Hynek Classification: NL

This thread will conclude the series of threads I have made regarding what were called “The three classic UFO cases of the late forties” by the Blue Book head, Captain Edward J. Rupplet. Remember Roswell at that time had not been broken open and everyone accepted the USAFs explanation. This was the first reported commercial airliner UFO incident and as far as witness credibility goes this case again provides solid witnesses. This case ranks right up with the JAL-1628 case (which ATS member internos so expertly laid out for this board last year) as far as commercial airliner-UFO encounters are concerned. Out of the three cases I have covered very recently this one has the least acceptable ‘alternate’ explanation. This case also is likely the most interesting in regards to it showed a clear attempt by USAF personal to really find out what was going on. There were even divided sides of what it was between an ET craft and a Russian secret craft. The conclusions reached by the USAF personal in this case lead many to believe that this and others were truly of extraterrestrial nature. So I hope this case opens some eyes out there to the fact that regardless of what you think the cause, something IS going on in our skies and has been for many decades or more.

Chapter Summary

1. The Encounter 
2. Alternate Explanations and Official USAF Explanation 
3. Final Conclusions

On July 24th, 1948 two pilots of an Eastern Airlines commercial DC-3 airliner witnessed something extraordinary and truly ‘out of this world’, but what was it? The airliner took off from Houston on a seven hour flight and was cruising northeast between Mobile and Montgomery, Alabama on route to Atlanta, Georgia. They were cruising at 5,000 feet with twenty passengers onboard at an airspeed of 150 knots (around 200mph). The following is a brief overview of the witnesses, then I will continue with the actual sighting.

• Captain Clarence Shipe Chiles:
• Age at time was 31
• Native of Tennessee
• Logged over 8,500 hours of flight time
• Veteran of World War Two
• Military rank was lieutenant colonel
• Named commander of the Air Transport Command's Ascension Island base
• Was full time commercial pilot after war
• Still registered as Lt. Colonel in Air Force Reserve at the time
• First Officer John B. Whitted:
• Age at time was 30
• Native of North Carolina
• Veteran of World War Two
• Flew B-29s in the war
• Passenger witness onboard - Out of the twenty only one was awake at the time (keep in mind it was 2:45AM), Clarence McKelvie, and editor from Columbus, Ohio.
• Stated he saw a “strange, eerie cherry-red streak of fire” but no detail

The days around and early morning hours of July 24th, 1948 were full of reports of a UFO from both ground and air in the region. See the following links that point to the fact that obviously something was in the skies in the days around the incident and that night. 

Robins AFB,GA Sighting, July 23rd 
Chamble, GA Sighting, July 26th
Blackstone, VA and Greensboro, NC Sightings on July 24th
 

According to Project SIGN's case file, the early morning of July 24 was also full of strange flying objects over the US. At 2:30 AM, the crew of Eastern Airlines flight 571/23, a Douglas DC-3 flying near Blackstone, Virginia (not far from Richmond), noticed a brilliant, slow meteor-like light traveling on a dead-horizontal path. It lasted for three seconds, and seemed to be moving on a southwesterly heading. Its unusual horizontal trajectory riveted their attention. Eastern Flight 573, not far away, noticed it too. 

www.project1947.com...

The attached drawings made by these two observers very closely resemble a flying object reported to have been seen on 20 July 1948, by A. D. Otter, chief investigator of Court of Damage Inquiry, and his daughter at Arnham, Netherlands. This object appeared to be a wingless aircraft having two decks. The craft, sighted four times through scattered clouds and unlimited visibility, was traveling at high speed at a high altitude. A sound similar to that made by a V-2 was reported.

www.nicap.org...

This encounter was taken very seriously by the military, as the craft resembled German V-2 rockets and the war was not yet 5 years old. Also the fears of advanced Soviet craft to counter the U.S. nuclear threat was a possibility in the minds of many officials. Not to mention this just added to the huge surge in sightings between 1947-1948, which is when the UFO phenomena really took off and the term “Flying Saucer” was coined. The witnesses of this case were again solid and in addition the numerous reports of a similar craft in the area in the days prior, during, and after the sighting gave huge credibility to this case. Keep in mind also that no craft at that time were known to be capable of speeds in excess of 700mph, let alone able to fit the description of the windows on the craft. 

