UFOs have been sighted by pilots and aircraft for decades, yet some of these truly stand out as something special. What has become known as being one of the earliest official UFO reports from a commercial airline crew began as a normal flight. On July 23, 1948, chief pilot Clarence Chiles and co-pilot John Whitted took off for a routine 7-hour flight from Houston, Texas to Atlanta, Georgia, aboard their Eastern Air Lines Douglas DC-3 passenger plane along with twenty passengers. The weather was clear and calm, and both pilots were very experienced, with distinguished flying careers during World War II, so there would have been no reason to think that this would be anything more than a typical, uneventful flight, but this would soon prove not to be the case at all, and it would propel itself into the realm of great UFO mysteries.

At approximately 2:45 AM on July 24, the plane was in the skies near Montgomery, Alabama, at an altitude of 5,000 feet when Chiles’ attention was drawn to what he would describe as “a dull red glow above and ahead of the aircraft,” and he mentioned it to Whitted, who also saw it. They at first took to be a military plane, but it would soon prove to be anything but, as it rapidly closed in on their position with astonishing speed in a horizontal path and silently whizzed by before shooting straight up into the sky while belching forth “a tremendous burst of flame out of its rear.” The proximity of the strange craft had been such that they had been forced to bank in an evasive maneuver, and Chiles would say of the encounter:

We veered to the left and it veered to its left, and passed us about 700 feet to our right and about 700 feet above us. Then, as if the pilot had seen us and wanted to avoid us, it pulled up with a tremendous burst of flame out of its rear and zoomed up into the clouds.

Both men would get a good look at it, describing it as having been a cigar-shaped metallic object 100 feet long and 25-30 feet in diameter, with no noticeable wings or tail section, and they would explain that they had seen two rows of brightly lit windows along its side. It would turn out that only one of the passengers, most of who had slept through it all, had seen anything usual, saying that he had seen an eerie red glow pass the plane. Other witnesses would later turn out to be personnel from Robbins Air Base, near Macon, Georgia, who would claim to have seen the same object shoot through the sky a half an hour before Chiles and Whitted’s encounter.

The plane made it to its destination on schedule, and the pilots wasted no time in reporting what they had seen to the US Air Force, who in turn called in investigators from Project Sign, which was an early Air Force group for studying UFO sightings and sort of a precursor to the more famous Project Blue Book. The pilots were extensively interviewed and they provided sketches of what they had observed, and it was found that their descriptions were remarkably similar except that Chiles claimed to have seen an actual cockpit on the craft, whereas Whitted had observed no such feature. Project Sign also meticulously mapped every known aircraft in the air for the entire southeastern United States in an effort to see if the object could have perhaps been another plane, but there was nothing else officially in the air at the time that could really explain the bizarre sighting. This, combined with the fact that the two pilot witnesses were seasoned professionals and had gotten a good, close look at the anomalous object, made this a very exciting, albeit alarming incident.

The idea that some large, unidentified flying object of this type had invaded U.S. airspace was a sensitive issue at the time, and so the Air Force was scrambling for answers. It was suggested that this could have possibly been some sort of advanced aircraft from a foreign nation, but this was problematic because the technology was seen as far beyond what anyone was capable at the time and nothing like it had been seen before. The detail of the flame shooting out of the rear of the craft was important in this regard, because in those days few aircraft had afterburners, and none of that magnitude. This was more like a rocket, but there was thought to be no conceivable way that such a massive low flying, horizontal rocket had been traveling through the area with the technology available at the time and with no discernible launching point.

Sketches of the craft

Other ideas were suggested at the time as well, such as that the pilots had simply misidentified a particularly brilliant meteor, but this does not explain the object’s ability to make a sudden vertical ascent, nor details like the double rows of windows. Project Sign also briefly entertained the idea that this could have been a brush with a Navy plane called the RV6 Constitution, which could have been on a classified mission and was top-of-the-line cutting edge stuff at the time, and also just happened to be cigar shaped, with the characteristic feature of two rows of windows, but it did not spew long jets of flame and certainly could not perform the radical vertical maneuver that was observed. The Navy, for its part, would also deny that this sort of plane had been anywhere near the area at the time.

By all accounts Project Sign was utterly meticulous and thorough with every aspect of the investigation, leaving no stone unturned and at every turn seeking to exhaust every possible option. In the end they had completely ruled out the meteor theory and had considered the notion that this had been some experimental aircraft highly improbable. In light of this, the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) compiled all of their findings into an “Estimate of the Situation” report, which allegedly came to the conclusion that the Chiles-Whitted object was an “interplanetary spaceship.” The top secret and highly classified report itself has become almost legendary, partly because it would have been the first time a government had ever conceded that UFOs were actually aliens, but also partly because it would shortly after disappear off the face of the earth and into history and the annals of great conspiracies.

