Oberth – Dr Hermann.  “Oberth was even more prominent than William Lear in the history of aviation and aeronautics.  He is generally considered to be the most brilliant and visionary of the three pioneers of modern rocketry (along with American Robert Goddard and Russian Konstantin Tsiolkovsky).  In 1922, Oberth’s doctoral thesis on rocketry was rejected.  A year later, he earned worlwide acclaim when he published it as Die Rakete zu den Planetenraumen (The Rocket into Planetary Space), followed by a longer version in 1929.  Oberth argued that it was feasible for rockets to be “built so powerfully that they could be capable of carrying a man aloft,” even above the Earth’s atmosphere.  This book provided much of the mathematical foundation for space travel.  During the 1930s, Oberth took on the young Wernher von Braun as an assistant in his rocketry research, and during the war assisted von Braun on the V-2 rocket.  During the 1950s Oberth designed anti-aircraft missiles for the Italian navy.  Around 1953 or 1954, according to Frank Edwards, the West German government hired him to head a commission studying UFOs…[his statement on this in 1954 stated] “conceived and directed by intelligent beings of a very high order.  They probably do not originate in our solar system, perhaps not even in our galaxy.” Like William Lear, Townsend Brown, and Wilbert Smith, Oberth decided that UFOs were “propelled by distorting the gravitational field, converting gravity into useable energy.” [He explained his electromagnetic propulsion theory to Donald Keyhoe]…[he was] hired in July 1955, under a Paperclip contract, to work for the army in Huntsville, Alabama, where he joined much of the old Peenemunde crew….Oberth worked on “a number of complex projects” dealing with “advanced space studies,” mostly classified secret”.” (Dolan (2002) p. 176)   In American Weekly (“Flying Saucers Come From a Distant World” October 24, 1954) he said “It’s my thesis that flying saucers are real and that they are spaceships from another solar system.  I think that they possibly are manned by intelligent observers who are members of a race that may have been investigating our earth for centuries.  I think that they possibly have been sent out to conduct systematic, long-range investigations, first of men, animals, vegetation, and more recently of atomic centers, armaments, and centers of armament production…We cannot take the credit for our record advancement in certain scientific fields alone.  We have been helped [by] the people of other worlds.”  He went on to write Man Into Space (1957).

Ocala – The US Navy has an Electronic Warfare Range Tracking Station at Pinecastle, near Ocala, Florida (32 miles east-southeast of Ocala to be exact) which was the location of an incident on Sunday May 14th, 1978, in the late evening.  A civilian female called the base at 10.05pm from Silver Glen springs.  She spoke to the duty officer, SK-1 Robert J. Clark to enquire whether flares were being released, but he assured her they weren’t.  The next call Clark got was from Rocky Morgan who said that “he and seven other persons traveling on Highway 19 near Silver Glen Springs had just seen an oblong-shaped flying object, some 50 to 60 feet in diameter and “almost the color of the moon,” pass over the top of his car.  It had a flashing light that was intensely bright at its centre.” (Clark (1998) p. 423).  As there were no known commercial or military flights in that air space, the base air controller climbed an observation tower and joined other personnel already watching a cluster of glowing lights, apparently atttached to one object which was silently hovering over an old Civil Defense tower three miles away.  They switched the radar on but it took twenty minutes to prepare.  At 11.20pm the acquisition radar told them the object was the size of a jetliner and between 50 to 100 feet above ground level at 0.2 degrees elevation.  Between ten to fifteen minutes after this the object disappeared from radar and visual contact but reappeared at 11.40pm 15 degrees to the north, but only visually to TD-2 Timothy Collins, the radar technician who could not get it with the acquisition radar the second time.  A few minutes later it was gone again, reappearing at midnight three miles to the northwest, apparently being the same object though they are not sure, as it remains unknown.  “For five seconds it moved at more than 500 knots on a course, then accelerated for two seconds, and executed a hairpin turn in one second.  When it made that turn, it was 15 miles south of the base – which meant it had covered 15 miles in seven seconds; most of that distance was covered in the last two seconds.  The turn was a radical reversal of direction” (Clark (1998) p. 424)  The turn took the object straight toward the observers and Collins the technician. It had slowed to only two knots so that Collins could radar lock it.  After just over a minute it was gone.  TD-AA Carol Snyder from the Pinecastle base reported to the media: “We saw three very blurry lights – red, white and green.  We watched them for about 30 minutes.  We couldn’t see how fast they were  traveling.  We were holding the binoculars, and the lights appeared to be bouncing.” (ibid p. 424)

Oliveira – Joao Adil.  Brazilian Air Force Chief and Brigadier General of the General Staff Information Service, who stated in 1954 to the Army War College: “The problem of flying discs has polarized the attention of the whole world, but it’s serious and deserves to be treated seriously.  Almost all the governments of the great powers are interested in it, dealing with it in a serious and confidential manner, due to its military interest.” [then they unleashed the Chupacabras on him for speaking out!].  He also said in the Brazilian media (O Globo): “It is impossible to deny any more the existence of flying saucers at the present time.  The flying saucer is not a ghost from another dimension or a mysterious dragon.  It is a fact confirmed by material evidence.  There are thousands of documents, photos, and sighting reports demonstrating its existence.” (Quoted in Birnes (2004) p. 238-239).