It turns out visiting jets from the Maryland Air National Guard were using high-intensity flares over a bombing range south of Phoenix the night of March 13, when many people reported seeing lights, an official said Friday.
The flares would have created quite a light show, and in an area that corresponds to the location where many people reported seeing lights in a boomerang formation.
That wouldn't appear to cover all the sightings reported that night, as many came from far north of Phoenix, but the flares were dropping in the general direction of lights captured in a videotape that created a media frenzy when it aired nationally last month.
People from Tucson in the south to Kingman in northwestern Arizona called authorities and groups that track UFO sightings to strange report lights that night. Military officials have said they had nothing in the air over Phoenix and dismissed the reports.
But Capt. Eileen Bienz, a spokeswoman for the Arizona Air National Guard, tracked down information on the Maryland unit this week. She told The Arizona Republic she conducted her own investigation after receiving "one too many calls" asking about the lights. She didn't return a call Friday.
The eight A-10 ground attack jets were using the Barry M. Goldwater Air Force Range, a busy desert bombing area 60 miles south-southwest of Phoenix where the military routinely conducts night training, according to Capt. Drew Sullins, a spokesman for the Maryland Air National Guard.
The planes were dropping high-intensity flares from 15,000 feet to illuminate the target area, Sullins said. The flares fall slowly by parachute and illuminate a wide area.
Before returning to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson that night, the planes jettisoned all their remaining flares at high altitude, which would have created what one pilot called "one hell of a light show," Sullins said.
The planes were in Arizona as part of "Operation Snowbird," which brings aircraft from northern bases to the state from November to April.
But that explanation is just too convenient for Frances Emma Barwood, the Phoenix city councilwoman who's been pushing for the Air Force to investigate the lights.
"If that is their explanation then they need to do a re-enactment so people can say that's what they saw or not what they saw," she said.
Barwood also said the explanation doesn't account for reports from more than a few people that the lights appeared to swoop in from northwestern Arizona, hover over the Phoenix area and then head toward Tucson, about 100 miles southeast of Phoenix.
Barwood wrote to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., urging an Air Force investigation. McCain forwarded the letter to the Air Force, which said it no longer investigates UFO reports.
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