My First Encounter

By Robin Akins

In the summer of 1957, I was 8 years old and lived on Painter Ave in
South Whittier, California. Our housing subdivision faced west across the ave into a
large 600 acre field, now a high school and industrial park.
A few months earlier in the fall they'd harvested mustard but the fields were
now flat and dry. The Los Alamitos Navy Air station was 6 miles away and on
two different occassions during the previous summer the Navy had landed a
large blimp in the field less than 100 yards from Painter Ave.
Both had mechanic problems which required them to land there with close access
to the streets to bring in repair trucks and Navy personnel. The first one
was there for 6 hours. But the second one was moored there for 3 days while
they repaired it. So during each landing I spend hours sitting on the lawn watching
these incredible giants. I feel that having spent so much time watching the
events that I feel I had a reasonable prospective even for an 8 year old as to
shapes, sizes, distances and heights of objects hovering in the field across the street.

On November 5, 1957 around 9:30pm after having been put to bed by my mother
I awoke to the sounds of what I thought was laughter outside on the sidewalk in
front of the house. I soon realized they weren't laughing but yelling and screaming.
I ran outside to the sidewalk where my mother and her friend Francis Downey,
who lived 4 houses down the block, where standing and pointing into the sky over the field.
At that time of the evening the sun had set but the sky was quite bright due to
the lights of East Los Angeles off to the west. As I looked up the first thing I
thought was that the Navy was landing another blimp in the field and it must be
an emergency as it was dark without any lights but definitely there as the
silhouette was very sharp against the sky. I also thought that it was really close
as it filled the sky more than any blimp we had seen. But the longer I looked
at it I realized that it was quite a distance away but huge non the less.
Mom I said "is the Navy landing a blimp again?" She quickly just said "no"
and started to cry again. Mom I said " why are and Francis crying?" but in
denile she just softly said "we're not crying" and didn't say anymore but continued
to weep. As I stood there trying to understand why everyone up and down the block
were out on the sidewalk facing west and yelling I continued to watch the object.
Then all of a sudden an orange light came out from the underside of the object
and stopped about halfway to the ground below. It was then followed by a blue one
and then by a green one. All three hung there for 5 seconds and then each went
flying off in different directions. At first I thought it was fireworks and I
said Mom "why's the Navy shooting fireworks from that blimp?" But before she
responded they flew off and I was startled to say the least. I stood there with
my month open as I'd never before seen anything like that. Months before I'd
been to Disneyland for my birthday and saw firework displays up close for the
first time but this was different. And then before I could speak again another
two green objects dropped out of the object followed by an orange one. Again
these three hung there for 5 to 10 seconds before flying off together towards
the west which would have put this formation on a course out to the ocean around
the LA airport. As I continued to stand there after a short while I realized that
the object was completely stationary unlike the Navy blimps which floated around slightly
in the breeze. It was hard to make out any details in the dark but it did have what appeared
to be a lighted opening on the bottom where the other objects seemed to have come out from.
The object was huge and must have been 1/2 mile or more in length. My guess is that it
was hovering around 1500 feet. For the longest time nothing happenned and I was
getting sleepy so my mother wanted me to go back to bed but as we got to the porch
Francis yelled at my mother to look as the first of the colored objects returned.
The first one hovered underneath the big object for 30 seconds or so and then went
straight up and was gone. It must have been 5 minutes before two others came back
and moved upward into the object. As we all watched and waited for the others to
return the object started to drift slowly westward and it disappeared out of sight
in less than 5 minutes.

Mass Sighting, Los Angeles, 1957