"Simple Swiss farmer" Eduard "Billy" Meier's FIGU cult has branches across the world, and its American spokesman, Michael Horn, maintains a website called TheyFlyBlog.com where all kinds of insane nonsense, cynically bracketed with words such as "scientific evidence" and "credible witnesses", is freely available for your viewing enjoyment and laughter (to join the cult, though, some not-inconsiderable financial fees apply). It's all bunk, of course. Meier is simply George Adamski 2.0 and he runs the same scam, just tweaked a little bit to give it an air of uniqueness (instead of Space Brothers from Venus, there are Plejarans from the Pleiades. Instead of Orthon, there is Ptaah, Asket and Semjase). Unlike Adamski, Meier also has the benefit of the Internet.
A typical example of the insane cow dung courtesy of the Meier crew comes in the form of a story about Wendelle Stevens (who Horn assures us was a "good and honorable man" despite his conviction on multiple counts of child molestation) being whisked forward through time in 1976 to the year 1981 aboard a ship piloted by buxom Plejaran "Asket" to Groom Lake to take photos of the maiden flight of the F-117 stealth aircraft.
Quite a story! But, you see: it's all horseshit. Because on this page of the website, it says:
April 14, 1976 information about the event also described here.
What do we find when we click the "here" link? Well, lots of nonsense, including this::
Then he [Meier; note; NOT Stevens in this older account] saw the jet fighter, a Mirage 111 [III] of the Swiss Army, [Air Force; the latter became an independent arm in 1936] heading straight for the Pleiadian ship. He turned on the tape recorder and continued to take pictures of the attempted interception. As the jet fighter approached the round ET ship, the spacecraft quickly ‘shot' up, allowed the jet fighter to pass, and then returned to its original position. This maneuvering continued in this manner for twenty-two passes by the jet fighter.
Wait: so if the Mirage was "actually" an F-117, as Horn is claiming, why would it "head straight" for a Pleiadean ("Plejaran") ship and make "twenty-two passes" at it? The F-117 carries no guns or missiles, and was designed solely to drop a maximum of two laser-guided bombs on ground targets. The account just mentioned of the plane (earlier a "Mirage", now an "F-117') "heading straight for" the ship quite clearly implies an interception course set by the pilot of the jet to attack the alien ship. Any hostile craft in the airspace of Groom Lake base would have precipitated an immediate and frantic scramble of fighter jets armed with air-to-arm weapons. Why not send the chase plane in for a closer look? (see more about the chase plane below under point 5 and how it further contradicts Horn's fairy tale) And the F-117 - by Horn's own account - was on its maiden flight! And they're sending it after anomalous craft against which it would have no defense if said craft became hostile?
This page on the website claims that what had previously been thought to be photos of a Swiss Mirage jet (Horn's doctored F-117 photos were never released at the time they were supposedly being touted as showing a Mirage, so again - and typically - we have to take the word of the Meier cult that these photos existed at the time) was in fact an American F-117 stealth aircraft. I'm sorry...before we dig into anything else: who the hell thinks that the photos below could ever be mistaken for Switzerland, of all places? I wasn't aware that Switzerland had sprawling Nevada-style deserts. I certainly never ran into them them during my 3 1/2 years of living there when I did my PhD:
The F-117 and "Asket's beam ship". Horn claims that the beam ship set Stevens down to take these photos. Image source: https://theyflyblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Groom-Lake-2-scaled.jpg
Come to think of it: who would mistake the plane shown in these photos for a Mirage III?
