The Army Tank That Came Down in a Beam of Light

An Unidentified Everyday Object

Back on February 25 I shared a post about Unidentified Everyday Objects, encounters people have had with ordinary objects, such as cars, planes, and in this article, military tanks. Thanks to researcher John Wenz, he’s pointed me to another fascinating case of an Everyday Object that comes from Nebraska.

Before we continue, it’s important to note that sometimes it takes a village to write a post like this. Special thanks are in order to bpleasies and Scott Philbrook from The Astonishing Legends podcast for helping to nail down the “who” at the heart of it all.

The case involves witness who “…is a prominent, highly respected business man whose name is familiar to nearly everyone in the Los Angeles area.” The article goes on, “As the owner and president of a large firm, he is an extremely busy executive who has had neither the time nor the inclination to become familiarized with UFO phenomena.”

If your UFO themed spidey-senses are tingling right now like mine are… Who is this guy?! Here’s what we know: his first name is Bob, he’s a business executive from Los Angeles. His family has owned property in the Cedar County, Nebraska area since 1880, and he was intimately familiar with the towns in the county. Through collaboration, we’ve been able to figure out who the witness is, but for now, he is simply Bob.

On the evening of September 14, 1978, Bob concluded some business in Washington D.C. He boarded a plane to Sioux City, Iowa where he rented a 1978 Chevette headed to Randolph, Nebraska where a meeting was scheduled to take place the next morning.

After a brief stop in Laurel, Nebraska for a cup of coffee, he continued on Interstate 20, putting the small town of Belden into his rearview. Several miles later he was startled by a bright column of light projected onto the road by an object in the sky. Stopping his car 20 yards away, he watched an object descending toward the road. What he thought at first was a meteor, then a helicopter, became something even stranger.

The object, which resembled army tank, landed partially on the road, and partially on the shoulder. “It appeared to have treads but he did not see them move. It also appeared to have turrets (but no guns) and perhaps a standard camouflage paint scheme. Some light was still being by the object but he heard no sound.”

Bob stepped out of his car. In response a door in the side of the object opened up and a man stepped out. “…the man appeared to be a normal human in every respect — dark haired, of normal size, and wearing white duck pants and a white shirt. The man then spoke to the witness, addressing him by his first name: ‘Well, Bob — what do you think of this?’”

The man did not wait for Bob’s response, reentered their army tank, closed the door, and ascended to the heavens on the beam of light. Bob was forced to shield his eyes as he watched the object climb upward. He noted that the “tank” was accompanied by a high-pitched whine when it ascended upward.

“He does not remeber [sic] getting back into the car, but the next thing he recalls is that he was back in the car and was driving down the road. An object — perhaps the same one — was following him closely, beaming a light through the rear window with such intensity that the interior of the car was as bright as daylight…”

It took a few moments, but Bob came to the realization that he was not on Interstate 20 anymore. He found himself on Route 15 near the town of Hartington, 12 to 15 miles north of where his encounter took place. Bob slammed on the gas, frightened as ever, knowing that he would intersect with Interstate 20 again. He tried to outrun the object chasing him. He pushed his rented Chevette up to 95 mph, and when he approached the spot where his initial sighting had taken place, the object stopped it’s pursuit, and sped away.

Bob arrived in Randolph at around 11:00 PM and immediately phoned the Sioux City police department who recommended reporting his sighting to Phenomena Research, a UFO organization out of Seattle. The case was eventually investigated by The Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO).

Our witness attempted to track down other witnesses that may have seen the object, but failed to uncover any, except for one man who’d seen a UFO in the area a year prior.

When it comes to the identity of the witness, the Bob in question is Robert Stewart “Bob” Estes.¹ Born in Santa Monica, California, on September 21, 1913, Estes was an auto racing owner/sponsor in southern California, and a businessman by trade, first opening the Bob Estes Lincoln-Mercury dealership in Inglewood, California in 1946, following his service in World War II, and opening additional dealerships through the years. We discovered Bob’s identity through another Bob, coincidentally. Estes reported his sighting to Bob Gribble at the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC). Here is the audio of that call.

