This article originally appeared in The Skeptic, Volume 2, Issue 5, from 1988.
The precise happenings of the evening of 3 March 1988 cannot be reconstructed any more. The Amsterdam municipal police, the RLD (State Service for Aeronautics), and the personnel of the traffic tower at Schiphol (Amsterdam airport) don’t like to go into the matter any further. Things got completely out of hand. How could it come to this? A reconstruction of that chaotic evening follows.
It all started with a call at around 9:30pm to Schiphol’s air traffic control tower. Someone (the name and address were not taken down) had seen a formation of strange lights, and wanted to know whether the personnel at Schiphol had seen them, too. Indeed, three lights oscillated in the north-northeast, over Sloten, seemingly right above the apartment buildings. The radar people, one floor below, were asked whether they had seen anything, but they hadn’t.
Schiphol has three radar systems: a ground radar with a reach of 5km, an approach radar APP, with a reach of about 60km, and the Area Control Center, with a reach of 280-350 km, depending on atmospheric conditions. Probably reconfirmation was requested by APP because an approaching plane was suspected. Nothing can be said about the telephone call. The tower observations can be explained. ACC said visibility was excellent at that moment, maybe 400km, and at the time an airliner was passing Helgoland (200km). Possibly this was what was seen. Tower personnel saw the lights go north, slowly, oscillating. Oscillation can be explained as an effect of atmospheric refraction. The airplane was too far away for APP-radar. It must be considered impossible for tower personnel to confuse local stationary lights or stars with UFOs.
Mr Van Solingen, head of the traffic control centre, decided to call in the RPDL (State Police Department of Aeronautics) at 9:45pm. RPDL didn’t know what to do with the story, and asked tower personnel, after some internal consultation, whether the unexplained lights were still visible.
Tower personnel looked again, and again saw something (no details are known about this second sighting, so no explanation can be given. Possibly it was the same aeroplane mentioned above). No radar confirmation being given, the RPDL commander concluded that it was a small, local phenomenon. He decided to inform local police departments (State and municipal) through INRAP, the interregional police radio network. (Note that communications through this network cannot be monitored by civilians, but local police radio can. INRAP is intended for use during disasters in and around the airport.) The RPDL commander asked that local police be on alert for the cause of the lights. Police stations relayed this request via radio to surveillance cars. Now all fences were down, because lots of Amsterdam residents monitor police radio, and many started their own investigations.
To top it all off, the national press service, ANP, also listens to police radio channels, and shortly after 10pm, the Schiphol UFOs were already on the Teletekst news. One half hour after the first innocent report, dozens of Amsterdam people were already hunting enthusiastically for UFOs. The sky was scanned with binoculars, police cars were pursued in the supposition that they were headed for the UFO, and lots of dramatic reports were phoned in. Schiphol, the police stations and newspaper editors were overwhelmed with reports and requests for information.
The main police station information centre only knew that a mysterious light was flying back and forth over the town. Many reports mentioned ‘lights in the west’, but some stories were very complex.
Tower personnel can be considered trained observers, but ordinary policemen and civilians cannot. On that evening, Venus and Jupiter were very bright in the wester sky, and also very close together. Many reports were probably due to this pair of planets. Probably lots of fantasy reports must have been called in as well. Neither Schiphol, nor the RPDL, nor the Amsterdam police took down the names and addresses of witnesses. No one has come forward with photographic evidence or films, etc.
The stream of reports continued (10:30pm), and the Amsterdam municipal police asked RPDL to let a helicopter investigate. This request was turned down-people would only get even more excited.
For the police in the surveillance cars, the whole affair was an entertaining break in their otherwise dreary routine. They kept each other informed through police radio of the latest news. Lots of Amsterdam people listened in on that, and phoned in their comments. A police station in the north of Amsterdam reported little green men checking in at the desk. Other cops took their task seriously, and tried to track down the sources of the stories. The main office found out that the lamps on the NISSAN terminal could be seen from a large distance.
The NISSAN terminal in the western harbour was unloading the ‘Hual Trapper’. Seen from Schiphol, this is directly behind Sloten. Normal area lighting has been functioning for 14 years, and the large cranes there carry lamps which are used regularly. The ship also has searchlights, and possibly one of them, directed upwards, gave striking light effects.
The police considered that this light was the cause of the reports from that moment on. Journalists asking for information were only told that the UFOs were explained, and they were not satisfied. The press got the impression that the police didn’t know what to do. Reports kept coming in from all sides, and also from out of town. It was altogether implausible that Schiphol’s tower personnel mistook cranes for UFOs.
Schiphol air traffic control still didn’t know what they had seen, but they believe that many people had mistaken NISSAN lights for UFOs. Traffic control asked NISSAN to turn the lights off to calm down the excitement. NISSAN refused: they were still working. Meanwhile, the municipal police were getting fed up with all the reports, and also with the press’s questions. They decided on a tour de force.
RPDL got another (this time urgent) request to send up a helicopter to identify the UFSs.
At ten minutes past midnight, their request was granted. The helicopter crew reported that the NISSAN cranes are the only bright object in the western harbour. The helicopter (generating a couple of new UFO reports) flew low down over the NISSAN area, and returned t o base after 40 minutes. The city police considered this the end of the affair.
Most journalists couldn’t see any pattern in the reports either, and agreed with the police interpretation of the facts. At about 1am, the telephone reports stopped. Everyone was confused, and had a hungover feeling. The Telegraaf newspaper found the whole affair interesting enough to give it a large spread on the front page the next morning.
This story was as confusing as the events of the previous evening. As a reaction, SKEPSIS chairman Prof. de Jager sent a press statement to ANP, explaining that the coincidence of Venus and Jupiter may have generated many reports. From this reconstruction, it is clear that Jupiter and Venus can explain some or many civilian reports, but not the first reports from the traffic tower at Schiphol. During the day, Friday 4 March, Prof. de Jager’s explanation was accepted as a complete one – an understandable, but regrettable, simplification.
This article originally appeared in SKEPTER, the magazine of the Dutch skeptical group.
