- [Tony] Tonight on "The Proof Is Out There: Alien Edition,"
a possible UFO,
a passenger jet
and a near miss over New York City.
What really happened in the sky?
- When I looked back,
there was something in there.
I definitely did see something.
- [Tony] At 30,000 feet,
a pilot reports a strange encounter.
What did he see
when the instruments showed nothing at all?
- Nothing was seen on radar.
It would move, and then it would go out.
- [Tony] And over China,
another pilot records a UAP
no one can explain.
- These orbs seem to be blinking
in some kind of pattern or signal.
- [Tony] With UFO reports at an all-time high,
we're examining the most compelling evidence
caught on camera.
Tonight's focus,
pilot and passenger encounters.
Our experts will analyze the evidence
and then pass a verdict.
- I can't tell you what this is.
So categorically, it's a UFO.
- That these things can
and absolutely will be an air safety issue.
- [Tony] The proof starts now.
[dynamic music]
- Good evening, and welcome to "The Proof Is Out There".
Due to ongoing tensions with its neighbor, India,
Pakistan is highly sensitive
about anomalous incidents
in its airspace.
So when a team of Pakistani commercial pilots
spotted a mysterious object
outside their window,
they took notice
and took out a camera.
January 23rd, 2021.
A Pakistan International Airlines Airbus A320
is on a routine flight from Lahore to Karachi
when suddenly the pilots notice a bright ball in the sky
over the city of Rahim Yar Khan.
- [Tony] At first, the object appears to glow and pulsate,
but that's because the camera is trying to focus on it.
Slowing down, the video shows the object
appears to be a solid white orb.
Excitement grows as they struggle with a smartphone
to zoom in and hold the object in frame.
- [Tony] This isn't the first time
pilots have reported strange orb-like objects
over Pakistan skies.
- In January of 2019,
a report was filed that the crew on a flight
from Karachi to Sakkur
saw an object floating about 105 feet above their aircraft.
The object they saw wasn't bright,
it was kind of oval shaped.
The incident was immediately reported
to air traffic control in Karachi,
but the details of the sighting
were never released to the public.
- For decades, commercial and military pilots
faced scorn and ridicule
for reporting UFO sightings,
which could have resulted in a loss of critical information.
Our team of experts
is about to give this Pakistani airline crews footage
the attention it deserves.
[suspenseful music]
[inquisitive music]
- We don't see rotors, we don't see a jet engine.
We don't see anything that would propel it.
We don't see control surfaces,
that type of thing.
And so it's not a plane or a helicopter.
- [Tony] These experienced commercial pilots
had no idea what they were seeing.
- [Tony] Could that be because it's something
not of this world?
- [Lt. Tim] We know that from the Pentagon
and their official UAP investigative office
that the sphere or, you know, round shape
are the most commonly reported UFOs that they have.
So, you know, this shape of UFO
is very consistent.
- [Tony] But McMillan also notes,
if it's a UFO,
it's certainly not acting like one.
- Typically when you're thinking of UFO,
you're talking about sightings of objects
that perform in ways that we can't comport
with any known technology.
So is there anything in this video that I see
that would tell me that it requires
an explanation for it being alien?
No.
- [Tony] Instead, McMillan believes
the orb-like shape of this object
isn't that unusual to find in the sky,
and he disagrees with one of the pilots on board.
- The round sphere shape
is not an aerodynamic shape,
so it's something that is having to maintain altitude
by lighter-than-air gases.
And for me, the only type of airborne object
that it would be consistent with would be a balloon.
- [Tony] So is there a clue to the kind of balloon it is?
- This might be a Pakistani version
of a Chinese spy balloon.
If so, that payload would be hanging
directly beneath the balloon,
lost in the glare, you'd never see it,
because those payloads are closer to the balloon.
They're not hanging way down below,
like many aerial weather balloons have hanging from them.
- [Tony] But proving it,
McMillan admits, for now,
the full evidence isn't there.