The first head of The Air Force’s famous Project Blue Book study of UFO phenomena, Edward J. Ruppelt, would insist that the report did in fact exist, that it was sent all the way up through the chain of command, to land on the desk of General Hoyt S. Vandenberg, the chief of staff. The result? Well, Vandenberg apparently was skeptical of the estimate that the UFO was of alien origin, and doubted the evidence used to back that case up. Rather, he was a proponent of the idea held by another faction within the Air Force that believed that the object, and indeed UFOs in general, were the result of top secret aircraft being developed by the Soviet Union, which fit in perfectly with the Cold War paranoia at the time. According to Ruppelt, the report would then be totally dismissed and destroyed, saying:

The general wouldn’t buy interplanetary vehicles. A group from ATIC went to the Pentagon to bolster their position but had no luck, the Chief of Staff couldn’t be convinced. The estimate died a quick death. Some months later it was completely declassified and relegated to the incinerator.

The mysterious report has gone onto become the stuff of legend in UFOlogy, with occasional witnesses saying that they have seen a copy, but no concrete evidence that it ever even existed at all. There are no photographs of it, no known pages remaining from it, it is a specter lost to the mists of time, only reports of purported having seen the report up close. In the aftermath of this, the official Air Force verdict was and has remained that what Chiles and Whitted saw was a meteor. Case closed. Of course, in light of the other evidence of Project Sign’s findings on the case this explanation has been scoffed at and accused of being a weak attempt to obfuscate and blur the real truth, as has the fact that the actual report was apparently disposed of to leave us with nothing.

For their part, Chiles and Whitted would always stand by their account, never once faltering from what they believed was a truly anomalous situation and some sort of unknown craft. To this day the case is discussed heavily, and it remains a very credible one considering the pedigree of its pilots and the very thorough investigation that came to the conclusion that this might actually be something not of this earth. Yet not everyone obviously agrees, and so we are left with questions. If this wasn’t extraterrestrial in origin then what was it? A meteor, an experimental aircraft, what? Why would this remarkable and mysterious report make it all the way up through the upper echelons of the Air Force brass to merely be brushed aside and destroyed? Doesn’t incinerating it suggest they were merely trying to get rid of it? In the end we don’t know what it was, and it is all an intriguing mystery that we very well may never have the true answer to.

Of the severalthousand pages on UFOs that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has declassified into the public domain, very few make any kind of deep reference to encounters with a U.K. connection attached to them. There is, however, one case in particular that really stands out. It is dated November 18, 1976. The one-page-long report is titled “Aerial Observation of Intense Source of Light.” An interesting title, to say the very least. It is a document that was prepared by the CIA’s Domestic Collection Division. The report starts as follows: “An unusual incident was observed during a 10 September 1976 British European Airways (BEA) flight (number 831) Moscow to London. Between 1800 and 1900 hours, the aircraft was cruising at an altitude of approximately 33 thousand feet (9,900 meters), apparently inside the border of Lithuania, when a blinding light was observed off the starboard flight path of the aircraft.”

The CIA continued: “The light’s distance was estimated to be approximately 10 to 15 miles (16 to 24 kilometers) off of the aircraft’s path and approximately five to six thousand feet (1,500 to 1,800 meters) below the aircraft, somewhat above a lower cloud layer. The light, which resembled a sodium vapor lamp (yellowish in color), and which was too intense to view directly for any period of time, completely lit the top of the lower cloud layer, giving it a glowing cast.”

The CIA writer of the once-classified report had more to report: “The light was of such interest that the BEA pilot came onto the aircraft’s intercom network, stated that he was somewhat concerned over its presence, and said he had asked the Soviet authorities for an identification of its source. The Soviet authorities came back with a negative identification response, suggesting that he should not ask questions. The light was observed for approximately 10 to 15 minutes, until the aircraft had flown past and left the light source behind.”

And, that’s where the report ends. So, what was the source of the strange light? The fact that the details of the encounter were logged in the CIA’s UFO files makes sense. It is important to note, though, that just because the report was filed under “UFOs,” doesn’t mean that the crew of Flight 831 encountered something extraterrestrial. I would suggest that the most important line in the whole document is the one that reads like this: “The Soviet authorities came back with a negative identification response, suggesting that he should not ask questions [italics mine].” This suggests – to me, at least – that while the crew of the British European Airways plane were baffled by what they had seen, the Russians may have known exactly what they had seen. Now, let’s move onto something that may have relevance to that 1976 incident.

Don’t ask questions.

In 1999, Gerald K. Haines – in his position as the historian of the National Reconnaissance Office – wrote a paper titled “CIA’s Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90.” It’s now in the public domain, thanks to the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act. It can be read at the CIA’s website. Haines’ paper detailed the history of how, and why, the CIA became interested and involved in the phenomenon of UFOs. Although Haines covered a period of more than forty years, I will bring your attention to one particular section of his paper, which is focused on the 1970s-1980s. Haines wrote: “During the late 1970s and 1980s, the Agency continued its low-key interest in UFOs and UFO sightings. While most scientists now dismissed flying saucers reports as a quaint part of the 1950s and 1960s, some in the Agency and in the Intelligence Community shifted their interest to studying parapsychology and psychic phenomena associated with UFO sightings. CIA officials also looked at the UFO problem to determine what UFO sightings might tell them about Soviet progress in rockets and missiles and reviewed its counterintelligence aspects [italics mine].” Perhaps that mysterious “light” was some kind of Russian device, the very kind that fell into the category Gerald Haines referred to. Namely, something that was perceived as a UFO, but which was actually a secret Soviet vehicle.

