Customer Reviews

Strange Skies: Pilot Encounters With Ufos

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Well-known ufologist Jerome Clark's 'Strange Skies' provides a fascinating look at an important component of the UFO enigma. This work represents a unique contribution, much as the late Ivan T. Sanderson did with his seminal 1970 book 'Invisible Residents', which detailed UFO sightings associated with the oceans, seas and other bodies of water.
Beginning with such early phenomena as foo fighters and ghost rockets, Clark lays down a historical record of "the more interesting, suggestive reports..." (although they comprise a rather small percentage of the total on file). A large number of these pilot/UFO reports are from the 1940s and 1950s (including, of course, the famed Kenneth Arnold episode), although some are more contemporary, such as the Valentich case and the JAL incident of 1986. Regardless of the sightings' vintage, the author does a superb job in fleshing out the factual details of the events. Clark's writing style infuses his recounting with a hard-to-put-down sense of awe and fascination for the reader.
While Clark generally avoids analysis or speculation, there are some notable exceptions. He persuasively discredits the so-called 'Maury Island incident', and attempts to do the same regarding the 1948 Thomas Mantell case (where pilot Mantell was killed chasing an alleged UFO), although somewhat less convincingly. While he makes a plausible case that Mantell was actually pursuing a a secret, experimental balloon, Mantell's last words to ground control ("a metallic object...of tremendous size") leaves some room for doubt. The comments I had the most trouble with, however, were regarding a sighting in 1965 by Jim Cumber, detailed in the Dec. 2000 issue of The Mutual UFO Network's (MUFON) magazine. This sighting involved an alleged 'snatching' of a jet interceptor by a UFO. After more than 30 years of studying the UFO phenomenon myself, I cannot share Clark's conviction that "the Air Force could not hide a missing interceptor and its crew." He adds the rather puzzling comment that "Whatever Cumber's sighting was about, it cannot have been what he thought it was about." He offers no speculation as to what "it was about," but the inference is that it was a secret military exercise. Perhaps.
These quibbles aside, 'Strange Skies' is a well-written, absorbing book. It is a welcome (and overdue) addition to the annals of ufology.

It seems logical that if your seeking truth about things flying in our skys that you would ask people who fly there and know what kind and shape our Earth craft are. Also when judging distance from the ground or another moving object or speed of some thing encountered people who fly have the basic knowledge to find the answers much more so than some grounded person like me... The book was more than interesting... maybe spell binding. Like a movie .. you see things the second time you look and I'm now going to read the book again... PLEASE READ IT

I enjoyed the book it is well presented and edited. The book does not answer my question but that may not be possible.
Even if you don't believe that UFO's are from another planet it is interesting to see how others react to unexpected encounters with something that should not be there.
As a pilot, who once saw something I could not explain, I was fascinated by the book. If you think that UFO's are something made on this planet read the book it could change your mind, or even convince you that you are correct.
I have no doubt they are real I saw something that was impossible for me to explain. But that doesn't mean they were from another planet or galaxy. If we are making them then we have technology I've never even dreamed of.

As a believer in UFOs, I found this book in the library and thought that it would be a fascinating read about pilot encounters with UFOs. Well, yes and no. Some of the cases presented were truly fascinating and others were ho-hum. It could be due to Clark's writing style. He doesn't really appear to care about what he writes. His style of writing is lackluster and the reading comes across as such.

For example, he will tell the story of such-and-such pilot; this is what he/she saw; the USAF investigated and came to so-and-so conclusions. OK. So what? Other stories, in which he appears to be interested, come across much better and exciting.

Clark gives me the impression of trying to dismiss what he writes, so I wonder why write a book if you don't really believe in the subject matter.

I thought the book would be much more interesting but it just never really takes off for my tastes.

Another first rate book from Jerome Clark. Careful, considered and always entertaining.
What I especially like about this work is the way he takes the old chestnuts--the Arnold story, the Mantell incident ,the Chiles-Whitted encounter and especially the 1952 Washington flap and fleshes them out giving us details of the story in a fresh new way. Kenneth Arnold comes across as an especially appealing character and the way his story is weaved together with the Maury Island hoax is very illuminating.
Someone on this sight criticized Clark's " lackluster" style and I can only think we were not reading the same book as I find his style taut, flexible yet full of the wonder of all this. Clark is an enthusiast but with a critical mind perfect for sorting the wheat from the chaff so different from those dessicated true believers like Menzel and Klass that the HARD scientistic types on this site love to cite for their rigor and objectivity. Those two in particular had biases from before time was and it astonishes me they are still quoted as though they were quiet, rational types. They were total debunkers as Clark points out. But I digress--In this particular book Clark takes quite a lot of the familiar stuff and makes it really come alive and anyone who has really read a lot of the familiar lore before knows how not easy that is
Anyway--rational enthusiasts everywhere--buy this book!

Maybe I was expecting too much, but I was looking for some recent reports from commercial and military pilots that might have been originally suppressed and were recently released to Mr. Clark under the freedom of information act. Instead I got a rehash of older reports, the most recent being around 1986, most, if not all of which I had read about before. Starting long before the Kenneth Arnold sighting on June 4 1947, the book talks mostly about sightings that occurred 40, 50, and 60 years ago. The only surprise was that Mr. Clark on several occasions reported on incidents that were ultimately determined to be a hoax or misidentification of natural phenomena, which he readily acknowledged. I couldn't understand his reason for including them. Similarly he left many apparently good sightings, questioning their validity. I couldn't really tell if Mr. Clark was approaching this as a believer, skeptic, or debunker or whether he was merely relating what he knew. In any case there wasn't anything new presented, any conclusions drawn, and no revelations.

As latest generation of UFO books go I'd give this one a C+. It's a quick study of important cases for anyone new to the subject.