- It certainly has all the appearance
and shape of a balloon.
And so what type of balloon it could be
could be anybody's guess.
[suspenseful music]
- Our verdict, McMillan is leaning balloon,
but the pilot himself
insists that's not what this was.
For now, to be safe,
we're going with unidentified object.
The frantic camera work
just doesn't give us a clear enough image to be definitive.
A rep from the airline
claims they don't know what the object was either,
but they won't be launching their own investigation.
[suspenseful music]
What do Pakistan, New Mexico and Columbia have in common?
If you're a regular viewer,
you know that they're all locations
where strange flying objects
have been caught on camera
by professional pilots.
August 9th, 2022, the Pacific Ocean.
Commercial airline pilot Chris van Voorhis
is about 90 minutes into a flight
from Honolulu to Los Angeles
when nearby pilot chatter
calls his attention to an anomaly in the sky.
- At this point in time, when we started looking outside,
we were able to pick up the anomaly
that they were talking about.
- [Tony] Through the cockpit window,
Chris records a bright orb
appearing to the northwest,
just below the Big Dipper.
- [Chris] Okay, there it is.
- [Tony] Let's slow it down and take a closer look.
The light moves around a bit
before quickly disappearing.
- [Pilot] Yeah. - [Chris] Oh dang, it went away.
- [Pilot] Did you get it?
- [Tony] Chris continues recording
for more than two minutes
as the light intermittently disappears and reappears.
- [Chris] We were rather awed by it
and dismayed at the same time.
Nothing was seen on radar.
It would move, and then it would go out.
Now, sometimes this is indicative of a satellite,
and usually we'd see satellites
during either sunset or sunrise
and it would be reflecting the sun
from their solar arrays.
But this wasn't directly after sunset or sunrise.
- [Tony] But this sighting is far from a first
for either Chris or his fellow pilots.
- I've seen quite a bit up there,
and I know quite a few pilots
that have seen these orbs or anomalies,
maybe up to 50%.
- [Tony] Chris's video appeared in national news coverage
on the growing topic of pilot encounters.
- This is not unique.
There's videos captured like this all the time.
Needless to say, it's always a bad combination
to have a commercial airline
flying in the vicinity of an unknown object.
That is an air safety issue.
[inquisitive music]
- [Tony] In fact, pilots overseas
are facing similar safety concerns.
- [Luis] There's also reports by pilots in European countries
of these strange lights.
One sighting wasn't on the pilots' radar,
and air traffic control, or ATC,
also did not report the incident.
- [Tony] And these sightings can leave a lasting impression.
- This has changed my beliefs tremendously.
It's opened my mind to the possibilities of
everything from interdimensional travel and portals
and time travel and extraterrestrials.
- One of the more prominent pilot whistleblowers
is Ryan Graves,
the first active duty US Navy aviator
to go public about regular UAP sightings.
He testified about his own encounter to Congress in 2023.
So did Chris see one, too?
Our experts review the data.
[inquisitive music]
Is this just a case of mistaken identity?
We first ask if this ball of light
could be natural,
like a meteor or fireball.
- A fireball is a very fast-moving object,
and it looks like an object
that is leaving some sort of like a small trail.
In the video that we see here,
we don't see trails.
- [Tony] So perhaps this light
is emitting from a manmade craft,
like the afterburners found at the rear of a jet.
Like Chris, we don't see it.
- [Lt. Tim] When a fighter jet is using afterburners,
it's the equivalent
of just slamming your foot on the gas in a car.
And so you wouldn't see afterburners
just burning consistently over any length of time
because the act of putting your foot on the gas
burns a lot of fuel.
- [Tony] Okay, well this is the middle of the Pacific,
could it be some secret military technology
we were never meant to see?
- It is in this weird corridor in the Pacific
between California and Hawaii
that is frequently used by the government
for various testing.
- [Tony] In fact, the nearby Pacific Missile Range Facility
is the largest range of its kind,
and is known to test advanced technology systems.
