The Hale-Bopp Comet made its closest approach to Earth in March 1997. The longest such astronomical feature visible to the naked eye would not trek by our neck of the universe for another 2,500 years. Across the southwestern United States on the evening of March 13, however, Hale-Bopp took a back seat to other aerial objects, as thousands of people, principally Arizonans, generally described seeing either a giant boomerang-shaped aircraft gliding across the sky or a series of hovering orbs.

The military says the sightings were of their aircraft and flares dropped from fighter jets during an Air National Guard training exercise. Many of the witnesses dismiss those contentions, believing the “Phoenix Lights” are still unexplained.

The first reports of bright aerial lights were received in western Nevada, near Henderson, at approximately 7:30 p.m. MST (Mountain Standard Time). Over the following three hours, upwards of several thousand similar sightings were reported across a roughly three-hundred mile radius of Arizona.

In the northern half of the state, five bright spherical lights were observed slowly and silently sailing through the virtually cloudless sky in what was most collaboratively described as a carpenter’s square, wedged, or curved V-shaped formation. Some saw two additional lights following beneath them. Many viewers assert the lights were part of a large solid structure as there was no movement between them and many of the stars were not visible as they passed. The object, whatever it was, was believed upwards of a mile long.

Though the so-called glowing orbs appear white in some of the photos and on video, many of the witnesses say they were some shade of orange, red, or amber. One viewer says the lights slightly dimmed after the aircraft emanated a downward white beam. Some viewers believe they saw physical crafts behind the lights while others claim the lights themselves were the crafts.

The lights were seen by air traffic controllers across the region, but they had not shown up on radar.

   

Images Of The Lights

The lights were in the V-shape formation when they were first seen over Phoenix in south-central Arizona at approximately 8:00. Two hours later, multiple hovering orbs generally estimated at 1,000 feet above the ground were observed over the western part of the capital city and surrounding communities moving more slowly and in more of a straight-line formation in a north to south direction roughly along the routes of Interstates 17 and 10. Some say the orbs were lit one-by-one and later individually dimmed but not in the order they had appeared.

Multiple people across Phoenix photographed and/or videotaped the hovering lights. Similar sightings were later observed around Tucson, one-hundred-ten miles south of Phoenix, as well as in small sections of southern California, eastern New Mexico, and across the border in Sonora, Mexico.

The Lights’ Flights Across Arizona

No photos of the boomerang-shaped object seen in the sky are known to exist. Drawings of the perceived aircraft were made based on witness descriptions.

   

Drawings And Model Of The Object

After local television stations throughout Phoenix later aired footage of a series of skyward orbs hovering and disappearing at random intervals just west of the city, they henceforth became popularly known as the Phoenix Lights.

The unexplained aerial objects generated only brief local coverage until USA TODAY published an artist’s rendering of the lights on its June 18 front page. Afterwards, multiple national news outlets picked up the aerial lights sighted three months earlier.

USA Today Picks Up The Story

The following day, after holding one press conference regarding the sightings, Arizona Governor Fife Symington hastily called for a second briefing at which he announced his office had learned the source of the lights. Public Safety police officers then escorted a handcuffed man attired in a rubber suit and a stereotypical space alien mask to the podium. Identifying the “being” as the “guilty party,” the Governor then removed the mask to reveal the large-handed costumed extraterrestrial as his Chief of Staff, Jay Heiler.

Most Arizonans were not amused with Symington’s spoof. He later stated he was trying to lighten the near hysteria over the perceived UFO sightings.  Instead, the attempt at satirical humor further fueled the frenzy.

 

Governor Symington’s Spoof Press Conference

In July, the following month, the Air Force attempted to allay Arizonans’ agitation, saying the Phoenix Lights resulted from “Operation Snowbird,” a series of pilot training missions conducted by a Maryland Air National Guard unit based at Tucson’s Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.

On the evening of March 13, 1997, the unit was performing training exercises over the Gila Bend section of the Barry M. Goldwater Air Force Range in western Pima County, approximately seventy miles west of Phoenix, near the Sierra Estrella Mountains.

Phoenix Mapped

Officials say the “flying triangle” lights seen across the Grand Canyon State that night were a formation of Air Force A-10 Thunderbolt II jets, nicknamed “Warthogs,” flown from 8:00-8:45 p.m., and that the second hovering group of lights were slow-falling LUU-2 illumination flares dropped by another flight of A-10 aircraft beginning at approximately 10:00. The flares would have been visible in the skies and appear to hover due to rising heat creating a “balloon” effect on their parachutes and slowing their descent. In the process, the bright lights would likely appear to block out background stars.

Many aviation experts accept the Air Force’s account, saying aerial flares are akin to hot-air balloons in that they go where the wind takes them. Multiple flares could be simultaneously propelled while being kept at a uniform distance but appearing closer than they actually are because of their brightness.

Skeptics noted there were no illumination of sky lit up around the flares. The Air Force says the environmental conditions of the evening did not allow for that kind of reflection.