UFOs are seen all over the world, by people from all walks of life, and some of these cases have managed to cement themselves into the annals of great unsolved cases. Such incidents are especially intriguing when they take place over well-monitored airspace or internationally recognized landmarks, and one of these cases is the time that a fleet of UFOs blatantly invaded airspace over Washington D.C., mocking all attempts to catch them and parking over the White House.

At 11:40 PM on July 19, 1952, an air-traffic controller by the name of Edward Nugent was on duty at Washington National Airport at Washington D.C. on an otherwise uneventlful night when his attention was drawn to something rather strange and alarming popping up on his radar screen. There, only about 15 miles south-southwest of the city were seven anomalous blips, in an area where there was no scheduled traffic at the time. As Nugent watched he soon became aware that whatever these objects were, they were not following established flight paths, and this was alarming enough that he called his superior, Harry Barnes, who was also startled by the radar images.

It was so odd that they reportedly checked to see that the radar was even functioning properly, and when there turned out to be nothing wrong with it they called air control towers at both their own airport and nearby Andrews Air Force Base to learn that air-traffic controllers there in both locations were also registering the anomalous blips. In addition, a controller at National Airport’s radar-equipped control tower claimed to have made actual visual confirmation of a bright light in the distance that suddenly shot away at “incredible speed.” A controller at Andrews AFB also spotted what he called an “orange ball of fire trailing a tail,” and airline pilot Captain S.C. “Casey” Pierman was waiting for takeoff at one of National Airport’s runways when he would claim to have seen a series of fast-moving lights in the sky that looked “white, tailless, fast-moving lights like falling stars without tails.” Staff Sgt. Charles Davenport at Andrews AFB also saw an orange-red light to the south, of which he said “it would appear to stand still, then make an abrupt change in direction and altitude . . . this happened several times.” Nugent and Barnes did not actually see the objects, but with the radar blips and sightings reports knew that something very weird was going on, with Barnes later saying of these radar blips:

We knew immediately that a very strange situation existed . . . their movements were completely radical compared to those of ordinary aircraft. They acted like a bunch of small kids out playing. It was helter-skelter, as if directed by some innate curiosity. At times, they moved as a group or cluster, at other times as individuals.

As several independent radar operators looked on, two of the blips could clearly be seen to approach the White House, where they appeared to hover for some time before moving off again, while another one did the same over the Capitol and yet another hovered over a radio beacon. The mysterious objects then simultaneously vanished from radar for a time, before appearing once again to orchestrate a series of impressive aerial maneuvers that were far beyond what any known aircraft was capable of, making 90 degree turns, speeding up and slowing down with amazing speed and precision, and even abruptly going in reverse.

All of this strangeness over the U.S. capital was enough to cause quite a panic, and two United States Air Force F-94 Starfire jet fighters were scrambled and sent from New Castle Air Force Base in Delaware to investigate. However, as soon as the jets entered Washington D.C. air space the objects vanished once again. The confused jets circled around until they ran low on fuel and had to head back, and rather oddly as soon as they were gone the strange phenomena started right back up again, almost as if they had been waiting for the jets to leave. The anomalies proceeded to lurk in the area before vanishing for good at approximately 5:30 AM. The incident would soon be slashed all over the front page of newspapers nationwide with sensational headlines like “SAUCERS SWARM OVER CAPITAL!” and “Jets Chase D.C. Sky Ghosts!” and considering that this was in the midst of a major flap of UFO sightings all over the country people were in a bit of a mass hysteria over it, with talk of an alien invasion being seriously discussed among the populace.

It was one of these papers that alerted USAF Captain Edward J. Ruppelt to what was going on, which is odd considering that he was the supervisor of the Air Force’s Project Blue Book official investigation into UFO sightings and also just so happened to have been in Washington at the time. It was very strange that he would not have been told about the incident, and things got even weirder when he tried to get out to the scene of it all, but was refused permission to use a staff car, instead told to take a taxi cab on his own dime. Frustrated and not a little irritated by the military bureaucracy he was facing, Ruppelt gave up and flew back to his headquarters at Dayton, Ohio without gaining any further information. However, it would soon become apparent that the UFOs of Washington D.C. were not gone after all.