- [Lt. Tim] So it's not totally out of the question,
but normally that's done in a very controlled setting,
where it wouldn't be visible to the public.
- [Tony] So while possible,
the fact that Chris and other commercial pilots
were allowed to fly here
makes secret tech unlikely.
Then could it be a genuine UFO?
- [Lt. Tim] I don't see any characteristics
that are unusual or anomalous,
but at the same time,
I can't tell you what this is.
So categorically, it's a UFO.
And if you add into the mix
the eyewitness testimony,
maybe this is more unusual than the video gives it credit.
[suspenseful music]
- Our verdict, genuine UFO.
If you're a commercial pilot
or a veteran who wants to report a sighting,
Ryan Graves' nonprofit, Americans for Safe Aerospace,
can help.
The organization provides us a secure system
to collect information through its witness program.
And while you're at it,
you may as well let us know, too.
- Let's talk about air travel.
The procedure typically involves baggage check,
security, boarding, takeoff,
and UFO sighting?
March 25th, 2024.
It's a beautiful day above New York City.
Michelle Reyes is on a commercial airline
preparing for landing at LaGuardia Airport.
Michelle pulls out her phone
to record the skyline out her window,
but Michelle's shot is interrupted
by something speeding by.
Let's play that back in slow motion.
[rewind whirring]
A black oblong object enters frame right,
just above the horizon.
The object appears to be tilted slightly forward.
In less than a second,
it exits frame left,
leaving Michelle unsure if she saw anything at all,
until she watches that video back.
- When I looked back,
there was something in there,
so I was like, "All right, I'm not going crazy.
I definitely did see something."
I posted it online
just to see if someone could say like,
"Hey, this is not out of the ordinary
and we'd see this all the time."
I was just really curious.
- [Tony] Many online share Michelle's curiosity.
So much so that her video was picked up
by multiple national news outlets.
Across the country,
people are perplexed by Michelle's sighting,
and it's not hard to see why.
- There's been a lot of reports
of these larger cylinder-shaped or cigar-shaped craft.
So people looking at this
and saying they see a cylindrical UFO,
I can certainly understand why they would see that.
- [Tony] In fact, these cylindrical UFOs
have crossed paths with commercial aircraft
in recent years.
- There was an incident in 2021
with an American Airlines pilot
flying to Phoenix, Arizona,
reported over New Mexico
seeing a large cylindrical object
fly directly over his own aircraft.
- [Tony] But these near misses
didn't just start in the last few years,
they actually go back almost as far
as the modern UFO age as we know it.
In 1948, two commercial pilots
were flying over Alabama
in the early morning hours
when they saw a wingless cylindrical craft
speeding toward their plane.
The pilots veered to the side,
dodging a near collision.
What's worrisome is that these near misses
seem to be getting more frequent
as the years go on.
Long Island-based researchers Jerry and John Tedesco
have seen it themselves,
not far from where Michelle Reyes recorded her sighting.
- It was October of '23, early morning,
and I was just videotaping flight traffic
in and out of the airport.
And on the extreme zoom,
I saw an airliner making its rotation to come into JFK,
and I saw this object passing the path of the airliner.
- The cylinder-shaped object's seemingly showing up
quite often in these reports.
So it's consistent, it's a persistent pattern.
[laughing] It's definitely gotta be taken seriously.
- [Tony] That's because if objects like these
are sharing the skies with civilian aircraft,
it's a problem.
- The greatest concern here
is that air traffic control
didn't see this and didn't report it.
That is proof positive that these things can
and absolutely will be an air safety issue
if we don't do something about it.
- In 2023, a "New York Times" investigation
found that near misses involving commercial aircraft
were happening multiple times a week nationwide.
Will our investigation reveal another kind of safety threat
in our skies?
[inquisitive music]
Could this indeed be a cylindrical UFO
crossing paths with this commercial plane?
