The first release was by the news agency Than Hnien News, Vietnam, May 28, 2008 [1]. It said that an unidentified flying object crashed on Phu Quoc island on May 27, 2008. Residents in the thinly populated area north of the island said they heard explosions in the sky about 11 p.m., and then saw a black object plunge to ground, leaving a white trail of smoke behind.
From the debris, authorities suspected it to be an airplane, but in the absence of markings on the debris, and no remains of passengers, no sign of persons piloting the object, no firm conclusions was made.
Island authorities confirmed they found six pieces of metal, some with screws on them, the biggest being about 1.5 meters long.
Truong Quoc Tuan, the Kien Giang Province Party Committee chief, said the explosion occurred in airspace used for international flights. He said officials asked airlines in Vietnam and nearby countries, but no plane crash report had been reported as of May 27, 2008 in the night.
The island's militia started searching for possible human victims and for more debris to identify the object and find out the cause of the explosion.
Iranian.ws published an interesting report [2] with details unfound in other reports: The Vietnamese officials said that they suspected it could be either a military plane or a civilian plane but not a flying saucer.
The explosion occurred on the 27th "in the morning" above Cua Can commune on Phu Quoc; Ngang Van Truyen, chairman of that commune, said it was a huge explosion, at first thought to be the thunder, but then a 100-meter-long smoke trail was seen in the sky and they knew that it was the explosion of a flying object.
Truyen added that people in his commune found six pieces of aluminum-like metal painted yellow-green on one side. The largest piece is more than one meter long and 50 centimeters wide. However, no markings or letters are found on the pieces.
A second release was published by Than Hnien News, and AFP, [3] from Vietnam, May 29, 2008.
Additional details are that the residents saw the object burning in the sky, north of Phu Quoc Island, near Cambodian territory.
The interpretation is that nobody knows what it was, that it was possibly a plane. The island district's military chief Colonel Nguyen Van Qui was quoted as saying on May 28 that "an unidentified flying object exploded at about 10 a.m. on May 27 over the northern part of Phu Quoc Island."
An official in Cambodia reported 2 days earlier that a small plane had crashed in its southern Kampot province, but retracted the comments later. Cambodia's civil aviation authority said that airlines denied missing any planes and there was no trace of any crash. Keo Sivorn, chief of flight operations at Cambodia's civil aviation body, said no plane had crashed. Kampot's deputy police chief said villagers reported hearing a "loud explosion" but that all authorities had been able to find was one small piece of metal in the jungle near the coast.
[Note: The Vietnamese island of Phu Quoc is indeed right offshore and within sight of the Kampot province in Cambodia, this is why official Canbodian comment are related to the incident.]
Airlines in Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand were asked for missing planes on the 27th but "did not receive immediate news of any missing aircraft".
Dinh Khoa Toan, deputy chairman of the island's People's Committee, said he informed the Ministry of Defense and expected the ministry will send some experts to clarify whether the metal came from a crashed plane. He added that several metal pieces were recovered in various parts of the island.
One piece of metal measures one meter by about 60 centimeters. A soldier named Tuan, said they had received seven metal pieces that were over one meter long from local people. The soldier said that responsible agencies were contacted and no Vietnamese planes, civil or military, were flying there at that time. He said experts an facilities on the Island are not sufficient to tell now whether these metal parts came from a plane.
The Reuter news agency picked up on the story [4].
Reuter said that the Vietnam News Agency (VNA) report said the explosion happened at about 8 km above the ground, and perhaps it was a plane, but authorities could not identify whether it was a civil or military aircraft.
Reuter adds that it was maybe a military aircraft taking part in a secret mission that exploded but "its country of origin has not claimed it."
Pictures of pieces picked up in Cambodia were published:
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U-K tabloid The Sun puts out its sensational version of the story [5], claiming that "The unidentified flying object is NOT believed to be a plane as none have been reported missing in the area."
The article clearly promotes that "UFO" does not mean any unidentified flying object such as a plane, but an alien spaceship:
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The article offers no new information and nothing to support that it was an alien spaceship, except for insisting no plane were reported missing in nearby countries.