The following week, at around 8 PM on July 26, 1952, the crew of a National Airlines flight into Washington radioed in that they had observed some anomalous lights in the sky above their plane, and right after this report was made mystery blips began showing up on radar at Nation Airport and Andrew AFB, and they had apparently brought friends. This time there were reportedly at least a dozen objects, and there were once again sightings of something strange in the sky, such as that made by USAF master sergeant Charles E. Cummings, who said of them, “these lights did not have the characteristics of shooting stars. There was [sic] no trails . . . they traveled faster than any shooting star I have ever seen.”

These lights once again began a series of insane maneuvers, slowing down to a stop, blasting off to speeds of up to 7,000 mph, performing sharp turns, and reversing, and considering the reports of visual confirmation of the objects coming in aircraft were scrambled again. At around 11:30 PM, two F-94 jets were once again sent to engage the targets, this time guided in by radar operators, but the blips seemed to be very evasive and then vanished again. As they headed back the blips reappeared and the jets turned back around to engage. One of the pilots was unable to get a visual on the mystery objects, but the other, Lieutenant William Patterson, did see two of the objects and gave chase but was unable to match their speed, of which he has said:

I tried to make contact with the bogies below 1,000 feet. I saw several bright lights. I was at maximum speed, but even then I had no closing speed. I ceased chasing them because I saw no chance of overtaking them.

At the same time this was going on there were several reports of aircraft in the area also seeing anomalous darting or streaking lights. These reports of what seemed to be physical solid objects was contrary to a theory that had been going around, which was that the radar blips were being caused by a temperature inversion, which basically entails a layer of warm air forming in the low atmosphere, which traps cooler air beneath and can bounce radar signals back towards the source. However, although there had apparently been a slight temperature inversion recorded that evening, it was doubted that it was strong enough to produce such strong radar returns to fool experienced operators, and with the visual sightings involved air-traffic control were convinced that they were dealing with physical, solid objects. Eerily, one of the objects would once again hover directly over the White House at an altitude of 1,700 feet before vanishing off of radar. The objects eventually left and did not return.

Once again the strange incident hit the news in a major way, and people were now starting to demand answers. The Air Force, still apparently not really sure what was going on themselves, struggled to come up with something to tell an increasingly nervous public living in a climate of a mass UFO mania going on at the time and Cold War anxiety, even as President Harry Truman himself demanded that the Air Force figure out what was happening. Pressed for time and needing to come up with something fast, the Air Force hastily assembled a press conference at the Pentagon on July 29, 1952, during which they remained extremely and frustratingly vague and obtuse about the situation, and force fed reporters the idea that this was all due to the temperature inversion weather phenomenon even as professionals watching groaned at this theory. UFO researcher Alejandro Rojas has said:

The investigators had ruled out the inversion. They had examined that situation. The radar operators said, ‘Inversions happen. We know what inversions look like. This is not an inversion. This is not the same thing at all.’

In other words, the Air Force was being deliberately evasive and just trying to get the press off their back and allay public fears to avoid a mass panic by giving everyone a nice, pat, easily understandable and digestable explanation. And it worked. Before long the public had fully accepted the weather theory, despite the fact that the Air Force itself knew that something very strange was going on, although what that was could not be determined. In the absence of any solid answers, the case was officially labelled as the result of radar reflections caused by temperature inversion, and the visual sightings that were made caused by nothing more mysterious than misidentified meteors, stars, city lights, flocks of birds, weather balloons, and Venus.

For his part, Project Bluebook’s Captain Edward J. Ruppelt was very skeptical of the temperature inversion theory, and when he was finally able to adequately interview the numerous witnesses, pilots, and air-traffic controllers involved he found that no one at all bought the official Air Force explanation. However, this investigation process would get a bit strange when some of the witnesses began to retract statements they had made, even when it didn’t make sense. For instance, one air-traffic control crew who claimed that they had seen “a huge fiery-orange sphere” suddenly changed their tune to say that it had just been a star, even though astronomical information showed that no star in the sky on that night would have been bright enough to account for what they said they had observed in their original report. Ruppelt also began to hear rumors that Air Force higher ups were intentionally approaching the witnesses and persuading them to not contradict the official explanation in the name of national security. In the end, he had the very strong impression that something was not quite right, and was more convinced than ever before that what had been experienced over Washington was no radar mirages and that it was perhaps being covered up.

Not long after the Washington D.C. incident, in January of 1953 the Air Force and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) would launch the Robertson Panel, which included top officials and scientists and went about trying to debunk UFO cases in the interest of stemming mass public panic and hysteria. The panel would recommend that Project Blue Book basically keep its mouth shut on truly inexplicable cases and spend more time publicly debunking UFO cases and stripping them of their mystique, and after this genuine unsolved cases were rarely discussed. However, the Washington UFO incident certainly ranks among these truly compelling cases in that it has never really had all aspects of it satisfactorily explained.