Well, while from the side
it might look like a cylinder,
it might be something else entirely.
- When you do closer analysis,
you can actually see
that there's something kind of spinning.
So it could be just a large disk.
- [Tony] Still sound like aliens?
Not so fast.
In 2019, Romanian engineers
successfully built their own flying saucer
called the All Directional Flying Object, or ADIFO.
In other words, a disk-shaped drone.
But wouldn't something like that have been noticed?
- [Lenval] The pilots would've been able to see it coming by
and explain it.
Air traffic control would've picked it up.
This was not picked up by any radar system.
- [Tony] So is this just something ordinary
captured in a way
that makes it look extraordinary?
- [Rich] You've got the aircraft going north,
the wind coming from the opposite direction,
which is really meaning that this is going maybe wind speed.
So you have the aircraft,
and then the wind speed carrying it aloft
creates this effect
where it's zooming by.
I think that it's more like a party balloon.
- [Tony] Specifically, we're thinking
of those number-shaped balloons
that people usually get to denote their age.
The theory is one of those numeric balloons
may have gone astray.
- [Rich] I think it's a zero.
In the beginning of the clip,
top-right-hand corner,
there is the aircraft's wing.
So what you're able to see
is that this object is just beyond.
And so the size matches,
the winds were moving along in such a way
that it's potentially coming from Staten Island.
Everything matches up in terms of it being a zero balloon.
And she happened to see it as they were going by.
- Our verdict,
party balloon.
See how this zero-shaped balloon looks
turned on its side?
That's what we think Michelle saw
when she looked out her plane window.
It's amazing what a change of perspective can do.
- For millennia, Turkey has been a bridge between cultures,
a crossroads between Europe and Asia.
But as you're about to see,
it might also have been the meeting point
between human civilization
and extraterrestrial life.
[pensive music]
It's May 13th, 2009,
and night owl Yalcin Yalman
is stargazing in the suburbs of Istanbul, Turkey.
Shortly after 3:00 a.m.,
something strange appears in the sky
over the Sea of Marmara.
Yalcin immediately grabs his Canon MiniDV camera,
a videotape, and records this.
It appears to be some sort of saucer-shaped craft.
It's hovering silently for half an hour
about a mile away
and 500 feet above the sea.
But watch what happens when Yalcin zooms in.
Do you see that?
Now, take a look at the footage
when we zoomed in and cleaned it up for you
to get a better look.
Yalcin says that what you are seeing here
is a cockpit window,
and they're inside the alleged craft.
He's saying you can see two aliens
piloting this thing,
right here
and right here.
Yalcin is sure he's made contact.
In fact, he claims it's been happening for years.
[Yalcin speaking in foreign language]
- [Tony] For millennia, strange things have been reported
in the skies over Turkey.
In 74 BC during a battle between Greek and Roman armies,
thousands of soldiers
witnessed a flaming object of molten silver
shaped like a wine jar flying above them.
- In 2016, Turkish air pilots
reported that they saw a UFO
go over their plane
with green lights.
The pilots say they saw this UFO about 17,000 feet,
but the airport authorities
reported that they had no evidence on their radar
of any of the sightings that the pilot saw.
- [Tony] Now, we've never seen a window on a UFO before.
Yalcin's cockpit aliens
appear to be a unique phenomenon,
and one the Turkish government
has taken very seriously.
- [George] The Turkish government came back
and said that this is authentic,
and this spacecraft is nothing
to do with any military programs or anything.
So this could be an extraterrestrial.
- UFOs are such a hot topic in Turkey
that in 2001 a museum opened in Istanbul
containing various photos,
videos, reports, models,
and even a library about UFOs
and extraterrestrial life.
But are we ready to add this video to the collection?
Our experts take a deeper dive into the footage.
[suspenseful music]
[inquisitive music]
- We always look to the metadata first.
And this block-like pixelation,
this is an indication
that excessive amounts of compression
were applied to these pixel areas.
