2005-02-22 - Eugene, OR - Unknown

Unidentified government craft over Eugene?

I was driving home at about 9:30 PM on 22 February 2005, and I was only a minute or two away from being home. I saw in the medium distance, maybe a mile away at most, what looked like two streetlights in the northeast, only higher up in the air. Two amber-ish/off white colored lights. They didn't seem to be moving very fast, and I was trying to keep my eye on them off and on while I was driving. I didn't think much of it, because they could be helicopters or some kind of normal aircraft, so I was just mildly curious. I drove into my driveway and got out of the car and waited to see if I could see the lights again. At this point they were obscured by some taller trees in our neighborhood. Eventually one came over our neighborhood- not directly overhead but nearly- and I got a pretty decent look at it. Let me say first that there was not anything other-worldly about this, it followed the "rules" and physics a normal kind of aircraft would, but at the same time it didn't match up with anything I've seen or heard before. It flew at the approximate altitude and speed I would expect a helicopter to fly at, not very fast, but not unusually slow either. In any case, it was not at the altitude of a commercial airliner. The prominent, constant bright light on the craft obscured my vision of the actual shape/texture of the craft, being that it was night. If it had wings, there were no lights on them. On what I interpreted to be the side of the craft, there were small lights with a repeating pattern, very similar to what I've seen before on registered aircraft. I believe one was red, the others might have been white or blue. I don't remember how many of these smaller lights there were. No more than three. I believe the pattern was two-step in that one pattern flashed followed by a slightly different pattern, and then the entire sequence repeated. The entire sequence didn't take longer than two seconds to complete. Again, it was much like the patterns I've seen before.

Now, the only thing that did not cause me to dismiss this as a helicopter was the sound. There was no loud, rotary sound. It sounded very much like the sound of a distant commercial airliner, the kind of low-frequency-air-jet kind of sound, only very subdued. It wasn't nearly as loud as I would expect for an aircraft flying at the altitude of this craft. Hearing this kind of sound with a low-flying, slow-flying craft did not make any sense in my mind. Again, the sound itself was not particularly unusual, but in the context of what I was seeing, it seemed very unusual. The craft progressed toward the southwest, toward our downtown. And the second craft followed in a similar direction about 20-30 seconds later. As far as I could tell, the craft were identical, and they flew at the same altitude and speed. The entire sighting from the time I first saw the two lights in the medium distance to the time they were out of my sight was probably no more than four minutes. Possibly a little less.

To follow-up the sighting I called one of our local TV stations about an hour later, and they had received no calls about odd aircraft. The next day, Wednesday, I called the air traffic controller tower at the Eugene Airport, and the representative there said she was not aware of any government or military aircraft flying over Eugene the night before. My best guess is that these were military craft, but they resembled nothing I have seen in the past.