Here is a case that really checks off a lot of the boxes of a great UFO case surrounded by dark conspiracy. We have these objects being tracked on radar from several sources and also being visually observed by reliable, trained witnesses. We have these objects witnessed displaying very unusual behavior and properties not consistent with conventional aircraft. Then there is the hasty official attempt to explain it all away with a wave of the hand and what has been seen by most researchers as a flimsy hypothesis that doesn’t really fit all of the features ad evidence of the incident, as well as the specter lurking in the background of possible government intimidation of witnesses, and the Air Force’s clear desire to just sort of sweep it all away. Yet, although the official report still stands there are plenty of mysteries and unanswered questions orbiting the incident, and this has made the case very tenacious in the world of UFOlogy. What happened over Washington D.C. in July of 1952? Was this just a bunch of well-timed misidentifications and radar mirages or something else? The true answer has remained elusive and what has come to be known as the Washington flap, the Washington National Airport Sightings, or the Invasion of Washington remains mysterious.

The year was 1979, and a man by the name of Robert Taylor was a forestry worker for the Livingston Development Corporation, in Livingston, West Lothian, Scotland. He was a respected war hero, was known as a good, honest worker, and was not prone to spinning wild yarns or getting into trouble, so when on November 8, 1979 he stumbled back from a trip to a hill called Dechmont Law looking disheveled, with cuts on his face, torn clothes, and looking somewhat the worse for wear, people were very concerned. When the visibly shaken man had gotten his head together, he would begin spinning a spectacular tale of bizarreness that has gone on to become a well-known and much discussed piece of UFO lore.

According to Taylor, he had gone out with his dog to do a routine check on the fences, gates, and a sampling project going on in the area. Since there were no direct roads to the remote location, he parked his truck on the nearby M8 expressway and he and the dog made their way into the woods of Dechmont Law on foot. As they progressed through the forest, Taylor says he was startled to see the startling sight of a dark grey metallic “flying dome” around 20 feet in diameter and 30 feet high hovering in the air of a clearing just above the forest floor, apparently kept aloft by an array of “small propellers” around its outer rim. As he looked on in wonder at this bizarre sight, he would claim that the air was pervaded by a smell like “burning brakes.” Very strange indeed, but it was about to get even stranger still.

Taylor claimed that before he had even had time to really process the sheer bizarreness of what he was witnessing, two small spheres detached from the larger craft, which were described as having protrusions and nodules all over them and as looking like “sea mines,” and which started rapidly rolling along the ground to approach the frightened man as they issued a “plopping, sucking sound.” These mysterious spheres reportedly then “grabbed” him with sets of protruding spikes and began pulling him towards the large dome as he struggled against them. He would claim that he believed they had been emanating some sort of toxic gas, as the acidic smell of burning rubber got unbearable and he felt the strength leaving his limbs. The whole time his dog was barking ferociously at the objects.

At this point Taylor apparently lost consciousness, and when he awoke he was lying face down in the clearing, which was now empty and with no sign of the otherworldly dome or its malevolent spheres. He found that his clothes had been shredded and that he had cuts and abrasions on his face and body, whether due to his struggle with the spheres or inflicted directly on him he did not know. Taylor had then made his way back to his truck, but was unable to start it, the engine completely dead, and so had stumbled all the way home on foot. Whatever those objects had done to him was still in his system at the time, because he did not seem to have full control of his body and had trouble speaking. When he came staggering to his home in this rambling, dazed, barely coherent state his wife immediately called the police and an investigation would ensue.

Police at first treated this as a common assault, and wrote up Taylor’s mutterings of UFOs and spiked killer spheres as just the rantings of his stressed mind, but they nevertheless went to the scene to investigate and see if they could get some information about the perpetrator. The area where the dome had allegedly appeared was found to have flattened grass, and to contain 32 anomalous holes in the ground, which were about 3.5 inches in diameter each and formed a strange semi-circular pattern, as well as ladder-like marks that looked like the treads of a bulldozer, which were confined to just the clearing and did not come from or lead to anywhere. Authorities tried to find out what could have made the marks by contacting the Livingston Development Corporation, and one investigator would say of this:

After examining every piece of machinery they had up there, we did not find anything to match. These marks just arrived. They did not come from anywhere or go anywhere. They just arrived as though a helicopter or something had landed from the sky. An object of several tons had stood there but there was nothing to show that it had been driven or towed away. There appeared to be no rational explanation for these marks.

Robert Taylor in the clearing

In the meantime, Taylor’s ripped clothing was examined by forensics experts, who came to the conclusion that they had been torn by something hooking into them and pulling sharply upward, which when taken with the tread marks made the story of domes and spiked discs sounding less and less far fetched by the minute. Police would ultimately log the incident officially as an assault, but there was nothing more they could do except ponder the strange clues surrounding it all. For his part, Taylor would adamantly insist that his story was true all the way up to his death in 2007, and considering what an upstanding citizen he was many people believed him. What has come to be known as the Robert Taylor Incident, Livingston Incident, or Dechmont Woods Encounter, has since gone on to become a much discussed and highly regarded possibly genuine UFO incident, and UFO researcher and author Malcolm Robinson has said of it:

This case stands head and shoulders above any other Scottish case and has the prestigious hallmark of being the only case officially investigated by the police and forensic science laboratories in Great Britain. Most, if not all, British UFO researchers would say that this one case provides the best evidence that something, not of this Earth, occurred in that lonely wood and which today, stands the test of time as being one of the biggest UFO cases in the annals of British UFOlogy.

