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New Zealand Government Opens UFO Files
astroengine writes "Following hot on the heels of a series of international UFO sighting disclosures, the New Zealand government has joined the party and made public 2,000 pages of UFO eyewitness accounts dating back to 1952. Helpfully, the NZ newspaper The Dominion Post has scanned the documents and has made them available online. Among the accounts of alien encounters and strange lights in the sky is one of New Zealand's most famous UFO mystery: the Kaikoura sighting. But was it aliens? Probably not, but it makes for an entertaining read."
So why no reports from before 1952? Roswell incident occurred in 1947. I imagine before this people just attributed "UFO"s to natural "unexplained" causes, but then Roswell got so much exposure that I guess it made more sense for people to take the easy way out and say it's aliens. We're still discovering amazing natural occurrences in our atmosphere.
I'm not saying a UFO have never stopped by to take a look, but 99.999% of reports are likely explained by natural causes.
These types of reports are typically kept secret because in addition to stories that are totally made up, they could be a source of intelligence on military aircraft. When testing new yet easily observable capabilities (i.e. VTOL), you don't want foreign powers reading your citizens' UFO sighting reports to judge how far along you are, or for that matter even to track down which airfields are being used to test prototype craft. In some cases depending on local geography and political relations, the reports might even contain information on craft of neighbouring nations.
Alphanos
Japan has a serious tentacle problem even if it's not true.
I find flying objects, unidentified or otherwise highly interesting and think that attempting to identify them is interesting and worthwhile.
Here's a handy chart to help you on your quest.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".