A Swiss Air Force Dassault Mirage III. Note that the canards shown here are an upgrade only available in 1988 and were not present in 1976. Note especially that the Mirage has a single vertical stabilizer, whereas the F-117 has two. A photo that can resolve the basic shape of the F-117 cannot possibly be mistaken for a photo of a Mirage. Image source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dassault_Mirage_III#/media/File:Mirage_III-R_MG_1444.jpg
Oh, that's right: the dolts in the Swiss Air Force, according to the Meier cult - for according to Horn's claimed chronology of events (remember: "April 14, 1976 information about the event also described here."), these very photos had been shown to "UFO researcher" Erwin Mürner, who claimed to have shown photos to a Swiss Air Force man at a UFO convention in Zurich (note: the following is an account from 1976 that talks about "photos" of a "Mirage III"; Horn links to this page and thereby points to it as the account directly connected to the F-117 photos. Therefore, according to him, Mürner's "Mirage III" is "actually" the F-117, and so must the accounts of it, according to Horn, pertain to an F-117. Of course, there's zero evidence that Mürner ever possessed any F-117 photos or had shown anything to a Swiss military man that alluded to any aircraft, whether Mirages or Nighthawks). Here is Mürner:
"Billy gave me several of his photos. The picture that impressed me the most was of a UFO and an Air Force Mirage fighter plane. I made serious efforts to uncover the truth about it. Then the following occurred: A UFO convention was being held at the Zurich Novotel, where I met a man who was with the Air Force. We entered into a conversation, and when he told me he was with the Air Force, I asked him about the photo. He confirmed the photo was authentic and that they knew everything about the contacts. I met with the man several more times, during which he said he was part of the Army’s Special Services. At our next meeting he carried a black briefcase, from which he removed a portfolio, a dossier, which he allowed me to read . . . and on page 3 was the story about the Mirage! In brief, the article stated that those who have knowledge about this case must keep it a secret for the rest of their lives. Thereupon I asked my acquaintance what he thought of Billy Meier, and he told me the military knew that everything was true but the people aren't allowed to know about it."
Later Mürner was even able to glean the name of the Mirage pilot, and he contacted him. The Air Force officer confirmed the incident without revealing any details.
But wait: this doesn't make sense at all. Mürner claimed that not only the mystery military man but also the "Mirage pilot" "confirmed" the photos - which ostensibly showed a Mirage III according to Mürner - as authentic. How could the Swiss Air Force have "confirmed" it if it "really" showed an F-117, which looks nothing like a Mirage and if the "pilot" didn't actually fly the aircraft since no Swiss personnel were present at Groom Look to take part in the F-117's maiden flight? The stealth "fighter" (actually a tactical and strategic bomber) was a top secret black project of the US military and in 1976 was still in its pre-F-117 Have Blue phase (the first flight of the Have Blue prototype was flown in 1977); the Swiss simply did not have a "need to know" about it at the time. Or is Horn implying that the Swiss Air Force is so inept that it would mistake something as distinctive as the F-117 for its own workhorse fighter jet?
Back to the "maiden flight" aspect of Horn's story. This page claims that Stevens was brought forward in time to 1981 aboard Asket's Plejaren beam ship. Note this claim on the page:
Asket’s craft and the Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk Stealth fighter photographed in 1981 by Wendelle Stevens, when he was brought into the future to photograph the first flight of the then secret military craft.
There are just a few glaring problems with this narrative, Mikey. Here are the points I listed on your blog that refute Stevens as a time traveling tourist, plus a few other additional details to help other people put the pieces together for themselves and see what they think of your little fable:
1) Where are the original negatives? Nowhere to be found, of course. This is a staple of the Meier cult's "amazing photographic evidence".
2) Where's the proof that these photos were actually taken in 1981 and aren't just post-hoc montages that would be trivially easy to create? The Meier cult has been caught MANY times, shall we say, massaging the items in their photos and videos, so we're going to need something more compelling than someone's say-so before these photos are taken to be authentic. I hope this isn't thought uncharitable of me.
3) Why did Meier only "reveal" this F-117 story (as he called it, one of "the secrets that I kept") in "Contact report 757" in 2020, DECADES after the F-117 was publicly available knowledge? Here is Meier - sorry, "Ptaah" "telling" Meier about what Asket had told him of the Groom Lake jaunt:
Ptaah:..."Asket also told me that she had given Wendelle Stevens the date and location of a forthcoming secret test flight concerning a secret new type of fighter aircraft, the F 117A, which was to take place in June 1981, in an area called Groom Lake. He was tempted to use it to penetrate and hide in the area and then, when the test flight was made, to take a large number of photographs at the risk of his life. If he had been noticed by the many guards who were securing the whole area, he would have been shot immediately without a phone call, as Asket said."