Of course there are skeptics of the whole thing, and other possibilities have been offered above and beyond that Taylor was attacked by aliens. For instance the strange markings in the ground have been speculated to have been left by the water company that had been laying a cable duct through the area and had been storing a large collection of PVC pipes near the clearing. Taylor’s story of the dome, the spheres, and the physical effects he experienced have been suggested as being the result of him suffering an isolated attack of temporal lobe epilepsy, which can cause the physical symptoms described and cause hallucinations, which could have all been exacerbated by a case of meningitis Taylor had struggled with not long before the ordeal. It could have also been that he had mistaken a nearby water tower for being an alien craft in this disoriented state. Other theories are that he had consumed hallucinogenic berries, that he had suffered a stroke, that he had seen a mirage of the planet Venus, or simply that he just made the whole thing up. There has never been any definitive answer, and considering that the sole witness has passed away we will probably never know for sure, but the legacy of this case lingers on today and probably will for some time to come.

Some of the most spectacular UFO reports are those that involve actual contact or engagement with the craft in question, and cases such as these abound. Among these some of the more intriguing have been the various airborne UFO encounters in the records, and one of the most well-known and documented of these is a compelling case from 1953. It is an account that was widely witnessed, surrounded by oddness, and which resulted in the disappearance of two men and remains mired in questions and conspiracies right up to the present.

It was the evening of November 23, 1953, and what had started out as a routine, quiet night for Air Defense Command Ground Intercept radar operators at Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, was about to get very weird very fast. It started with an unusual radar signature that was picked up over the Soo Locks area of Lake Superior, near the border with Canada. It was particularly odd, as the area in question was restricted airspace, no one should have been there at all, yet here was this anomalous target just flying through as if it had every business in the world to be there. The nearby Kinross Air Force Base was notified, and they began scrambling a fighter to take to the air and intercept the mystery aircraft. An F-89C Scorpion was prepped for take off and roared up into the sky towards the unknown, carrying within pilot First Lieutenant Felix Moncla and radar operator Second Lieutenant Robert L. Wilson. Little did anyone know that they were about to fly out into one of the greatest UFO mysteries in history, or that they would not be coming back at all.

Felix Moncla

Once in the air, Wilson went about trying to track the mysterious object, but this would prove to be easier said than done, as he had trouble getting a lock on it. Instead, ground radar operators kept constant radio contact, guiding the plane towards its target, yet as they descended from a higher altitude to engage, the object reportedly made a sudden sharp turn and evaded them. The F-89 panned around to continue to the pursuit, and the object managed to match their movements and remain elusive, almost as it was toying with them. Meanwhile, ground radar was watching this cat and mouse game unfold as two blips on a radar screen, and at one point at an altitude of 8,000 feet and around 70 miles from Keweenaw Point the two blips seemed to merge on the screen. This was not necessarily completely shocking in and of itself, as there was no distress signal issued and it was just thought that the two aircraft were passing over or under each other, yet when the expected separation of the single blip into two did not happen, and radio contact with the F-89 was lost as that blip just continued off as one signature things got more worrying. It was thought that this meant the two objects had collided, yet the single blip continued its journey on its original course with no sign of having any problems, until it left the radar range altogether.

There were panicked attempts to recover radio contact with Moncla, but there was nothing but silence in return, and so it was assumed that their plane had crashed and a rescue mission was immediately launched, involving both the American and Canadian Air Forces, as well as numerous ships. The area where the blips had become one was then scoured for any sign of the men or their plane, but not a single sign of any wreckage was found, as if they had just flown off the face of the earth. Neither was any sign found of the mysterious aircraft that had started all of this, and it too seemed to have just vanished.

In the meantime, the USAF got off to an unsteady start trying to explain all of this to the public, at first saying that the F-89 had crashed after chasing a mysterious unidentified object, but they soon backpedaled away from this and completely changed their story. The official report was now that the object that was being chased was actually a Canadian C-47 Skytrain, later oddly changed to a DC-3 airliner, that had flown off course and that the F-89 had crashed due to pilot difficulties on the way back from successfully guiding the Canadian aircraft back on course, speculated as likely caused by Moncla experiencing vertigo, combined with the poor weather at the time. Yet, this doesn’t really jibe with the fact that two radar blips had gone in, merged, and only one had come out. The Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) also changed their story, at first saying that the DC-3 pilot had not been aware of the American jet at all, yet they later claimed that there had been no Canadian aircraft in the area at all at the time of the incident. Either way, according to the RCAF the incident had never happened at all.