Aftermath of Sighting

After the plane safely landed in Atlanta the two pilots were giving reports of the incidents to reporters, Eastern Airline officials, and military officials. Project Sign was again called to investigate. The pilots made sketches of the craft for the Sign personal: 

Here are the official statements from the two pilots courtesy of bluebookarchive.org: 

Captain Chiles statement….

First Officer Whitteds statement….

So obviously this event shook up the military, I mean they had to be thinking “how can these objects be flying around in OUR airspace and we know NOTHING about them??!!” 

Here is some more information for you all:
 

Press release courtesy of bluebookarchive.org 
 

MEMORANDUM TO THE PRESS 

MO. M 26 - 49
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
APRIL 27, 1949

Excerpt pertaining to Chiles-Whitted case:

SPACE SHIP

Perhaps the fantastic saucer sighting in Technical Intelligence records was the widely-publicized "space ship" which two Eastern Air Lines pilot reported encountering in the skies around Montgomery, Alabama, last July. Presumably the same object was seen by ground observers at Robbins Air Force Base, Macon, Georgia, about an hour before. All reports agreed it was going in a southerly direction, trailing vari-colored flames and that it behaved like a normal aircraft insofar as disappearing from the line of sight was concerned.

The EAL pilots, Capt. C.S. Chiles and John B. Whitte(d) described the phenomena as a "wingless aircraft," 100 feet long cigar shaped and about twice the diameter of a B-29 with no protruding surfaces."

"We saw it at the same time and asked each other,"What in the world is this?" Chiles told investigators. "Whatever it was, it flashed down toward us and veered to the left. It veered to its left and passed us about 700 feet to our right and above us. Then, as if the pilot had seen us and wanted to avoid us, it pulled up with a tremendous burst of flame from the rear and zoomed into the clouds, its prop wash or jet wash rocking our DC-3."

The flame-shooting mystery craft, as described by the EAL pilots had no fins, but appeared to have a snout similar to a radar pole in front, and gave the impression of a cabin with windows above.

Captain Chiles declared the cabin "appeared like a pilot compartment, except brighter. "He said the illumination inside the body itself approximated the brilliance of a magnesium flare.

"We saw no occupants," he told investigators. "From the side of the craft, came an intense, fairly dark blue glow that ran the entire length of the fuselage...like a blue fluorescent factory light. The exhaust was a red-orange flame, with a lighter color predominant around the outer edges."

The pilots said the flame extended 30 to 50 feet behind the object and became deeper intensity as the craft pulled up into a cloud. Its speed was said to be about 1/3 faster than common jets.

In their investigation of the incident, Project "Saucer" personnel screened 225 civilian and military flight schedules and found that the only other aircraft in the vicinity at the time was an Air Force C-47. Application of the Prandtl theory of lift to the incident indicated that a fuselage of the dimensions reported by Chiles and Whitted could support a load comparable to the weight of an aircraft of this size at flying speeds in the sub-sonic range.

The object is still considered "Unidentified."

Here is a summary of the description of the craft and its effects: 

• Craft was cigar shaped
• Craft was around 100 feet long
• Craft caused some type of “jet wake” affecting the plane according to one witness.
• Craft made intelligent maneuvers
• Craft had a large (about 50 feet in length) exhaust plume colored orange-red
• The underside of the craft had a “blue glow”
• The craft appeared to be moving in excess of 700mph
• The object had two rows of “windows or openings”, in which a orange glow was emanating from
• No occupants were seen inside of craft
• UFO was in sight for no more than 8 seconds
• No visible wings seen
• No sound was heard from the craft
• No jet engines, air ducts, or cockpit seen
• Side Note: The visibility that morning was over 25 miles and clear

The Pentagon first suggested that the men had seen a weather balloon, but this explanation was quickly withdrawn. Within days, an Air Force spokesman admitted the sighting was credible, further stating: "this country has no plane resembling a double-decked, jet-propelled, wingless transport shooting a 40-foot flame out of its back end." (Clark, 182)

Astronomer Dr. J. Allen Hynek, a consultant to Sign, argued that it if the pilots had reported accurately what they'd seen, that "no astronomical explanation" was even remotely plausible. However, he did offer an admittedly "far fetched" explanation, suggesting that the pilots had seen an "extraordinary meteor." (Clark, 183)

The men of Project Sign, however, had their own ideas. Ruppelt wrote

According to the old timers at ATIC, this report shook them worse than the Mantell Incident. This was the first time two reliable sources had been really close enough to anything resembling a UFO to get a good look and live to tell about it [Weeks earlier, Mantell had died in pursuit of a UFO].

