Captain Robert Salas, Testimony
December 2000
Captain Salas graduated from the Air Force Academy and spent seven years in active duty from 1964 to 1971. He also held positions at Martin Marietta and Rockwell and spent 21 years at the FAA. In the Air Force, he was an air traffic controller and a missile launch officer as well as an engineer on the Titan 3 missiles. He testifies about a UFO incident on the morning of March 16, 1967 where 16 nuclear missiles simultaneously became non-operational at two different launch facilities immediately after guards saw UFOs hovering above. The guards could not identify these objects even though they were only about 30 feet away. The Air Force did an extensive investigation of the incidents and could not find a probable cause. At a debriefing about the incident, an officer from the Air Force Office of Special Investigations required him to sign a non-disclosure form and told him that he was not to talk about the event to anyone including his family or other military staff. At a time during the Cold War when minor technical anomalies were openly communicated amongst the staff, this incident was not and to this day Captain Salas thinks this to be very unusual.
The UFO incident happened on the morning of March 16, 1967. I was on duty along with my commander Fred Mywald. We were both on duty at Oscar Flight as part of the 490th strategic missile squad and there are five launch control facilities assigned to that particular squadron. We were at Oscar Flight.
It was still dark out and we're sixty feet underground [at the ICBM launch control facility]. It was early in the morning and I received a call from my topside security guard who's the flight security controller and he said that he and some of the guards had been observing some strange lights flying around the site around the launch control facility. He said they were acting very unusual just flying around, and I said, "You mean UFO? He said, well, he didn't know what they were but they were lights and were flying around. They were not airplanes; they weren't making any noise. They were not helicopters; they were making some very strange maneuvers and he couldn't explain it…
It wasn't more than a few minutes- maybe a half hour later- and he calls back and this time he's very frightened; I can tell by the tone of his voice he's very shook up. He says, "Sir, there's a glowing red object hovering right outside the front gate - I'm looking at it right now. I've got all the men out here with their weapons drawn…"
I immediately went over to my commander who was taking a nap - we have a little cot down there for rest periods - and I was telling him about the telephone call we just received. As I was relating this to him our missiles started shutting down one by one. By shutting down, I mean they went into a "no-go" condition meaning they could not be launched. So we get bells and whistles - a red light no-go condition…
These weapons were Minuteman One missiles and were of course nuclear-tipped warhead missiles.
As they started shutting down, immediately he gets up and we both start querying the status board. We've got the ability to query and determine what the cause of the shutdowns was. As I recall, most of them were guidance and control system failures. And then he started reporting to the command post. In the meantime I called upstairs to find out what the status was of this object and the guard said, well, the object has left - it just left at high speed…
The Air Force did an extensive investigation of the entire incident and was not able to come up with a probable cause for the shutdowns. And I've got quite a few witnesses that will testify to that - we've got a couple of people who worked on the investigative team - and I've got correspondence from the man who actually organized the investigative team. There was no viable explanation for this [shutdown of multiple ICBMs]. Each missile is basically self-supporting. Most of them are powered by commercial power but each missile has its own power generator…
At our site anywhere from six to eight went down but they went down in rapid succession which again is an extremely rare happening. We rarely had more than one missile go down for any reason at all…
After I talked to my guard upstairs, my commander talked to the command post. When he finished talking to the command post he turned to me and said, "The same thing occurred at ECHO Flight." ECHO Flight is another squadron, I'd say probably 50 - 60 miles away from our location but they had the same sort of thing happen. They had UFOs that were hovering, not at the launch control facility but at the actual launch facilities where the missiles are located. They had some maintenance and security people out there at the time and they observed the UFOs at those sites. Now they lost all ten of their weapons - all ten…
It was the same morning. So that morning we lost anywhere from between 16 to 18 ICBMs at the same time UFOs were in the area and were observed by airmen. Those missiles were down the entire day because we've got testimony from Colonel Don Crawford, who relieved the crew at ECHO Flight and he was there when the missiles were being brought up to alert status and he said it took the whole day. So I'm assuming it took our missiles all day to be brought back up also…
I wrote up a report about this incident; it was in my log and I turned it in. When we got to the base we had to report to our squadron commander right away. And in that room with my squadron commander was a fellow from AFOSI (we had an Air Force Office of Special Investigations on the base). He was there in the office with the commander. He asked for my logs and he wanted a quick briefing although it seemed to me he knew pretty much what had happened already. But we gave him a quick briefing and then he asked us both to sign a non-disclosure agreement saying this was classified information- we were not to release this to anybody, and that was it. We couldn't talk; he told us we could not talk about this to anyone, including any of the other crews, our spouses, our family, even amongst each other…
I've got a copy of a telex which we received under FOIA coming from SAC headquarters and coming to Malstrom and other bases right after the morning that happened saying that this incident was of extreme concern to SAC headquarters because they couldn't explain it. Nobody could explain what happened. And yet we never got de-briefed. And we were cleared for very high classification because these are nuclear weapons we're dealing with.
