COMMENTARY

MILT THOMAS

If you were up just before sunrise on New Year’s Day (or had not yet gone to bed), you may have noticed a strange phenomenon looking east over the ocean. Different photos flooded the Internet that appear to show a rocket or missile with a fiery contrail moving extremely fast in a vertical trajectory.

However, the US Department of Defense claims it was in fact a commercial airplane whose contrail was captured in the rising morning sun. Really?

At one time years ago, a UFO was spotted over forest and the official explanation was “swamp gas.” A cartoon some time after that depicted two cavemen looking at the remains of a WWI era biplane and one turned to the other and said, “swamp gas.” No one bought that explanation then, and I don’t buy this one now.

Getting back to what was observed on New Year’s Day, I guess the photos appear to show a rocket, not an airplane, because it is shaped like a bullet, not like any commercial airplane I have ever seen, unless this is another Elon Musk invention. I have never seen a fiery contrail behind an airplane, and if I did, I would probably call 9-1-1. I also note that most airplanes travel more or less on a horizontal trajectory, not a vertical one, unless it had just taken off from out in the middle of the ocean somewhere.

So, sorry, DOD, I don’t buy the swamp gas-like explanation of what multiple people actually saw and recorded.

A while back, I also personally experienced another unexplained sky event. I was driving south on A1A just before sunrise one morning and thought a car was some distance behind me until the headlights suddenly headed skyward over the ocean. I pulled over to watch what was obviously a rocket. It reached several miles high, then suddenly exploded. It was quite a spectacle as it caught the first rays of morning sun. The incident was never reported by any media. The year was 1961.