But I don't detect any evidence of this program
interacting with something that would introduce CGI.
There is no indication that they were trying to deceive
or mislead.
- [Tony] So if it doesn't appear we have a doctored video,
has Yalcin really been dealing with aliens?
- Back in 2009,
we didn't have the cameras we have today.
He's zooming in on it all the way.
And in my view,
I don't think that you're gonna be able to see anybody
in a craft like that.
- [Tony] Turkey is a NATO member
and has the second largest army in the organization.
So is it possible this could be an experimental aircraft?
- [Lt. Tim] This is a particular area
where you do have military drills.
And in fact, NATO holds different annual drills
simulating wartime environments.
However, all of the telltale signs of aircraft
as we know them
are really kind of thrown out of the window.
We definitely don't have any aircraft
that are lenticular or saucer shaped.
Beyond that, if it's gonna be an aircraft,
you're gonna hear something,
whether it's the jet engines of a plane
or that rotor thunder of a helicopter.
And in this case,
the individual said he didn't hear anything
while filming it.
- [Tony] So what else could this be?
- [Marc] It's a case that's been around for a long time.
That doesn't mean it's true,
it just means it's not solved yet.
Our verdict, we're going to classify it
as a genuine UFO.
Our experts make good points.
And we'll agree that those images in the windows
probably aren't alien space pilots.
But that doesn't mean we can identify
what this thing actually is
until we get more definitive evidence.
- The US military has had some now famous encounters
with UFOs in recent years,
but it may not be alone.
Back in the final years of the Cold War,
an encounter in the skies
over the low countries of Northwestern Europe
prompted a robust military response.
That sparked a controversy over what really happened
which continues to this day.
[inquisitive music]
It's March, 1990,
over the Belgian countryside.
Two F-16s are deployed by the Belgian Air Force
after radar spots an ominous object
hovering in the air.
They see this.
You're looking at an actual recording
of what was on their flight radar lock-on.
In the center of the screen,
at an altitude of 7,000 feet,
is a diamond-shaped blip.
This blip indicates there's something solid in the sky,
though it doesn't necessarily represent
what this solid object actually looks like.
The radar's altimeter, measuring in thousands,
indicates the odd object races thousands of feet higher,
then plummets back down again at breakneck speed.
And it seems to accelerate to 990 knots,
or more than 1,000 miles per hour,
before bolting out of range.
The pilots never make visual contact.
But back on the ground,
one resident of Brussels
claims to capture this footage
of three lights in a triangular pattern passing overhead,
- This video was shot in March of 1990 over Belgium
on the same night of the radar sighting.
- [Tony] A few months later,
Belgian Air Force Colonel Wilfried de Brouwer
holds a press conference about the incident.
- [Tony] And there's another layer to this story.
This wasn't the first Belgian sighting.
There'd been a string of strange encounters
just months before.
- [MJ] It starts in November of 1989.
Multiple reports start coming in
of seeing three lights in the sky.
- [Tony] During that first wave of sightings,
no less than 30 different groups of witnesses
describe seeing three bright lights up in the sky.
- [MJ] What they see is
that these aren't three distinct
lights, but rather three points of light
on one very large triangular-shaped object.
- [Tony] The witnesses claim to have seen the object
slowly glide at low altitude
northeast across the Belgian landscape
from the town of Liege
to the border with the Netherlands and Germany,
more than half a dozen police officers
working that evening
also spotted the mystery aircraft.
But it wasn't until months later
when the Air Force picked up that strange UFO on radar
and this footage was captured
that they seemingly had proof
that this was a technologically amazing craft.
- There was nothing that existed
that could outperform this F-16 aircraft.
But the pilot says that, as he's pursuing this object,
the object makes essentially a quick turn
and deviates off his radar system
and he loses it.
[suspenseful music]
- In total, this Belgian triangle
was seen by more than 1,000 witnesses
over these several months.
With so many viewers and the military involved,
could this be the real deal?