But hang on: on this page, Horn has this so say about Plejaren technology:
These two objects [the beam ship and the F-117] represent aircraft from two very different worlds... all of which are separated technologically by many thousands of years.
Did you get that? Asket's beam ship is thousands of years more advanced than a puny Skunkworks creation - yet it couldn't provide Stevens with protective cover from men armed with our primitive firearms?
Believe it or not, it gets even worse:
4) Which is it - Groom Lake or California? Horn says that the photos were taken at "either" Area 51 or in California. Area 51 is in Nevada. Doesn't the F-117 in Horn's photos look like it's flying a little low to have been over California if this was a maiden flight of a classified aircraft? And how would Stevens not remember in which state he had set foot to take some happy snaps of the plane? Did the beam ship's navigation system not carry any computer maps of the United States? (I guess that incredible Plejaren tech doesn't extend to knowing where you are) The maiden flight only lasted 15 minutes from take-off to touch-down, and the plane experienced some handling problems (these problems are not mentioned or alluded to in Contact Report 757, either. Wouldn't the Plejaren's sensory tech be able to discern such problems and relay them to Stevens?):
On its maiden flight, the F-117 flew for only 15 minutes from take-off to touch-down at Groom Lake base (Area 51) in Nevada. There would not have been enough time to fly through California air space. Image sources: Paul Crickmore, "Combat Legend - F-117 Nighthawk", 2003, pp. 28-29. Airlife Publishing Ltd. ISBN: 1-84037-394-6.
5) We return to the chase plane. Where's the chase plane in the photos? Maiden flights involve a plane that keeps up with the test plane and films it for diagnostic purposes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chase_plane No chase plane is mentioned in Contact Report 757, either.
Here is YF-117A, serial number 79-10780 on the maiden flight, as filmed from the chase plane:
Note that no flying saucers are anywhere to be seen in this footage, nor were any reported by personnel or by the pilots of the planes on this closely monitored flight. No one has come forward to say that they spotted a flying saucer in the vicinity while the test flight was being conducted. No declassified documents mention any such anomaly.
Here is Hal Farley, Chief Test Pilot (Retired) for the Lockheed Skunk Works, who flew the F-117 on this very flight, talking about it and some of the mechanical bugs that were encountered:
6) It's hard to tell (and perhaps a difference from this wouldn't come up clearly in photos of a plane taken from those angles, that time of day, the prevailing atmospheric conditions, etc.), but the plane looks completely black in all of Horn's photos. In reality, the maiden flight plane was painted in a three-tone desert camouflage scheme. See also the above videos and "Black Jets - The Development and Operation of America's Most Secret Warplanes", pp. 72-73, 2003, edited by David Donald (Airtime Publishing Inc. ISBN: 1-880588-67-6):
This fact, too, isn't conveyed AT ALL by Meier, even though Asket's super-advanced technology - if we are to believe Horn's account of how amazing it is compared to our primitive aircraft - should have easily been able to resolve such details with its sensory apparatus and convey them to Stevens, who could then have conveyed them to Meier (sorry, ,"Ptaah", who could then have conveyed them to Meier). In short, Horn and possibly other members of the Meier cult are so cynical and lazy that they couldn't even spend a few extra minutes digging up some of the pertinent details - up for grabs in readily available videos and books about aviation - of the F-117's maiden flight to make a fake account of it at least a little more on the mark and authentic.
Predictably, instead of addressing any of my points (see dialogue between me and Horn in the comment section of the page), Horn simply tried to derail my focus and "challenged" me about photos that Meier ostensibly took in India of Asket's beam ship and how I could possibly debunk those. It's a typical and tiresome game played by frauds: when something can't be defended with facts and logical consistency, just point to something else and say, "Well, what about this? I bet you can't debunk that, skeptic! HURR HURR HURR!" Frauds always insist that other people play their game of musical chairs as a ploy to tire the opponent out and then declare victory when the opponent "can't refute" the fraudulent story.
Here's a challenge of my own: what is the most charitable explanation that you guys can come up with for Horn's fable? Is he just lying (as I personally think he is), or is he just incredibly confused, inept, and being lead on by someone else? One should never underestimate the inclination of frauds to manipulate one another, after all. Or, for that matter, themselves.