Curious, and it would get even curiouser when ex-Marine and UFO researcher Donald Keyhoe found in leaked Air Force documents that far from considering this an open and shut case, the government in fact considered it to be a very anomalous occurrence that they could not explain. Keyhoe also found that there had been wildly conflicting stories from Air Force officials when informing the families of the victims, with some saying the plane had come in low to crash into Lake Superior and others saying that the plane had exploded and disintegrated in midair. This last one is strange, because does vertigo cause a plane to explode in midair? Without any wreckage to examine it is hard to say, but what is for certain is that the USAF and RCAF couldn’t keep their stories straight. Making it a bit more ominous and conspiratorial is the fact that investigators from the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) who looked into it were surprised to find that Moncla’s mission had apparently been struck from the official record altogether. They would write:

There is no record in the Air Force files of sighting at Kinross AFB on 23 November 1953… There is no case in the files which even closely parallels these circumstances.

There were other odd things that would pop up related to the case. One is that UFO researcher John Tenney would claim to have spoken to a member of the USAF who claimed that there had been a faint radio transmission from Moncla hours after his plane was said to have gone down, which seems weird and is hard to know what to make of. There would also be a possible clue in the report of some railway workers along the Canadian Algoma Central Railway, who claimed that they had heard a huge explosion on the night of the incident. These incoming leads have done little to solve the mystery, and indeed had only served to sprinkle it with more oddness.

The whole Kinross incident actually received relatively little coverage and remained fairly obscure to the general public at the time, perhaps to the relief of the governments involved, and it flew under the radar for quite a few years until it was sort of resurrected again in 1968. In October of that year, some wreckage was found near the eastern shore of Lake Superior that looked very much like that of a USAF fighter plane, but the only confirmation forthcoming was an Air Force officer admitting that they seemed to be from one of their planes, but the report was ever officially recognized and the identity of the parts remains unknown. In 2006 interest in the case was piqued again when it was claimed that a group of Michigan divers from the “Great Lakes Dive Company” had discovered Moncla’s F-89 at the bottom of Lake Superior, even providing sonar and photographic evidence. However, efforts to contact the company all led to a man calling himself “Adam Jimenez,” who was very vague about it all. It would later be found that the Great Lakes Dive Company didn’t even really exist, and that the claims were a part of an elaborate hoax, and Jimenez soon completely disappeared.

With so many mysteries and so much conspiracy surrounding it theories have flown about what happened to the plane and the two men. Maybe it was a crash just as the military has said, but maybe it was something more. The idea has been put forward that this could have involed some top-secret experimental aircraft, possibly from a foreign power, that was engaged out there. There is also the notion that this was a genuine UFO encounter with something beyond our understanding, an otherworldly craft that either collided with the F-89, shot it down, or even abducted the entire plane to whisk it off to places unknown. In the end we are left with a case that officially remains a simple crash, but which is far from satisfactorily explained. With all of the changing stories and obfuscation, there are only a few things we know for sure. We know that Moncla and Wilson took off in that plane to never return. We know that two radar blips converged and only one left. And we know that there has never been any other trace found of the missing plane or crew. Other than that, there is nothing concrete to go on, the government has been very opaque on the whole incident, and we will probably never get the answers we seek, even as that plane and its two crew remain missing.

My previous article was titled “The Strange Radar-Based Saga of the ‘Ring Angels.'” As I said, it was a story that most people have probably no awareness of. Certainly, it has largely been forgotten. As I also noted in the article, a down to earth explanation was found for the weird, radar-based affair that ran from 1958 to 1959 at the Marconi Research Center in Essex, U.K. With this affair still in my mind, I thought why not share with you another largely forgotten saga from decades long gone. This one, however, most assuredly does not have a down to earth explanation. Arguably, it’s out of this world – which will give you an idea of the subject matter! We’re talking about a fascinating UFO encounter that occurred less than two months after pilot Kenneth Arnold had his encounter that led to the dawning of the age of the Flying Saucer. The whole thing went down on August 12, 1947. The following affidavit on the case was prepared by the eyewitness – a military officer, Captain John Paul Strapp – at Flight Test, Muroc Army Air Field, Muroc, California. That same affidavit was witnessed by a Counter Intelligence Corps agent, Thomas A. McMillan. It reads as follows:

“At 11:50 hours, 8 July 1947, while the undersigned was sitting in an observation truck located in Area # 3, Rogers Dry Lake, for the purpose of observing a P-82 ejection seat experiment, the following unfamiliarity was observed. The undersigned was gazing upward toward a formation of two (2) P-82’s and an A-26 aircraft flying at 20,000 feet, preparing to carry out a seat ejection experiment, when I observed a rounded object, white aluminum in color, which at first resembled a parachute canopy. The first impression was that a premature ejection of the seat and dummy had occurred. This body was ejected at a determined height lower than 20,000 feet, and was falling at three (3) times the rate observed for the parachute which ejected thirty minutes later. As it fell it drifted slowly north of due west against the prevailing wind, toward Mount Wilson. The speed, horizontal motion could not be determined, but appeared slower than the maximum velocity 50-80 aircraft.

