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By Joe Garner | The Garner Report
In 1976, two Iranian fighter crews pursued a brilliant object. Their reported equipment failures make this more than an ordinary light in the sky.
Just after midnight on September 19, 1976, residents of Tehran’s Shemiran district began calling about a strange light overhead. An officer first suspected stars. Then he looked for himself and ordered an F-4 fighter jet into the air.
That is where this story stops sounding like a routine sighting.
Two Jets, One Uninvited Visitor
According to a U.S. military report, the first F-4 approached the bright object and lost its instruments and radio communications. The pilot broke off the pursuit. As the jet turned away, its systems came back.
A second F-4 went up minutes later. This crew reported a radar lock on the object, while the visual sighting remained difficult to judge through its intense light. The report describes rapidly flashing blue, green, red, and orange lights. Then, the crew said, a smaller bright object appeared to emerge from the larger one and headed toward their jet. The pilot attempted to fire a missile. At that moment, the report says, the weapons control panel and communications failed. He turned away.
Later, the crew watched another light apparently descend toward the ground. A daylight search found nothing obvious at the suspected landing spot. People in a nearby house reported hearing a loud noise and seeing a bright flash, but the report does not establish what caused either one.
Tehran, Iran
What Do We Make of It?
A document records what witnesses and crews reported; it cannot, by itself, tell us what flew over Tehran. The electrical failures could have another explanation. The lights could have been misread. I keep coming back to the sequence, though: residents called, two jets were sent, a radar contact was reported, and the crews described trouble with their equipment during the encounters.
To me, this looks less like a mistaken star and more like an encounter with something the pilots could not identify. Was it technology from somewhere beyond Earth? I cannot prove that. But if I had been in the second cockpit that night, I doubt I would have called it ordinary.
What do you think was over Tehran? You be the judge.
Former Imperial Iranian Air Force pilot discussed his 1976 UFO sighting in detail.
