1997-12-01 - San Jose, CA - Triangle

Summary : It was a clear starlit night when I noticed an object in the south-eastern sky. At a distance I assumed it was an airplane on the flight path to the international airport in the north-west. When it got close, only five lights were visible in an enormous triangular configuration. Three lights were large, bright white, unblinking, and made a smaller triangle at the forward point of the object, the other two lights were dim, white, unblinking, and at the other two corners of the larger triangle. It was 3 or 4 times the size of a passenger jet, and under 2000 feet, but no engine noise could be heard.

Monday, December 1, 1997 At about 9:45PM tonight I was driving southward on the Monterey Highway when I noticed what was either an experimental air craft or else I’ve had a sighting of one of the new triangular ufos. I initially thought I was observing the bright landing lights of a couple of incoming commercial jet liners, since they were in the usual flight path for San Jose International Airport from the southeast toward the northwest. However, when I was stopped at the signal near the Edenvale shopping center on the approach to the Blossom Hill underpass, I was able to clearly see something which was not a plane with which I am familiar. I wondered if it might have been some kind of stealth plane, because I could not make out the body of the plane against the night sky. All I could see was five lights. Three lights were very bright, they were larger than normal running lights, and they were arranged in a tight equilateral triangle on the bottom of what I thought may be a plane’s fuselage (the triangle was about the size of a silver dollar at arms length). But, if it is a conventional or experimental airplane, the fuselage is two or three times as wide as most commercial jets. There were also two small white lights placed where I imagined the wingtips were located aft of the triangle, (from the triangle to a “wingtip” was about the span of a 5 inch ruler held at arms length, or it was between 11 and 12 inches from tip to tip) but once again, they indicated a much wider wing span than is typical. Looking for a place to park and observe the craft, I rolled down the window and turned off the radio to see if I could hear the engine, but I could not. It may have been too high, although its unusually large size indicated it was low enough to hear (perhaps a couple thousand feet above the highway). If it was too high to hear, then its dimensions had to be too enormous to contemplate. I proceeded onto the cloverleaf and emerged slowly onto the eastbound side of Blossom Hill so I could look toward the craft’s flight path, but it was long gone. Never-the-less, off in the distance, on the same path were some large red lights which I assumed were probably the tail lights of the same air craft, primarily because they also were much larger than the running lights of most planes. I also watched other planes to make a comparison. As expected, I was able to clearly see the bodies of the other planes. I also found that their lights were not configured like those of this large craft, nor were the lights as bright, or as large. Furthermore, there were the usual flashing lights on the airplanes, but all the lights of the other craft were steady and unblinking.