“As this object descended through a low enough level to permit observation of its lateral silhouette, it presented a distinct ovular outline, with two (2) projections on the upper surface which might have been thick fins or nobs. These crossed each other at intervals, suggesting either rotation or oscillation of slow type. No smoke flames, propeller arks, engine noise, or other plausible or visible means of propulsion were noted. The color was silvery, resembling aluminum painted fabric, and did not appear as dense as a parachute canopy. When the object dropped to a level such that comes into line of vision of the mountain tops, it was lost to the vision of the observer.

“The following is my own personal opinions about this subject:

1.  I think it was a man-made object, as evidenced distinctly by the the outline and functional appearance.

2.  It’s size was not far from 25 feet with a parachute canopy. 

3.  The path followed by this object appeared as though it might have been dropped from a great height. Seeing this was not a hallucination or other fancies of a sense. This statement was given freely and voluntarily without any threats or promises under duress. This statement consists of two (2) pages, and is the truth to the best of my knowledge and belief. I have initialed all corrections deemed necessary.”

So, what we have here is the testimony of a highly credible individual. Not only that, the witness was able to get a good look at the craft and calculated that it was around twenty-five-feet in diameter and similar to a “parachute canopy” in shape. A classic from decades long gone? Yep!

We have a number of candidates running for president who claim they will investigate the existence of extraterrestrials and their spaceships once they’re elected, but these types of promises tend to get shoved aside when more pressing matters like foreign affairs, domestic disasters and welcoming championship sports teams to the White House interfere. Perhaps it’s because none of these candidates have any actual encounters with UFOs or ETs. Fortunately, there’s one candidate running for US Congress in California (of course) who has both, and his name is probably familiar to ufologists – retired U.S. Air Force Captain Robert Salas, who says the recent release of videos showing military encounters with UFOs are part of his motivation to run, and disclosure is part of his platform. Does he have a chance?

Robert Salas, a UFO witness (and researcher) who figured prominently in UFOs & Nukes: Extraordinary Encounters at Nuclear Weapons Sites is running for Congress.

“And just as I [called my commander], our missiles began going into what’s called a no-go condition, or unlaunchable. Essentially, they were disabled while this object was still hovering over our site.”

In 1967, Robert Salas was told by personnel under his command at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana that a red, glowing object about 30 feet in diameter was hovering just above the front gate of the facility. As he was escalating this up the chain of command, the ten Minuteman One nuclear-tipped missiles (ICBMs) at the base shut down due to failures in their guidance and control systems. In a story he has now told many times, Salas asked about the status of the UFO and was told by a guard that it took off at a high speed. The ICBMs were eventually brought back online and an investigation was conducted, which found no viable/believable/non-ET cause for the mysterious shutdown. Salas and everyone else involved were told never to discuss the incident again.

So why do so many people know about it? Well, ex-soldiers talk, especially when there’s beer involved, and Salas discovered there was a similar UFO-related shutdown incident in 1966 at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota. He decided to come forward with his story in 1994, co-authored a book, Faded Giant, about it in 2005, co-sponsored a press conference about it with other ex-military witnesses in 2010, participated in the Citizen’s Hearing on Disclosure at the National Press Club in Washington in 2013 and wrote another book about it and other similar cases in 2015 (Unidentified: The UFO Phenomenon). And yet, with all of that effort – including lectures and media appearances, Salas has not been able to influence disclosure about UFOs, ETs and their possible relationship to nuclear weapons and nuclear power, even though UFOs are often seen around power plants.

“So, how does this relate to my running for Congress? You may have already guessed? It will be one of my prime objectives to get Congress to take this phenomenon on as a serious matter. One that is directly related to excessive secrecy in many of our agencies and the issue of nuclear weapons.”

On his political website (salas4congress.org), Salas lists “The UFO Issue,” “Excessive Government Secrecy” and “Nuclear Weapons” as part of his platform. For greater details on his beliefs, he refers voters to his other website (spiralgalaxy.org). Unlike the current presidential candidates, Salas is upfront about them. He tells De Void why the recent UFO videos inspired him to run – he sees the military seizing on them as a funding vehicle to fight aliens, not work with them.

“The shutting down of our missiles was, to me, a message – that’s all. They did no damage to those missiles, by the way, they simply upset the inertial guidance system. All they had to do was go out there and reorient the missiles properly so that if they launched, they would be accurate on target. It was strictly an orientation thing.”

Does he have a chance? California’s primaries on March 3rd are bipartisan, which means the top two vote-getters will meet again in November, regardless of their party. So, he just needs to finish second against a strong incumbent. And if he doesn’t?

“I don’t know where this is gonna go. But if I don’t get laughed out of the place for this UFO stuff, if I can get the UFO community behind me even more in terms of donations, then hopefully I’ll have enough to compete, and stimulate more interest in this subject.”

Get out and vote!