PHOENIX LIGHTS

Opening

On 13 March 1997 Arizona had two separate light events that the public filed as one name. Early evening, a V or chevron of lights moved from the northwest down the state, seen from Henderson through Prescott into Phoenix and on toward Tucson. After 22:00 a row of lights hung and dropped south of the city and was filmed from streets and yards.

The Air National Guard later put A-10s from the Maryland unit on a training drop of LUU-2 flares over the Barry M. Goldwater Range for the late row. That explanation is specific and timed. It does not automatically swallow the earlier V, which witnesses described as a single dark mass with lights along an edge, low and silent.

The spine of the file is the split night. Phoenix Lights is a brand. The paper is two clocks. Mix them and the flares win an argument they were not asked to fight.

Timeline

13 March 1997, about 19:30 to 20:45. Calls and later statements put a line of lights, often five or seven, in a V, moving southeast. Some witnesses, including pilots and later the governor in a different year, describe structure between the lights. Others see only orbs. The formation crosses a lot of ground without the noise a low jet package that size should make if it is a package of ordinary aircraft at the heights people claimed.

After 22:00. A second, more photographed event: lights in a row over the Estrella direction, hanging, then dropping and dying in a way that matches flares falling behind a mountain. This is the footage that television prefers. It is also the footage the Guard can own.

March into June 1997. Mayor and press ask the Air Force. Luke and the Guard point at Operation Snowbird and the flare drop. On 19 June Governor Fife Symington stages a press joke with an aide in an alien suit. That joke is 1997 public paper. His later statement that he saw an otherworldly craft is 2007 public paper. Keep those years apart.

No radar package released in 1997 closes the early V as a single known flight plan visible to the whole valley. The late row has a unit and a munition type.

Key figures

The mass of valley witnesses are the first layer for the early event. They do not share one sketch. They share a time and a direction. Some are pilots. That does not make them unanimous about a hull.

The Maryland Air National Guard A-10 crews are the official actors for the late lights. Flares on a range at that hour are ordinary training. They are a poor fit for a 20:00 chevron over central Phoenix if the times are not collapsed.

Fife Symington is two men in this file. The 1997 governor who mocks the story, and the 2007 former governor who says he saw the thing and that it felt otherworldly. The second man is later life.

Mike Fortier, Lynne Kitei, and other named valley voices keep the early event alive as structure rather than orbs. Their photographs and times are part of the split. They are not a hangar inventory.

Physical and documentary trail

On the paper, 13 March 1997 gives you four hard objects and two clocks.

One: the early-evening mass sighting along a northwest-to-southeast track, logged in calls and later interviews. Direction and time are the strongest shared facts.

Two: video and stills of the late row south of Phoenix after 22:00. The drop-and-die behaviour is the exhibit the flare reading uses. Those frames are real. Their identification is the fight.

Three: the Air National Guard account of A-10s dropping LUU-2 illumination flares on the Goldwater Range as part of a Snowbird detachment. Unit, munition, and approximate hour exist on the official side.

Four: the 19 June 1997 press conference in which Symington jokes the matter closed. Arizona press coverage of Governor Symington's 19 June 1997 briefing is 1997 paper. His CNN and interview language from 2007 is not.

There is no released 1997 radar track that all parties accept as the V. There is no wreckage. There is no flight plan that the early witnesses will accept as their object.

This just goes to show that you guys are entirely too serious.

Competing explanations

One craft, two views. This reading welds the V and the late row into a single visitor. It has to survive the flare timing for the second event. Many who were outdoors at 20:00 never saw the 22:00 row, and the reverse is also true.

Flares for everything. This is the official convenience. It is a good fit for the late drop. It is a worse fit for a silent V crossing the metro area two hours earlier, unless those lights were aircraft in a formation people read as a single wing.

Aircraft formation plus flares. Two mundane events, one brand name. Planes or helicopters for the early lights, A-10 flares for the late. This is the most economical split. It still has to live with pilots who say they have seen formations and this was not one.

Hybrid caution. The late row has a unit. The early V has a crowd and no agreed tail number. Those are different strengths of paper.

Later life of the case

Anniversaries, documentaries, and Symington's 2007 reversal keep the brand hotter than the clocks. Kitei's work treats the lights as a continuing presence. Skeptical reconstructions keep the A-10s on the second event and try to pull the first event onto ordinary traffic.

I keep the 2007 otherworldly interviews and the later orb theology on the later-life shelf. I do not treat them as incoming 13 March field notes. The two hours stay first.

Finding

The valley saw it. An early V of lights moved from the northwest down across Phoenix, silent and huge in the mouths of people who had no club to join, and a later row hung south of the city and died in a way flares can own. Believe the first hour as the people standing outside told it. Two clocks got forced under one name. Only one of those clocks has a unit attached.

What still will not resolve: a flight plan or a radar track that accounts for the early chevron as a single known machine. Flares can finish the late drop. A named package for the V, or a clear structured photograph from 20:00, is what would stop the argument that the whole night was training munitions.