Sign's personnel were very intrigued by the Chiles-Whitted report. They knew that rockets could fly, but there was no known technology that could account for a rocket being as maneuverable as the pilots had asserted. They pored through obscure technical journals (including the work of German engineer Ludwig Prandtl) and eventually concluded that a "flying fuselage" was feasible if the object had a power source that used nuclear energy.

Based on this, and other UFO cases, Sign's personnel began to favor the extraterrestrial hypothesis. Though there was no direct physical evidence, they thought that there was simply no Earthly technology that could account for some UFO sightings.

They allegedly wrote the legendary Estimate of the Situation to argue their case. The document was gradually forwarded to the highest authorities in the Air Force, who rejected it, primarily because of a lack of physical proof. The Estimate was ordered destroyed, and no copies are known to survive.

However, Sign's personnel refused to abandon the interplanetary hypothesis, even when explicitly ordered to do so. Due to conflicts with "anti-saucer" elements in the U.S. military, Sign was dismantled and replaced with Project Grudge, which conducted little to no research, and which tended towards debunking of any UFO reports.

Hynek's meteor explanation became the official Air Force explanation for the Chiles-Whitted incident, though his qualification was not mentioned in later discussion of the sighting.

en.wikipedia.org...
 

Weather Balloon

First put forth but quickly dismissed for obvious reasons.

A New Navy Plane?

The Navy RV-6 Constitution was put forth as a possible explanation for at least the shape of the craft, it is obvious the USAF was really trying here, even though this is obviously not what was seen.

But for this to be true one would have to assume that the pilots imagined the flame and speed of the craft due to fatigue of a long flight. Yes the airplane is cigar-type shaped and has two rows of windows but the final word from the Navy does this one in. It was proven by the Navy that no such craft was in the area at the time, so this one is definitely out. But we can see that this case was of the most importance, the frenzy to find a solution to the problem was without question.

But SIGN went much further than that. It began the herculean task of attempting to determine the positions of all aircraft in the southeastern United States on the night of 23-4 July 1948 in order to rule out a near-miss with any other plane. The case file is crammed with scores of teletype messages to airports, military air bases and airline operations offices, requesting departure and arrival times of all flights at their location, as well as identity and type of aircraft involved. Within hours, bewildered air traffic controllers and dispatchers began replying with the requested information, and when all 255 flight reports had been received, SIGN compiled the data into a huge table that served mainly as evidence of the intense pressure the Wright Field technical intelligence personnel were feeling from their superiors.

That was one of over 250 teletypes sent out all over the country by Sign trying to determine if any planes could be responsible for the sighting. Can you imagine the chaos as they tried to find a solution to this? This is real life folks, not the movies, this REALLY HAPPENED.

The Constitution lead turned out to be dry. Only one of the air movement reports even remotely matched with the sighting time and place (it was a C-47 heading northwest miles from the Eastern plane, and was ruled out). Most SIGN members doubted the meteor explanation. The existence of secret US or foreign rockets with performance and appearance matching the Alabama object was highly improbable. The Air Force saucer investigators were unwilling to dismiss the report and needed to give Cabell an answer. There was one other alternative, as some of SIGN's personnel saw it, and the time had come for action. On or about August 5, the faction within the project that leaned toward the extraterrestrial hypothesis issued an intelligence "estimate," classified top secret, that argued that the Chiles-Whitted object was an interplanetary spaceship.

www.project1947.com...

Another major issue with this theory to add to the other two clinchers that this theory did not fit the craft was Robins AFB personal stated that this was in no way a conventional plane, or any known aircraft for that matter.So that lead turned up nothing, the other explanation (other than unknown origin) is a conspiracy and a thread in and of itself. I want to remind people that this thread is about the UFO sighting and not a Russian-NAZI-RAND conspiracy, because I know where some will want to go with this next alternate explanation. Someone can start another thread, a ‘spinoff’ thread if you will. But this thread is about the incident itself. I fully expect and would like insight on the “Ghost Rocket” explanation, but not to a derailing degree. So now after that little disclaimer here is the final alternate explanation.

A ‘Ghost Rocket’?