Our experts try to identify both the object on radar
and the one that was filmed.
Are they one and the same?
If so, what could it be?
[inquisitive music]
- The important thing here is to notice
that there are three objects in the view.
And the objects don't get any closer to each other
or move apart from each other,
they stay near each other,
almost as if they're connected in some way
through a structure.
So we're probably looking at a cohesive, singular object
that has lights on it.
- [Tony] So could this be a real triangular UFO?
- [Marc] I can never pronounce that this is real.
There's no data indicating that it is.
I can only say that it's compelling.
From my point of view,
the jury is still out.
So does that make it a hoax? No.
Does it make it real? No.
But it doesn't take away from the fact
that this footage exists
of an F-16 Fighting Falcon
tracking an object on its radar.
- [Tony] Sources say the ground footage
was filmed at around 2:20 a.m.
about two hours after the F-16s
spotted something on their radar.
So could these two incidents be connected?
And what would that mean?
- What this radar screen is telling us
is that essentially this object
descended from 10,000 feet
to roughly 500 feet or below
in just a matter of seconds.
To do that, we're talking about something
that would have to be moving exceptionally fast,
upwards of Mach 40.
Those types of g-forces would crush a person.
- [Tony] So McMillan agrees with the Belgian Air Force,
a human couldn't withstand these forces,
but maybe an alien could.
Well, hang on,
McMillan has a different theory
as to what the F-16s' radar screens
may have detected.
- [Lt. Tim] I think possibly what we're looking at here
is something called Bragg's scattering.
It's a scattering effect with the radar.
Pockets of high humidity,
ice crystals, cloud cover,
different things like that
can actually cause the radar
to produce false echo returns.
The pilots themselves never visually saw anything,
only the radar.
In this particular case,
I would say that the idea that radar scattering
caused these false returns
could be a very plausible explanation for it.
- [Tony] But remember, this object was detected
on multiple radar systems,
so it's unlikely it would be Bragg's scattering
in every case.
That's why many who've studied this incident
remain perplexed.
[suspenseful music]
- Okay, it's true,
the incredibly fast speeds caught on the F-16s' radar
could be a glitch,
but our verdict is genuine UFO.
We have no way of confirming
if the object seen on radar
is the same one filmed in Brussels,
but it does seem remarkable that these two pieces of footage
came within hours of each other.
And decades later, the former Air Force colonel
and now retired major, General de Brouwer,
still can't account
for the thousands of UFO sightings
reported in Belgium
over those months.
- In November of 2021,
the Pentagon announced the establishment
of a new UFO task force,
and just in time for our next sighting,
which took place on that very same day.
Coincidence?
We'll let you decide.
November 24th, 2021,
a commercial plane is on an early morning flight
near Hong Kong.
As the plane flies over the South China Sea at 39,000 feet,
an unusual site out of the right window
prompts the pilot to whip out his cellphone and record this.
Nine orbs are moving across the sky
in three organized rows.
Let's zoom in.
The wildest part,
watch how the orbs on the left disappear
before three more orbs reappear
on the far side of the formation,
and the cycle repeats.
- These orbs seem to be blinking
in some kind of pattern or signal,
until finally, one by one,
they slowly, slowly disappear,
and then they're all just gone.
- [Tony] The video quickly goes viral,
racking up nearly 300,000 views.
But the question is, what could they be?
- There were a number of theories
as to what the lights could actually be.
One of the most popular is, of course,
that they were UFOs.
- [Tony] Patterns of strange lights in the sky
have been observed for decades.
In 1951, a group of scientists
from Texas Technical College
claimed to see a group
of 15 to 30 bluish-green objects
flying in formation.
A student at the college
snapped these photographs,
and the phenomenon became known as the Lubbock Lights.
The incident grab headlines across the nation.
But why would this formation of lights
be so near another airplane?
Grundhauser says some ufologists have theories.
- Some theories include
that they are trying to show us
the technology that they have,
almost in comparison to the technology we're using.