We did get the security incursion alarms at those sites when the missile went down. That is unusual because usually when a missile went down for something like guidance failure, we wouldn't get security incursion alarms, which means a perimeter is breached, an object crossed the fence, or something broke the security alarm system that we had on the perimeter of the launch facility. I did sent out guards to a couple of those facilities to investigate that.
The reason I think this story is very significant is because, going back to August of 1966 at Minot, ND, a very similar thing happened at one of the launch control facilities at Minot Air Force Base. They had the same kind of weapon system that we had - they had M-1 missiles. This [UFO] was observed on radar, there was some communication failure and the object was observed over the launch control facility.
That happened in August 1966 and that's a well-documented incident. About a week prior to my incident, in March 1967, I've got a record of a call from one of the security guards who was out roaming looking at the launch facilities and saw an object very similar to what I just described over the launch facility…
Bob Kominski headed up the organization to look at all aspects of these shutdowns. Kominski relates to me in writing that at some point he was told by his boss that the Air Force said, "Stop the investigation; do no more on this and in addition do not write a final report." Again, this is very unusual especially in light of the fact that CINC-SAC headquarters was stating that this was of extreme importance to find out exactly what happened here. And yet, the head of the investigative team was told during the investigation to stop the investigation and not to write a final report.....
Description:
By Robert L. Salas
“This incident happened almost thirty years ago. Until about two years ago, I had not given it much thought. In the spring of 1967 I was stationed at Malmstrom AFB, Montana. My recollection of the incident was that, while on duty as a Deputy Missile Combat Crew Commander (DMCCC) at a Minuteman Launch Control Facility (LCF) during the morning hours, I received a call from my NCO in charge of site security topside. He said that he and other guards had observed some unidentified flying objects in the vicinity. He said they had over flown the LCF a few times before he phoned. He could only distinguish them as "lights" at that time.
I did not take this report very seriously and simply told him to keep observing them and report back if he saw anything more significant. At the time, I believed the first call to be a joke. Five or ten minutes later, I received a second call from my security NCO. This time he was much more agitated and distraught. He stated that there was a UFO hovering just outside the front gate! He wanted to know what he should do. I don't recall what I said except to secure the fenced area. As we were talking, he said he had to go because one of the guards had been injured.
I immediately woke my commander who had been taking his rest period and started to relate the phone conversations. Within seconds, our missiles began shutting down from "Alert" status to "No-Go" status. I recall that most, if not all, of our missiles had shut down in rapid succession. Normally, if a missile went off alert status, it was due to a power outage at a particular site and the site power generator would come on-line and pick up the power load and the LF would come back on-line. It was extremely rare for more than one missile to go off-line for any length of time. In this case, none of our missiles came back on-line. The problem was not lack of power; some signal had been sent to the missiles which caused them to go off alert.
After we reported this incident to the command post, I phoned my security guard to determine what had transpired topside. He informed me that the guard who had approached the UFO had been injured - not seriously. The guard was being removed by helicopter to the base. I do not recall the nature of the injury or how it was incurred. We were relieved by our scheduled replacement crew later that morning. The missiles had still not been brought on-line by on-site maintenance. Once topside, I spoke directly with the security guard about the UFOs. The only additional detail he added, that I recalled, was that the UFO had a red glow and appeared to be saucer-shaped. I do not recall any other details about its appearance. He repeated that it had been immediately outside the front gate, hovering silently.
When my commander and I returned to the base, we discussed the incident with our squadron commander and an Air Force investigator from Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI). The Colonel was just as shocked about the incident as we were. Neither he, nor anyone else we talked to that day about the incident could explain it or indicated that it was some sort of readiness exercise.
After that day, and through the time of my transfer from the base in June 1969, none of the crews, including ours, ever received any additional information on the incident. There was never a report of investigation that was released to the missile crews or any other explanation given of the incident. This was also unusual because we were given regular briefings about any technical areas of concern regarding the readiness of our weapons. These were my recollections at the time the FOIA requests were submitted to the Air Force in January 1995. After nearly a year of submitting these requests and waiting for responses, USAF declassified an incident which appeared to be the one in which I was involved. I will refer to that as the Echo Flight incident.