The article then goes on about a chap who snapped pictures in Birmingham of "three disc-shaped objects shooting through the skies" without seeing anything before he looked at his pictures on the PC. The Sun claims about that that "British UFO experts claim to have found fresh evidence of alien spacecraft flying over BIRMINGHAM." Pictures of birds, etc. that the photographer of course did not see when he snapped the pictures are regularly presented as "true UFOs" according to "experts" in this type of newspapers!
Journalist Tien Trinh reports via Than Hnien News [6].
Lam Quang Chanh, the provincial People's Committee's spokesman, told the agency that metal pieces had rained down in Ganh Dau and Cua Can communes on Phu Quoc.
The Military Command of Phu Quoc District said militias and residents had recovered 14 metal pieces allegedly deposited on the island from the explosion.
Rumors in Phu Quoc also suggest that some individuals have retrieved "dollars" or "very cold" metal pieces following "the UFO's explosion."
The Kien Giang police deputy chief told the agency that anyone found guilty of spreading rumors from the incident that would negatively affect security on the island would be dealt with according to law, but that the security on Phu Quoc Island has been stable thus far.
The report published one picture of recovered parts:
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The Cambodge Soir Info website provides a balanced summary of the event [7], and indicates:
"According to the Kampuchean press, the authorities of Kampot, who had sent men to investigate as soon as Tuesday, are suspecting it was the explosion of a drone."
"India Daily" is a website that looks like some news agency or major newspaper web site, but is really a small enterprise with a US administrative address operated by who knows who. Over the last years, they have been publishing dozens of articles with claims about UFOs and aliens verging on the most ridiculous ever, with fortunately little success in the ufology community.
They write about the incident [8] that what crashed is a "UFO made of biochemical derivatives" that "carries no extraterrestrial life but transmits information about earth and its habitat." It is the drone of the advanced extraterrestrial civilization, they claim.
These "advanced drones" ... "mimic intelligent life with the ability to be in mission for thousands of light years, fix its own problems and eventually reproduce to move on. The biochemical nature of the materials resembles the life in earth. But in reality it is itself an advanced life form unidentifiable by our terrestrial type zero science and technologies."
Certainly not afraid of the ridicule, the authors comment about the found debris that "biochemical UFOs do not leave trace of any nature. Because of their nature and power to bio-disintegrate fast, they do not leave any trace. They travel through wormholes bending space and time. They go across universes through the Hyperspace. They can defy the basic laws of quantum physics. They are propelled by gravity waves. They have the stealth of electromagnetic flux. They are navigated and controlled from parallel universes."
June 5, 2008.
It is quite obvious that the debris are those of some aircraft from our world. If this came from another planet, then the expression "nuts and bolts UFO" would definitely gain some weight!
Sensation tabloid The Sun takes advantage that no missing planes were reported. But what it meant is that from the three nearby countries, no airliners was missing. It does not exclude planes from other countries, it does not ecxlude small planes. Just looking at the few debris pictures and their indicates that it was certainly not a very big plane.
True, there is some mystery on the plane's nature. Where's the pilot?
So, is it possible that the plane was actually some US drone, such as the Predator, possibly lost out of control, and destructed willingly when this happened, to prevent the electronics to fall in unwanted hands? One of the pieces could be its rudder. The absence of markings, the absence of pilot or evidence that it was manned could be evidence of a spy drone. On the other end, maybe more parts will be found, and it'll turn out to be some other plane.
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Left: Another of the recovered debris. Possibly a piece of wing with the attach of a weapon system pod. |
Now, what I expect is that the media will not report anything more simply because the "news" is not "news" anymore. Some UFO-sensation websites will claim it must have been from another planet. And that will be it. If ever the information comes out about what kind of plane it was exactly, the media will not report about it, because it will not be interesting anymore. And conspirationists will argue that once again the Truth on the Aliens was covered up.
To be continued... maybe!