It's also possible that,
especially when it comes to military aircraft,
maybe the aliens are just getting the measure of us,
seeing what our technology can do.
- Today, the formal US government name
of the UFO task force
is the Airborne Object Identification
and Management Synchronization Group.
Lord, if you can come up with a clunkier name,
please, please, email it to us.
This organization wasn't established
until after more than 100 incidents
documented by military planes
were officially classified as unexplained.
So did this pilot's strange encounter
over the South China Sea
merit a report with the department?
We ask our experts.
[suspenseful music]
- What's interesting about this recording
is there is a moment
where that automatic iris makes a change,
and the white balance overall in the image changes
and the intensity of the objects doesn't.
They stay fairly consistent.
So I did not detect any evidence
that these objects were overlaid into the recording
or any CGI was used to create them.
So this video does appear to be genuine.
- [Tony] Are we looking at
some kind of atmospheric phenomenon?
- When we see lightning,
it's a very quick flash.
It's a discharge of electricity.
In this case, it's a light that appears to be fairly static
for a couple of seconds,
and then it goes away.
There really is no weather phenomenon out there
that would manifest itself as an orb or a light.
- [Tony] If it's not atmospheric,
could these be actual alien ships?
- They're not doing anything amazing
in terms of moving very fast.
They don't appear to be shooting upwards,
which is a typical thing that you see in UFO videos.
So it probably has a
relatively Earthly explanation.
- [Tony] Maybe that steady formation that rules out UFOs
rules in another explanation.
Drones.
- [Nick] Now, we see very impressive aerial setups
sometimes where lots of drones
fly in synchronized shapes,
but no one's going to be making a drone display
at 20,000 feet over the South China Sea,
and drones are probably not gonna be bright enough
to be seen at that distance.
- [Tony] But West does find a clue in the video
that he believes is key to solving the mystery.
- I think probably what we're looking at here
are three military planes dropping flares.
- [Tony] Many fighter jets employ decoy flares,
which burn on contact with the air
and at a temperature hotter than the engine exhaust.
They're deployed to attract heat seeking missiles.
And it's possible this timed formation
is due to a training exercise.
- [Nick] These decoy flares,
they need to burn as bright as possible initially
so that they can guide the missiles
away from the plane,
and then they're just allowed to burn out.
- [Tony] Meanwhile, US government officials
claim China has fully militarized
at least three artificial islands
they've constructed in the South China Sea.
- It's probably Chinese military aircraft
just doing some kind of exercise.
Fighter jets are usually highly camouflaged.
So since it's dusk,
there's gray clouds behind.
It's simply too far away to see the planes.
[suspenseful music]
- Our verdict, military flares.
The South China Sea
has gained major geopolitical significance
because a huge share of the world's maritime shipping
passes through it.
Given that the area has seen a variety
of territorial disputes of late,
it's not too surprising
to see a military presence in the airspace above it.
- Germany has its own history of UFOs
going back at least as far as World War II.
This next puzzling footage
is a much more recent sighting
out of Deutschland.
And whatever it is,
we know it's not one of the 99 Luftballons.
[inquisitive music]
September 29th, 2014.
It's a beautiful day in Berau, Germany,
a rural southern village
near the Swiss border.
A photographer sets up his camera
to film the perfect sunset.
But when he watches the footage back,
he has captured something else entirely,
a bright streaking orb jetting across the sky.
Suddenly, the object seems to zigzag violently
before continuing downward.
Let's see that again.
[dynamic music]
- [Eric] The way that it moves,
it doesn't look like the behavior
that any Earthly vessel could possibly undertake.
- [Tony] Much of the online speculation
centers on the location of the sighting,
a place considered by some
to be the birthplace of the modern UFO phenomenon.
It was 1944 behind German lines.
The elite 415th Night Fighter Squadron
reported strange phenomenon
in the skies over Germany.
