Truly, we should thank the writers of past generations for the fact that they mastered the fantasy genre relatively late and began to gain popularity only by the 30s of our century. If the epics about the invasions of space aliens began to appear fifty years earlier, we would not have avoided massive cases of panic at the sight of solemnly defiling armada of UFOs.
There are many known cases when whole groups of flying objects were observed. In 1104, a large cigar-shaped object was observed in the sky of England, around which several luminous disks circled.
But the behavior of groups of unknown objects looked especially strange, the maneuvers of which gave the impression of a confrontation between them. Here are some examples of such "battles".
In the summer of 1355, many people observed over England the appearance of a large number of objects that glowed with blue and red light. These objects moved across the sky in different directions, and the impression was created that they entered into a mutual struggle. Then the "army" of red objects began to defeat the blue ones, which hastily descended to the ground.
In April 1561, a large number of flying "plates" and "crosses" and two huge cylinders appeared over Nuremberg, from which groups of balls flew out. At the same time, numerous spheres and discs were observed, colored in red, blue and black. All of them staged a kind of air battle in the sky, horrifying the entire population of the city. After an hour, the objects began to descend and fall to the ground, engulfed in fire, exterminating each other.
In August 1566, over Basel, large "inclined pipes" were also observed in the sky, from which balls emerged. At the same time, a large number of black spherical bodies were seen nearby, flying at high speed towards the sun. After a while, they made a half-turn and began to collide with each other, as if depicting a battle. Some of the objects turned fiery red and seemed to “eat each other”.
In the XIX and early XX century. a number of observations of large groups of some unknown objects were recorded, which sometimes flew in formation. For the first time they demonstrated their mass character in September 1820. Then strange, bell-like objects that made a loud noise flew over the French city of Embruny in an even formation. After making a 90-degree turn without breaking the formation, they flew away. The famous astronomer Arigo wrote about this case in the Annals of Chemistry and Physics: “Numerous observers saw strange objects moving in a straight line during a lunar eclipse. They were at equal distances from each other and kept the formation, making turns with military precision."
In September 1851, more than a hundred luminous disks appeared over Hyde Park in London during the World's Fair, which flew up from the east and north, after which they gathered together and flew away. In August 1871, the astronomer Trouvleigh reported a massive appearance over Madonna (Latvia) at high altitude of flying objects with triangular, round and quadrangular shapes and moving at different speeds. One of the objects lost its maneuverability and began to fall, making the movements of the falling leaf.
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In August 1883, Mexican astronomer José Bonilla photographed several groups of round and cigar-shaped objects flying in formation at equal distances from each other and slowly crossing the solar disk from west to east. Each group had 15-20 objects, and Bonilla counted 283 objects in total. The next day, he observed 116 more such objects. In the French journal Astronomy, their distance from the Earth was estimated at about 300 thousand kilometers.
On September 21, 1910, about a million New Yorkers observed hundreds of round luminous objects flying over the city for three hours, as the entire world press wrote about then.
Of particular interest is the phenomenon observed on February 9, 1913 over North America and the western part of the Atlantic Ocean. According to the professor of the University of Toronto Hunt and the Englishman Dening, who summarized hundreds of eyewitness statements, this phenomenon looked like this.
At 21.05 the inhabitants of the central part of Canada observed in the northwestern part of the sky the appearance of a fiery red body with a long tail, followed by approximately 10 "waves" in succession, each of which had 20-40 objects flying in groups of 2, 3, 4 objects. Thus, in total, over 300 luminous objects flew by, the disappearance of which was accompanied by a rumbling sound. The total duration of observation of the entire phenomenon for individual groups of observers was more than 3 minutes.
From a set of observations from 143 points on the American continent and on ships then in the Atlantic Ocean, it was found that these objects flew in a straight trajectory from Saskatchewan through the area of New York and Bermuda to Cape São Rock on the east coast of Brazil.
In astronomical literature, this phenomenon was called "Hunt's fireballs" or "Cyrillid procession", although all its characteristics contradicted the characteristics of the fireballs flight. Suffice it to say that the length of the trajectory of these objects in the atmosphere was over 9000 km, while the greatest recorded flight length of fireballs in near-earth space is only 2400 km. The flight altitude of these objects, according to Hunt, was about 40 km, and according to Hofmeister and Davidson, it was about 70-80 km, and their trajectory was parallel to the earth's surface, while the flight altitude of the fireballs was much higher, and their trajectories, as usually directed at an angle to the Earth's surface ("falling fireballs").
All eyewitnesses of the described phenomenon also noted that the groups of these objects were moving majestically and unhurriedly, their flight speed was 8-10 km / s, while the speed of the fireballs was several tens of km / s, and the duration of observation was only a few seconds. It is also surprising that not a single observation of the fall of these "fireballs" was recorded.
Hunt suggested that these could be groups of small cosmic bodies that flew past the Earth and were captured by it, as a result of which they acquired a circular orbit parallel to the earth's surface. But other scientists, such as Davidson, Hofmeister and Fischer, argued that air resistance would not allow ordinary cosmic bodies to make such a long flight in the atmosphere, because they had to burn up or fall to the ground. A clear explanation of this phenomenon has not been received.
The most surprising thing is that 5 hours after this observation, that is, at 2.30 am, several groups of similar objects again flew along the same trajectory, although the Earth managed to turn 75 degrees during this time. It is also rather strange that the next day (February 10 at 2 pm) Toronto residents observed the passage of 7-8 dark objects, first from west to east, and then from east to west.
Flights of groups of unidentified objects during the period under review were also observed in 1796 in Canada, in 1808 in Sweden, in 1845 in England, in 1849 in Switzerland, in 1877 in France, in 1880 in Germany and in 1895 in Mexico.
Cases when flights of unknown objects led to the destruction of settlements and were accompanied by the death of people deserve separate consideration. It is assumed that the real cause of the "Great Fire" in Chicago on October 8, 1871 was the passage of a huge fireball, which destroyed several settlements on its way. The heat emitted by this ball was so strong that even the marble burned under its influence, and the metal slipway on the river was fused into a monolith. Interestingly, after the balloon flew in the vicinity of Chicago, hundreds of corpses of people were found who died not from fire, but for some unknown reason.
On the same night, such balloons swept over the states of Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Indiana and Illinois, with 1,500 deaths in the city of Green Bay, and 6,000 in Pestigo and Chicago each.
In another case, which took place in 1886 in Maracaibo (Venezuela), under the influence of an unknown oval object hovering near the house, tumors appeared on the bodies of nine residents inside the house, which disappeared the next day, leaving black spots. For nine days, these people did not feel anything, and on the tenth day, the affected areas began to fester, forming open wounds, and people began to lose hair.
At the same time, all the trees near the house dried up, and black spots appeared on them too. All the victims were sent to the hospital and survived.
Authors: Varakin A., Zdanovich L. "UFO SECRETS"