Many videos show a series of illuminated lights appearing at regular intervals before fading out. The Air Force says the images are of the Sierra Estrella’s partially obstructing the view of its aircraft flares from certain angles, creating the illusion of an arc of lights appearing and disappearing behind the mountains one by one.

 

An analysis of the LUU-2B/B illumination flares determined their luminosity range of approximately fifty-to-seventy miles would have fallen within the range of the lights viewed from Phoenix. Most observers, however, were not convinced that flares, which generally produce visible smoke, had flooded the sky because no one saw any vapors.

In addition to air traffic controllers, many commercial pilots were among those who had seen the lights, and the majority did not believe they were consistent with those from an aircraft.  One former pilot in particular became a surprising supporter of the skeptics.

To Say The Least

In March 2007, a decade after the Phoenix Lights sightings, Arizona’s former top state official who had mocked the claims of possible UFOs said he himself had witnessed the delta-shaped aerial objects and was certain they were not military planes or flares.

Fife Symington, also a former Air Force Captain who had been stationed at Glendale’s Luke Air Force Base, said “I’m a pilot and I know just about every machine that flies. It was bigger than anything that I’ve ever seen in the skies . . .” He said he had not conveyed what he had viewed while Governor “because he didn’t want to panic the populace.”

Symington had resigned as Arizona’s Governor in September 1997, less than three months after his press conference spoofing the aerial sightings, following convictions for bank fraud and extortion which were later overturned on appeal.

The Governor Saw The Lights . . .

Actor and licensed pilot Kurt Russell may have been one of the first people to officially log a report of the Phoenix Lights. While flying his private plane toward Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, he had noticed unusual brightness over Piestewa Peak Mountain, roughly ten miles outside of Phoenix.

. . . As Did An Actor 

Due to its occurring on the same evening of the anticipated viewing of the Hale-Bopp Comet, the Phoenix Lights are believed to have been seen by upwards of an estimated 10,000 people, and perhaps as many as 20,000 people, leading author Robert Sheaffer to say they are “perhaps the most widely witnessed UFO event in history.”

Nothing I found suggested the Phoenix Lights are related to the Hale-Bopp comet.

The Phoenix Lights Become A Phenomena

In his 2000 book, The Maryland Air National Guard: A Commemorative History 1921 – 2000, author Ronald Ball states the Phoenix Lights resulted from aerial activities performed by their 104th Fighter Squadron.

Most witnesses, however, remain certain that they had not observed aerial flares on the evening of March 13, 1997. Many believe they may have viewed some sort of clandestine stealth military aircraft; some feel the skyward objects may have been something extraterrestrial.

What Were They?

On February 6, 2007, nearly a decade after the Phoenix Lights sightings, several local residents reported seeing similar moving aerial lights which were briefly recorded by a local FOX News television station. The Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) and the Air Force again say what was seen resulted from military flares used during another training exercise, this one by an F-16 “Fighting Falcon” at Luke Air Force Base in Glendale, fifteen miles west of Phoenix.

Flares Are Again The Explanation 

Officials from the training facility, however, state there was no Air Force activity in the area when more skyward lights were reported ascending across northern Phoenix just over a year later, on April 21, 2008. On this occasion, they appeared to be moving and changing position, first forming a straight vertical line before morphing into a diamond shape and then into a triangular or U-formation. One witness reported seeing three jets heading west in the direction of the lights shortly after they appeared.

The following day, the Arizona Republic reported a “resident of Phoenix” had told them the lights resulted from his neighbor releasing helium balloons attached to flares, and that a police helicopter pilot had confirmed the account. The day after, it was reported that another unnamed Phoenix resident confirmed he had attached flares to helium balloons and released them from his back yard.

They’re BAAAAACK

Phoenix physician Dr. Lynne Kitei took several pictures of the Phoenix Lights and wrote a book of the same name about the sightings in 2004.

       

Some Of Dr. Lynne Kitei’s Photos Of The Phoenix Lights

On February 6, 1995, just over two years before the Phoenix Lights sightings, Dr. Kitei also photographed similar amber-colored aerial orbs which she estimated to be between three-to-six feet in length.

 

Lynne Kitei’s February 6, 1995 Photos

On January 23, 1997, just under two months before the Phoenix Lights mass sightings, Dr. Kitei had also photographed six points of reddish-orange light which appeared attached to something moving slowly behind South Mountain, seven miles south of Phoenix.

Dr. Kitei’s January 23, 1997 Photo

Two of Dr. Kitei’s neighbors photographed similar orange-pulsating objects on March 10-12, the three days before the Phoenix Lights sightings.

 

Neighbors’ Photos 

March 10 and 12, 1997

SOURCES:

• Arizona Republic
• KNXV TV Channel 15 ABC Affiliate Phoenix
• KPNX TV Channel 12 News NBC Affiliate Phoenix
• The Phoenix Lights…We Are Not Alone Documentary
• UFO Hunters– History Channel
• UFO Insight
• Unsolved Mysteries