Another Place Episode 28

Another Place Another Time

Book Two

Ben Cavanaugh

Episode Twenty-Eight

Having been the commander of the Greyhounds for almost thirty years I know the personnel and the installations of all military and most civilian airports in the southeast. That includes NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), headquartered in Huntsville, Alabama and the FAA Flight Service Stations in Nashville, Atlanta, Birmingham, and New Orleans.

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Nashville Flight Service Station is one of fifty-eight flight service stations in the contiguous forty-eight states of the United States. The heart of the Nashville Flight Service Center is a large, dark, room, in a single story, concrete block building that crouches in an obscure corner just inside the perimeter fence of Nashville International Airport. The control center is a large, featureless room, lit mainly by the green glow of many radar screens. It houses the air traffic controllers who direct air traffic over the area known as Nashville Air.

A year ago, on a quiet Sunday evening, the room was as relaxed as it could ever be. The decrease in the normal stress level was in direct proportion to Sunday’s lower number of scheduled flights. On this particular Sunday afternoon, the traffic was even lighter than usual because severe thunderstorms blanketed the area, discouraging many general aviation flights. The controllers were handling only a few scheduled airliners, which were flying above the storm cells that blanketed the area. However, in the life of air traffic controllers, relaxation is tenuous at best, and in an instant, it disappeared for them all.

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Jim Geeson, a senior controller, suddenly shouted, “My God! What is that?” His training and years of experience quickly overrode his panic and confusion. He keyed his radio transmitter and calmly said:

“Delta 421, turn right to heading 065, you have an unidentified aircraft descending on top of you from…from…69,000 feet. TURN NOW CAPTAIN!”

The Delta Captain complied without hesitation, and then asked, “Nashville Air, did you say from 69,000 feet?”

“That is correct, Captain. We are trying to contact the aircraft. You are clear now. Maintain your present heading and report any visual contact with the aircraft.”

Alerted by Geeson’s first exclamation, Richard Temple, Shift Supervisor, moved to the empty position next to the controller, and was calling the unidentified aircraft on every published military and civilian frequency. There was no response.

Geeson watched as the unidentified aircraft moved rapidly through 50,000 then 40,000 feet. Though it was losing altitude at an alarming rate, both Geeson and Temple knew, from its subtle heading changes, that it was an aircraft and not a meteor or satellite falling out of orbit.

On his radar screen, Geeson saw the aircraft descend through 35,000 feet when Delta 421 radioed, “Nashville Air, Delta 421, the aircraft just passed off our nose at two o’clock. We still have it in sight. I’ve never seen a plane like it. The nearest I know of would be the space shuttle, except this one has no windscreen or windows, and it has hundreds, check that, thousands of lights that are flashing erratically like it’s experiencing a power failure.”

Geeson turned to Temple, “Richard, I think it’s time to call NASA. Either we have one of their birds, and it’s in trouble; or we have a UFO. In either case, they are the investigating agency.”

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