Another Pterodactyl Sighting
(CC0) Gitmo Pterosaur Or Ropen Of Cuba by Patty Carson. Released under the CC0 license by Jon Whitcomb.
Copyright ©2023 — July 09, 2023
Oh how I enjoy crazy stuff! (Beats the heck out of watching American television!)
While goofing-off and watching a weird video about how some soldiers during the Viet Nam war had reported seeing 'winged demons' while using red-tinted night vision, the video brought to mind an event that occurred about 1975. I will first give a few details so as to help provide an idea of how the event and surrounding events progressed.
It was around 4:45 p.m. as I was driving home from an aircraft plant where I was employed as an 'A' bonding inspector (later to become a senior aircraft inspector at the same plant). As a long line of cars exited the parking lots and headed southwest towards I40, we traveled a 2-lane Farm-to-Market road that connected the airport with the Air Base. (Now that road has some stories of its own! Don't go there late at night! Especially not when 4+ black SUVs with black tinted windows are leading and following a vehicle in-between!)
Anyway, I was driving a white 1970 Pontiac TransAm 400 Ram-Air IV which was geared way-low, enabling it to burn rubber through all three gears almost all the way up to the maximum speed of around 95mph, of which I did as often as was convenient. Being young and dumb, I liked street racing back then. One fellow, the boyfriend of my wife's friend, with his full-house Chevy Nova SS 396, fully maxed with cam, headers, high-rise manifold, bored and stroked, and everything else he could buy and install, we raced one night, and yeah, I beat him bad. He asked what I had under the hood, and I replied honestly: 'pure stock except for rear gears'. Oh he was not happy! My wife later told me that he had spent many months tooling the Nova for racing, and our winning would have been a really big downer for him. Sorry, but racing is one thing that I don't pretend to be inadequate at. (Outrunning cars with blinking red lights in the grille was way too easy, but, I wouldn't know anything about that (turning eyes downwards to the left)... but the story does relate to the aircraft plant...)
But back to the airport road, I was, of course, rapidly gaining position in the line of cars. Having reached the front of the line and gaining a sizable lead, I had to hit my brakes, slowing almost to a full stop.
Standing at the south edge of the road was a large critter. At first I thought it might be a pelican or such because of its long beak... a huge pelican. I'd never seen a pelican before, but I was pretty sure they weren't that big! With about 50 yards between me and the critter, I saw that it was of a medium-light brown color, without feathers, its left wing went all the way across the south lane into my lane, the bat-like wings had what looked like skinny arms inside, and the head was long and pointed in the front and back. Yes, the head shape was indeed like the drawings that most all of us have seen of pterodactyls, but before I had the chance to take a closer look, very quickly the critter raised its wings, jumped, and within one or two flaps of its wings, it had already passed over my car while heading east. (I later mused that it could have likely been a strong contender in an eighth mile race.)
When at home, I told my wife of what I saw, and, knowing that most people go bipolar when hearing of anything that does not fit their comfortable view of life (especially since the science gods claimed that pterodactyls cannot exist, nor can water exist on any planet except earth, nor that moose and panthers can exist in the Texas panhandle, nor that orbs exist, nor can anyone see more colors than anyone else, etc. etc.), that was about the last time I ever spoke of it.
Of the long line of cars behind me, surely at least twenty other people had also seen the huge critter, but, when I began to speak of it to some fellow workers the following day, all I received were disconcerting shakes of their heads; apparently they too knew to not talk about it.
A few years passed when I heard a report that some Marines stationed in Cuba during around 1971 had seen pterodactyls flying off the coast. I though it was cool; at least those of us at the plant weren't the only ones.
And so, after watching a portion of the 'winged demons' video, I got on a search engine to see if the reports from Cuba were still available. Sure enough, there were several reports, along with many, many more (thousands), some as recent as 2022. Jonathan Whitcomb's website (jonathanwhitcomb.com) was a good spot to begin with. Interestingly, Oklahoma has about 4 times more sightings than Texas (maybe that was where the critter was flying towards in 1975).
Patty Carson's drawing of what she saw in 1965 (named a gitmo pterosaur I am told) is very much similar to what I saw.
The graphic below gives a rough idea of the seen pterodactyl's wing span, although I had once estimated the wing span to have been closer to 30 feet. If only the critter had stood still another two or three seconds longer, I would have been able to get a much better look.
(PD) Approximated illustration of the pterodactyl's wingspan.
Was it possible that I had made a mistake, and that the bird was not as it appeared? Well yes of course, but what flying animal could be as large as a pterodactyl? And look like a pterodactyl? And jump like a pterodactyl? And fly like a pterodactyl? Like the old saying goes, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it's probably a duck! Well, what else could the 'non-yellow' big bird have been?
The albatross is said to have a wing span of around 12 feet, the widest in the world, but that would only be about double the width of an automobile, and would not so much as fill one lane on a highway.
One thing that remained on my mind was that the bird(s) might have been the cause of the rash of many cattle being mutilated in our region during those years. ::Shrugging shoulders::
Anyway, my report is just one more amongst the thousands of other people having seen large flying critters that look like, walk like, and fly like a pterodactyl.