The two main explanations that divided the Sign team were this one and the ET hypothesis. As many know the Germans had developed the V-2 rocket by the end of World War Two and were well on their way to developing newer generation rocket systems. Fortunately for us they never got the chance, at least that is what we thought. When the U.S. and Soviets split Germany in half after the war, there was a mad rush to get as many of the remaining German scientist as possible before the other side did. In the U.S. this was code named Project Paperclip. It was postulated by Sign that this was possibly one of the following:
A Soviet secret rocket craft used for spying, flight testing, or possible future military strikes
A secret U.S. craft likely developed by RAND and personal taken in by Paperclip. See RAND World Circling Spaceship for further details.

Here is a sketch of the craft the pilots saw in comparison with rocket craft in development at the time:

The pilots sketch, about 100 feet long..…

The RAND spaceship, about 70 feet long……

The Navy/Martin HATV(High Altitude Test Vehicle), about 77 feet long…

The Navy/North American HATV, about 86 feet long….

All rocket images courtesy of project1947.com

So was it one of these that was seen? Well no unless one can explain how these rockets were at an altitude of 5,000 feet and in a controlled flight for many hours or days(length of sightings). Not to mention these did not exist at the time, so if you believe this theory then you must believe that the U.S. covered up having advanced rocket technology immediately following World War Two. Alternatively you could believe this was a secret Soviet craft but then again we must believe that the Soviets were FAR more advanced then we have been told, not to mention what the hell was Soviet rockets doing over United States airspace? This theory can not hold unless either the U.S. or U.S.S.R had developed some type of rocket craft that defies all known rocket science by being able to maintain a stable horizontal flight and then drastically change course and become vertical! So either way this one leads to a conspiracy, so I say dead end on this, but who knows. Here are some additional links to this theory:

• Air Intelligence Report
• Original Top Secret Air Intelligence Report (was ordered destroyed) in full , pdf file
• Chiles-Whitted Case Directory

This is now the official story, but like always the first official story was “unknown” but in the later years changed to meteor despite the counter evidence and the USAFs OWN personal believing this was a true extraterrestrial spacecraft! It was put forth by Major Boggs after retracting an earlier hypothesis that the object was a mirage. Boggs postulated that what the pilots had seen was a “horizontal moving meteor” from the Delta Aquarid meteor stream, but gave no explanation as to how it could take a non-ballistic 90 degree upward turn (when it was last seen by Whitted). It is also noteworthy to point out that this stream was no where near the object that was seen, and even if it was this does not account for the non-ballistic course of the object. I think Major Boggs had some very poor advice.

After this candid admission of his intentions, the Project consultant earnestly attempts to fit the two pilots' space ship description to a slow-moving meteor.

"It will have to be left to the psychologists," he goes on, "to tell us whether the immediate trail of a bright meteor could produce the subjective impression of a ship with lighted windows. Considering only the Chiles-Whitted sighting, the hypothesis seems very improbable."

As I mentioned in an earlier chapter, observers at Robbins Air Force Base, Macon, Georgia, saw the same mysterious object streak overhead, trailing varicolored

{p. 160}

flames. This was about one hour before Chiles and Whitted saw the onrushing space ship.

To bolster up the meteor theory, the Project consultant suggests a one-hour error in time. The explanation: The airliner would be on daylight-saving time.

"If there is no time difference," he proceeds, "the. object must have been an extraordinary meteor. . . . in which case it would have covered the distance from Macon to Montgomery in a minute or two."

Having checked the time angle before, I knew this was incorrect. Both reports were given in eastern standard time. And in a later part of the Project report, the consultant admits this fact. But he has an alternate answer: "If the difference in time is real, the object was some form of known aircraft, regardless of its bizarre nature."

The "bizarre nature" is not specified. Nor does the Project "Saucer" report try to fit the Robbins Field description to any earth-made aircraft. The air-base observers were struck by the object's huge size, its projectile-like shape, and the weird flames trailing behind. Except for the double-deck windows, the air-base men's description tallied with the pilots'. With the ship at five thousand feet or higher, its windows would not have been visible from the ground. All the observers agreed on the object's very high speed.

sacred-texts.com...

A Bolide meteor?

There are a few issues with this now official explanation:

• The “one hour setback” has been proven incorrect by Sign.
• How would a meteor that is falling to Earth do to gravity suddenly cruise around the sky and change directions in all 3 dimensions? That is impossible unless our current and well tested basic theories of gravity are completely false.
• The only rebuttal the USAF has for this is to chalk up the multiple witness reports to a “psychological event” and recommend a psychological investigation into if that could have caused the sighting. This is either a cover-up or pure laziness. 

