Three white lights over Goose Creek-North Charleston - maybe pursued by USAF fighters?
Conditions – very clear cool night. Moonrise had not occurred yet.
Upon leaving our house (facing east towards Highway 176) to get in the car, I noticed red lights of fast moving aircraft moving roughly north. Living within a few miles of airport – this was not unusual, but they were moving very fast and were fairly low (I would say 500-1000 ft.) above a residential area. They made a fairly tight arcing turn left and back around over Crowfield Lake/swamp to a SSE trajectory and happened to come right over our street. The fighters made a distinctive sound and I would guess they were F-16’s from Shaw AFB in Sumter. Charleston AFB does not have fighters as permanent party residents. The 4 fighters were all less than 2 plane widths apart – definitely not a typical formation over a densely populated area at night. Now really interesting part.
Thinking that that was an unusual flight pattern for a Saturday night my wife and I got in the car and started driving to North Charleston. Just as we were leaving our neighborhood we saw 3 unusual white lights about the height of a cell tower (200 ft or so) over the Goose Creek Reservoir Swamp (between Wannamaker Park and Goose Creek). We saw the lights for about ten seconds, and then they were gone. We drove back around the same way later, and were not able to see the same thing again, so it was not some errant streetlight. So either it was a plane that crashed into the swamp or something else. There were no blinking white or red lights, no anti-collision lights, just three very bright white lights (almost life bright streetlights) 200 feet over a place where there are no streets.
It is now 2152 as of this writing and a family member also claims to have seen a strangely flying white light from the Isle of Palms connector looking toward the big dipper. Apparently this light was moving erratically (fast then slow then fast then slow again) for about 45 seconds. Apparently then they disappeared - I will try to pick more details out later.
Conditions – very clear cool night. Moonrise had not occurred yet.
Upon leaving our house (facing east towards Highway 176) to get in the car, I noticed red lights of fast moving aircraft moving roughly north. Living within a few miles of airport – this was not unusual, but they were moving very fast and were fairly low (I would say 500-1000 ft.) above a residential area. They made a fairly tight arcing turn left and back around over Crowfield Lake/swamp to a SSE trajectory and happened to come right over our street. The fighters made a distinctive sound and I would guess they were F-16’s from Shaw AFB in Sumter. Charleston AFB does not have fighters as permanent party residents. The 4 fighters were all less than 2 plane widths apart – definitely not a typical formation over a densely populated area at night. Now really interesting part.
Thinking that that was an unusual flight pattern for a Saturday night my wife and I got in the car and started driving to North Charleston. Just as we were leaving our neighborhood we saw 3 unusual white lights about the height of a cell tower (200 ft or so) over the Goose Creek Reservoir Swamp (between Wannamaker Park and Goose Creek). We saw the lights for about ten seconds, and then they were gone. We drove back around the same way later, and were not able to see the same thing again, so it was not some errant streetlight. So either it was a plane that crashed into the swamp or something else. There were no blinking white or red lights, no anti-collision lights, just three very bright white lights (almost life bright streetlights) 200 feet over a place where there are no streets.
It is now 2152 as of this writing and a family member also claims to have seen a strangely flying white light from the Isle of Palms connector looking toward the big dipper. Apparently this light was moving erratically (fast then slow then fast then slow again) for about 45 seconds. Apparently then they disappeared - I will try to pick more details out later.
No
Yes
No
No
No
No
No
Off
No
No
Yes
No
No
No
No
Goose Creek
USA
1-2 minutes
1-2 minutes
33.06
-80.01
light
SC
Occurred : 2/23/2008 20:20 (Entered as : 02/23/08 20:20) Reported: 2/23/2008 7:03:11 PM 19:03 Posted: 3/4/2008 Location: Goose Creek, SC Shape: Light Duration: 1-2 minutes Characteristics: There were lights on the object, There were aircraft in the vicinity or aircraft chasing the object
Three white lights over Goose Creek-North Charleston - maybe pursued by USAF fighters?