Jim Klotz, the investigator who had submitted the FOIA requests, and I, had previously narrowed the time period by retrieving news reports from the Great Falls Tribune about UFO sightings during the early part of 1967. I had recalled reading such reports after my incident. In fact there were many news articles about UFO sightings a few weeks before and one week after the Echo incident. We requested USAF to release any information they had of such an incident that occurred during the spring of 1967. We made no reference to UFO sightings in our request. As a result of these FOIA requests USAF sent us copies of the unit histories for the 341st Strategic Missile Wing, Great Falls, Montana for 1967. The histories, which included the Echo incident, had been classified. In addition, USAF sent copies of some previously classified messages regarding the incident. One message was sent from SAC headquarters. The Echo incident, as related in one of those messages, is described as loss of strategic alert of all ten missiles within ten seconds of each other for no apparent reason and a "...cause for grave concern... [to SAC head quarters]". The date of the Echo incident is March 16, 1967. When we received this information, I assumed that I was in the Echo capsule during this incident because the events of the incident were very similar to my recollection.
The first unit history (January - March 1967, pg. 38) also has a brief statement suggesting reports of UFO activity. It states the following: "Rumours of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO) around the area of Echo Flight during the time of fault were disproven. A Mobile Strike Team, which had checked all November Flight's LFs (launch facilities) on the morning of 16 March 67, were questioned and stated that no unusual activity or sightings were observed." This statement was informative in that there would be no reason to query the November Flight strike team (security) about rumours of UFOs in the area of Echo Flight. This is the only reference to UFOs regarding this incident in any of the documents received from USAF and the statement is simply untrue. None of the reports we received from guards or maintenance personnel were ever retracted.
After reading this statement I recalled something my commander had said during our incident. After we reported the incident to the command post, he had received a call from another LCC. After that call he turned to me and said, "The same thing happened at another flight." With this new recollection, I began to question if I was at Echo during the time of our incident since I knew I was assigned to the 490th Squadron, which did not have responsibility for Echo Flight. We did however, occasionally, man LCCs outside our own squadron.
With some assistance, I was eventually able to contact on old friend who had served with me at Malmstrom. He recalled the Echo incident and was certain that I was not in that LCC at the time of the incident. He also recalled the names of the Echo crew and the name of my commander. With some additional effort, and a lot of phone calls, I was able to locate and speak with both crew members of Echo, the commander of the Echo relief crew, and my own commander.
As a result of these conversations, more information was revealed. The Echo MCCC related to me that prior to the shutdown of all his missiles he had received more than one report from security patrols and maintenance crews that they had seen UFOs. One was directly above one of the LFs in Echo Flight. The Echo crew confirmed that they had spoken to my commander that day and told him of their incident. They also told me that they were flown to SAC Headquarters, Omaha, Nebraska the next day and had to brief CINCSAC (Commander in Chief Strategic Air Command) about their incident. The Echo DMCCC also informed me that he had written an extensive log of the Incident and turned that over to staff officers at SAC headquarters. They certainly did report the UFO sightings and their guards and maintenance personnel were interviewed about their sightings by Air Force investigators. The MCCC of the crew that relieved the Echo crew also confirmed that the Echo crew had spoken to him about the UFO sightings during the time immediately preceding their shutdown incident.
My own MCCC confirmed my recollection of events with the exception that he recalled that about five of our ten missiles shut down in rapid succession. My own recollection is that it was more than five. However, he did add something I had not recalled. We sent a security patrol to our LFs after the shutdown of our missiles and they reported sighting another UFO during that patrol. They also lost radio contact with our site immediately after reporting the UFO.
To summarize the events of that morning:
UFOs were sighted by security personnel at our LCC (probably November Flight), at one of our LFs, and by other security personnel at Echo LFs, and these were reported separately to the capsule crews at both LCCs. These reports were made at or about the time Minuteman Strategic missiles shut down at both sites. USAF has confirmed that all of Echo flights missiles shutdown within seconds of each other. There was no apparent reason for these shutdowns.
Further discussions with individuals from Boeing, who had provided technical assistance and performed additional tests during the investigation into the cause of these shutdowns, confirmed that there was never a resolution as to cause or explanation for these incidents. The unit histories for 1967 also confirm that conclusion.
Since the termination of Project Blue Book, the Air Force has maintained the position that no reported UFO incident has ever affected national security. The incident I described above clearly had national security implications. The Air Force has clearly and deliberately hidden the fact that a large number of Air Force personnel reported sighting UFOs at the time many of our strategic missiles became, unaccountably, disabled.
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