- The incident involved a Bristol Beaufighter crew
led by pilot Edward Schlueter and his crewmates,
who were flying over the Rhine Valley
near Strasbourg.
The crew described eight to 10 orange orbs
flying at high speeds
off of their left wing.
- [Tony] The lights appeared from nowhere,
moving at erratic angles,
dancing around the planes.
The puzzled squadron could not shoot them down.
They also never appeared on radar.
The pilots dubbed the bright light bogies
allegedly captured in this photo Foo Fighters.
- [Eric] Since the Foo Fighters caused no damage,
the American crewmen
doubted that they were actually German secret weapons.
German pilots claimed to have seen Foo Fighters as well,
and they were just as baffled.
- [Tony] But there are other modern instances
of similar bright orbs
descending on planes, too.
On a previous episode,
we analyzed this 2020 sighting
from the Mexican skies
where veteran military
and commercial pilot Captain Erik Delgado
recorded this footage.
- [Erik] Oh man, that is phenomenal.
Dude, I'm so glad you saw that.
And you saw it drop out of the sky and just,
it just stopped? - I did,
[Erik laughing]
- [Erik] This is awesome, man.
- [Tony] Captain Delgado says this thing
dropped straight down from above
and hit his plane with some kind of spotlight.
- It looked like a lighthouse
in some thin fog as it's turning.
So that really got my heart going.
- [Tony] No doubt a UFO shining a light on your plane
would be a terrifying moment.
- I thought there could've been a safety issue
because initially this thing
is turning into us,
and then it decided to park itself off
our left wing tip. [laughing]
- [Tony] The glowing orb maintains its position,
pacing the plane.
Delgado says it stayed there for 25 minutes
before darting off at a sharp angle.
- [Tony] It's the kind of inexplicable maneuver
we've come to associate with UFOs,
from Foo Fighters
to those encountered more recently by Navy pilots,
to this very video.
Both the Foo Fighters legend
and the modern footage shot by Captain Delgado
remain mysteries.
How will this German orb footage
hold up to our experts' scrutiny?
Time for our team to dig in and find out.
[suspenseful music]
Is it possible all these highly maneuverable UFOs
are a single type of craft,
and this is one of them?
- It does seem to be going extremely fast,
and also, at one point,
executes a remarkable turn.
- [Tony] That single hairpin turn
might match Foo Fighter reports.
So if it's not a Foo Fighter,
could it be a meteor?
- This is a time-lapse video,
which means that we're looking at the sun
setting over a long period of time.
If that's the case,
this is way too slow actually to be a meteor.
- [Tony] Most meteors are visible for seconds,
burning up in a flash.
So the revelation that this is a time-lapse video
rules that out altogether.
The skip in time from the time-lapse
could also explain the erratic movement.
So it's not a meteor
or an alien spacecraft.
Could it be a non-alien spacecraft,
like a satellite?
- [Marc] This could not be a satellite
because it's still way too bright
to see even the brightest satellites.
Satellites do come out at sunset,
but only after the sun goes down.
- [Tony] Could this object have something
to do with the camera?
- [Marc] Here's the thing with cameras.
Whenever you point them into the sun,
you're gonna get things you don't expect
or don't want,
because the sun is immensely brighter
than anything else in the field of view.
So if this is something up in the sky,
as soon as it starts to go down toward the horizon,
it should slow down.
To your eye, it's not.
It stays the exact same speed.
That tells me that it's probably a camera artifact
of some kind.
[suspenseful music]
- Our verdict, lens flare,
or another kind of camera artifact.
We wish we could say this video
brought us closer to an answer
on the Foo Fighter legend,
but not this time.
Those mysteries continue.
And as we've seen tonight,
strange encounters are happening
on planes across the globe.
So the next time you fly,
you may want to book an aisle seat.
Thank you so much for watching
this special edition
of "The Proof Is Out There."
Please send us any video,
images or sound
that you think we should investigate.
And remember to keep those cameras rolling.
[dynamic music]