The 1976 Tehran UFO Incident: What Happened to the F-4s?
Two Iranian F-4 jets chased a bright light over Tehran in 1976. A US military account says one lost its instruments and the other its weapons panel.
On September 19, 1976, two Iranian F-4 jets chased a bright light over Tehran. A declassified US military account says one jet lost its instruments and the other its weapons panel. A skeptic argued the light was probably Jupiter.
In the early hours of September 19, 1976, the Imperial Iranian Air Force sent two F-4 Phantom interceptors after a bright object over Tehran. The event reached US military channels. A later account, "Now You See It, Now You Don't" by Captain Henry S. Shields of HQ USAFE, is posted in the National Security Agency's declassified UFO documents. It begins: "Until 0030 on a clear autumn morning, it had been an entirely routine night watch for the Imperial Iranian Air Force's command post—the Tehran area."
The account describes what happened as the first jet got close: "When approximately 25 NM distant, the interceptor lost all instrumentation and UHF/Intercom communications." To the second crew, the object "resembled flashing strobe lights arranged in a rectangular pattern and alternating blue, green, red, and orange." Then "A second brightly-lit object (about one-half to one-third the size of the moon) detached from the original UFO and headed straight for the F-4 at high speed." The pilot "attempted to fire an AIM-9 missile at the new object but was prevented by a sudden power loss in his weapons control panel."
The account goes on to describe another object that "detached and headed downward, passing toward the ground at high speed," then seemed to land gently and light up an area two to three kilometers across. A Defense Intelligence Agency evaluation called the case "outstanding" and "a classic that meets all the criteria for a ufological study." The records were released through Freedom of Information Act requests. Shields ended his article on a note of resignation: "No additional information or explanation of the strange events has been forthcoming; the story will be filed away and probably forgotten."
According to the US account, the pilot tried to fire an AIM-9 missile at an object heading toward him, but his weapons control panel suddenly lost power.
Journalist Philip J. Klass argued that the crews first saw a bright astronomical body, probably Jupiter. He put the equipment failures down to malfunction and pilot error, noting that one of the F-4s had "a long history of electrical outages."