This case is truly a “monster” and clearly shows that at least at one point the USAF was truly trying to find the truth. This case remained classified as unknown for many years until being changed officially in the 60’s to the meteor theory, despite the obvious lack of evidence. Cover-up? It doesn’t have to be, it could have been due to Blue Book being closed and officials wanting closure on the UFO phenomena, so the open cases could have been hurriedly closed.

In my opinion the only thing that fits here is that a truly unknown intelligently flown object was seen that morning. Apparently the USAF originally agreed as well. This is one of the best cases in Ufology as any alternate explanation given or could possibly be given for that matter is inadequate to describe and explain what Captain Chiles and First Officer Whitted saw. Was this case a rare combination of a strange moving meteoroid and physiological stress as the USAF would now have us believe? Or was it some secret, super-advanced rocket test by the Soviets or Americans in the short years following World War Two? I think if we apply Occam’s Razor to this case then the simplest explanation would be that this was simply a craft of unknown and non-Earthly origin.

This case added to the growing number of seasoned pilots seeing UFOs and reporting them. This case became the first case involving a commercial airliner, and it was not the last. Is one to believe that all these cases are simply “mistaken identities”? I think not, and I further think that it is cases like these, that were heavily documented by both civilian and military researchers that truly clinch the fact that YES there are UFOs, or better, unknown objects of unknown origin (UOUO,lol). Another fact that I would like to mention is that many people on average do not know of this case or other very solid cases, because they either happened so long ago or were not popularized by the media due to whatever reasons. Just because a case doesn’t have pictures of the UFO does not make it a bad case, there is usually a lot of other information on it. That is the bad thing with a lot of the good cases, they don’t have many or any pictures so people tend to shy away from them without digging deeper.

Again the final decision is all of ours individually to make based on the available evidence. Think what would happen today if this occurred! This would be all over the news for weeks. This was a very serious event and taken very seriously by our military officials here in the states. I sure want to know what is going on and what all these people have been encountering for all these years, I also want to know how safe it is to fly in the air considering these things appear everywhere! While I doubt their intent is to harm (or they would have already) I still think this is an issue for air safety. Any logical minded person would look at cases like this and the many others and see (if they just did some research into this topic) that there really is something going on, hell you can tell by the way the USAF acted in this case alone! It is now easy to see why this was included in Captain Rupplets “three classic cases of the late 40’s”.

In my opinion it is time for all who haven’t to wake up and realize that all these experienced pilots and witnesses are not mistaking normal things for UFOs, are some? Sure, but for all of them to the odds would be ridiculous. This is a serious topic as I believe others and myself have shown, so it is time for everyone to take a serious perspective on this and attempt to find out what really is going on here. I want to leave you this quote from the head of Blue Book himself about the incident:

Captain Edward J. Ruppelt:

"At about 2:45 A.M., when the flight was 20 miles southwest of Montgomery, the captain, Chiles, saw a light dead ahead and closing fast. His first reaction, he later reported to an ATIC investigation team, was that it was a jet, but in an instant he realized that even a jet couldn't close as fast as this light was closing. Chiles said he reached over, gave Whitted, the other pilot, a quick tap on the arm, and pointed. The UFO was now almost on top of them. Chiles racked the DC-3 into a tight left turn. Just as the UFO flashed by about 700 feet to the right, the DC-3 hit turbulent air. Whitted looked back just as the UFO pulled up in a steep climb. Both the pilots had gotten a good look at the UFO and were able to give a good description to the Air Force intelligence people. It was a B-29 fuselage. The underside had a "deep blue glow." There were "two rows of windows from which bright lights glowed," and a "bright trail of orange red flame" shot out the back."

"In intelligence, if you have something to say about some vital problem you write a report that is known as an "Estimate of the Situation." A few days after the DC-3 was buzzed, the people at ATIC decided that the time had arrived to make an estimate of the Situation. The situation was the UFO's; the estimate was that they were interplanetary!"

www.nicap.org...

That is all I have for now, have a great weekend everyone.

Sources

• nicap.org
• bluebookarchive.org
• project1948.com
• sacred-texts.com
• wikipedia.org
• ufocasebook.com
• ufoevidence.org
• ufologie.net
• Blue Book Unknowns

• Top 100 UFO Cases- Revealed !
• The strange story of JAL 1628

• The Mantell UFO Incident
• The Gorman UFO Dogfight