Bob’s case is reminiscent of Eddie Laxson’s.

On March 23 veteran pilot and electronics instructor Eddie Laxson was making the trip from his home in Temple, Oklahoma to Sheppard Air Force Base in Texas. He’d been an electronics instructor since 1951, and had also logged over 8,000 hours of flight time throughout his life.

As he turned on to U.S. Highway 70 in the direction of Randlett, he passed a farmhouse on his left, and was forced to stop the car. Blocking the entire road was a 75 foot long craft of some kind. It resembled the body of a plane, but had no wings, propellers, external engines or anything that conventional aircraft did. He described it, saying it looked like a “conventional C-124 aircraft without wings or motors.”

In terms of being the perfect eyewitness, Eddie Laxson was that. He had taught a class on aircraft identification at the University of Arkansas in 1942 for WWII soldiers, so to say he was familiar with all sorts of aircraft is an understatement. Eddie got out of the car and ran towards the the wingless craft. Standing next to it was an ordinary looking man, approximately 30 years old, dressed in a green Air Force style fatigue uniform, a baseball cap and he was even able to see chevrons on his sleeves.

On the hull of the craft, Eddie noticed that the vehicle had identifying marks on it. The insignia read, either, TL 4138 or TL 4738. He quickly jotted the insignia down, the strange man reentered his ship, and the object lifted 50 feet into the air, and accelerated away at roughly 720 mph, making a sound similar to a high-pitched electric drill, and creating a magnetic effect that made the hair on Eddie’s arm stand on end.

Another intriguing close encounter case would occur in the evening. “Police received a report from 23-year-old John King of Bangor, who claimed he had seen an orange colored, low-flying object with a blue light on one end and a white one on the other in a field near the Bangor State Hospital. He took a few shots at it. His story:

He was driving on Mt. Hope Avenue when he noticed lights in the field near the Bangor State Hospital. He got out to look and the object started coming toward him. He went back to his car, loaded a .22 caliber automatic pistol and returned to the field and fired four shots at the thing. King claimed he could hear the tips of the elderberry bushes scraping the underside of the object which he estimated as two car lengths wide, as it passed above him.

Captain F. Carr Mcinnis, to whom King reported, said that "King must have seen something as he was visibly upset."

Both cases are extraordinary. For Bob, they indicate something that was staged, something that he was meant to see. For Our Strange Skies a couple of years ago, I did a series on the history of the alien abduction phenomenon. In the first episode, I tied a strange phenomenon to abductions: “teleportations.” Teleportations are a phenomenon that occurred to drivers back in the 60s and 70s, particularly in South America. They would be driving along, see a strange phenomena of some kind — sometimes strange lights, a craft, or even an object that resembled a train — and the witnesses would find themselves and their car transported many miles away, in one case, over 1,000 miles away.

At one point, Bob’s car was “teleported,” moved 12-15 miles from where it had been. He found himself ultimately returning to the spot where his initial encounter took place, which is where it would also end. This element of the case reminds me of a scene from Randall Nickerson’s wonderful documentary, Ariel Phenomenon. Nickerson interviewed one of the witnesses to the Ariel School Landing, who claimed that one of the beings would approach him, disappear, and reappear where it first started from, and would begin to approach him again. It did this multiple times, similarly like the cat from the film, The Matrix.

If anything, these two cases prove that this phenomena is far more nuanced than you think it is.

Sources:

Dave Kenney, “CE III Encounter in Nebraska.” The APRO Bulletin, Vol. 27, No. 6, December 1978.

Robert Stewart “Bob” Estes - Obituary

Audio from Bob Estes call was found on the NUFOURS website

Notes from Our Strange Skies: UFOs Throughout History, episode “126: The History of Alien Abductions, Part 1: 1957-1969 with Rich Hatem”.

Notes from Our Strange Skies: UFOs Throughout History, episode “91: The Ariel School Landing with Rich Hatem”.

1. In a previous version of this article, I named Robert H. Ahmanson as the witness.