilometers apart, the records about the direction of movement of the strange aerial body in space, made independently by at least two different observers, were basically the same. To the present time this strange phenomenon has not been satisfactorily explained, yet there were thousands of good observers who had seen it. We can only let time decide what it really was."


FOUR


1978 – 1979: Flying Instructor’s Sighting


On July 26th, 1978, at about 9:40 p.m at Shanxi Airport, Shanxi Province, flying instructor Sha Yongkao as piloting a plane with a pupil at 3000 meters altitude when they saw two glowing objects circle the airport twice before moving off. Yongkao tried unsuccessfully to pursue the objects before radioing his report, and was told that no other aircraft were in the vicinity and that nothing was tracked on radar.


On a day in February, 1979, at about 9:10 p.m, Sha Yongkao was flying a night fighter over Hou-Ma in Shanxi Province when he saw an extremely bright luminous object shoot across the sky from south to north, apparently flying supersonic at an altitude of 1000 meters.


FIVE


1978: Air Force Multiple Witness Sighting


On October 23rd, 1978 at about 20:00 hours, a large luminous unidentified object appeared in the sky directly above Lintiao Air Base in Gansu Province. This is Air Force pilot Zhou Qingtong’s eyewitness account:


“The pilots of our brigade and several hundred other persons in the airfield district were watching a cinema film in an open-air theater. Several minutes after the show had begun, that is at 4 minutes past the 20th hour, there was a flurry of disturbance in the audience and we all looked up at the sky which was cloudless and full of stars.


I saw a huge object flying from east to west. It first appeared in the eastern sky at an angle of 60 degrees above the horizon, then flew over our heads and was cut off from our view by the row of buildings 60 meters to the west. The object had a very peculiar appearance. It was an immense oblong object but was not clearly visible. It had two large lamps, like searchlights, in front, shooting out white light forward, and a luminous trail issued from the rear. Both the front and rear light beams were changing in length and brightness at times, illuminating the space around the object like a mass of smoke or mist.


The speed, was not very great, and it progressed in a straight line. It was of a huge size, occupying about 20 to 35 degrees of arc of vision. It was in sight for 2 or 3 minutes. It was clearly not a meteor, nor a swarm of locusts or birds, nor an airplane. As we are all fighter pilots we could say this with some certainty. It was not very high above the ground. After many days we were still talking about it. Someone said, alas! If we only had a camera and had taken a photograph, the question could be solved.”


Chinese UFO researchers speculate that since there are some similarities in the description of objects, there may be a connection with the sighting by pilot Frederick Valentich over the Bass Strait, Australia, two days earlier, who disappeared together with his plane immediately afterward.


SIX


1979: Power Failure And A Close Encounter


On September 12th, 1979, at about 20:45 hours the witnesses in Xuginglong and Huaihua City in Hunan Province noted a complete power failure in their area. Fifteen minutes later a bright flying object appeared overhead, emitting a vertical stream of white rays. The object flew upward at an angle and vanished soundlessly a minute later, leaving two masses of semi spherical luminous clouds about 100 meters across.


Perhaps because of their controversial (and anti-Marxist?) nature, alleged close encounters with UFO occupants have also not been widely reported so far in China. Yet a few cases have now come to light since the easing of restrictions in 1980.


On 13 December 1979 at 4:00 a.m. near Longwangmiao on the Lanxi-Xin’angiang Highway, two truck drivers in separate vehicles observed an extraordinary sight. Wang Dingyuan (of the Weihus Steel Construction Plant) was driving in the front truck when he noticed a powerful vertical beam of light and two “unusual human beings” standing beneath it on the highway. Both drivers came to an abrupt halt and the apparition vanished.


The men discussed the incident, although the second driver, Wang Jianming (of the Jinhus Chemical Works), had seen nothing, so it was decided that they should swap positions, with Wang Jianming driving in front. After five or six kilometers the front driver noticed a beam of light and figures standing beside the highway about 200 meters ahead. The figures were 1.5 meters tall, wore helmets on their heads and “space apparel,” with something like a thermos bottle slung across their shoulders and a square pack on their backs. Each was apparently holding what looked like a “short cudgel” in his left hand, and a red light emitted from the top of the helmets.


Wang Jianming stopped his truck, turned off the headlights, and then turned them back on. The figures were still there, even when he repeated the procedure. Wang then dismounted with a crowbar in his hand, and at that moment both the light beam and figures vanished.


SEVEN


1980:  Tientsin Airport Tracks UFO


In early August 1980 hundreds of thousands of witnesses saw UFOs for several days running in the skies over Tientsin and the Gulf of Zhili (now called Bo Hai).


On October 16th, 1980 in the evening at Tientsin Airport, radar officers and technicians of the Tientsin Civil Aviation Bureau were observing the movements of Flight 402 on their radar screens when suddenly an unexplained echo showed up. When the airliner was about two kilometers from the runway, the plane’s bright dot of light on the screen veered out of contact for seven seconds or so.


The radar operators had presumed they were watching Flight 402, but when the controller contacted the aircraft and asked for its position they realized that the echo on the screen did not relate to the plane. Flight 402 had taken off from Peking and its flight path would have taken it across Tientsin, crossing the airfield from east to west. Another anomaly was that the radar azimuth was 20 degrees, but at the time the unexplained blip showed up on the radarscope, Flight 402 was bearing about 80 degrees, north of the runway and out of range of the directional radar.


At 21:53 hours, when Flight 402 had crossed the airfield to a point thirteen kilometers from the runway, on its final approach, the unexplained echo showed up again in the same position on the radarscope, moving from west to east. It was simultaneously visible on the screen together with the aircraft. A few seconds later it vanished.


Three minutes later, the strange echo reappeared. A second aircraft, Flight 404, was also over Tientsin at an altitude of 1500 meters, but its position was at variance with the echo, and moving in the opposite direction. As Flight 404 was on its final approach, two echoes, instead of one, again appeared on the radarscope. The UFO, from its original position north of the runway, was doing about 250 kilometers per hour. According to the captain of Flight 404, the Automatic Direction Finder (ADF) on his instrument panel registered an anomaly: the indicator needle appeared to lock on to a transmitting source not known on the chart. The captain assumed his instrument was faulty, and asked the radio officer to use his earphones to pick up the radio beacon’s audio signal. This was in order, and two minutes later the ADF returned to normal.


Just before touchdown, when Flight 404 was a few hundred meters from the runway, the assistant controller in the tower heard some interference on the radio and assumed it was either the aircraft or the radio room tuning in. “Who’s tuning in to the tower?” he asked. “We’re working that out, don’t call us!” The aircraft crew and radar personnel also heard the radio interference, but its source could not be identified.


My Take: These incidents are all pretty good. Hard to imagine that they were all Russian or Secret Chinese Military craft.


Resources: Above Top Secret, Timothy Good, 1988



1971 to 1980: Assorted UFO Events From China

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