Montgomery, Alabama
24 July 1948

On July 24, an Eastern Airlines DC-3 was en route from Houston to Atlanta, flying at an altitude of around 5000 ft, near Montgomery, Alabama. The pilot was Captain Clarence S. Chiles (8500 hours flying experience), and the co-pilot was John B. Whitted.

At about 2:45 a.m., dull red glowing object appeared ahead of them. At first they thought it was a jet, coming almost directly at them at nearly the same altitude. It passed them on their starboard side at a distance on which the two men disagreed. Chiles thought it was under 1000 ft, but Whitted put it at several times that. They saw no wings or tail section, but both claimed to see a pair of rows of windows or some apparent openings from which there came a bright glow "like burning magnesium." The object had a pointed "nose", and from the nose to the rear along its underside there was a bluish glow. Out of the rear end came an orange-red exhaust or wake that extended back by about the same distance as the object's length. The two men agreed that its size approximated that of a B-29, though perhaps twice as thick. Chiles' spontaneous reaction was to turn the DC-3 off to the left as the object came in on their right. Both saw it pass aft of them and do an abrupt pull-up; but only Whitted, on the right side, saw the terminal phase in which the object disappeared after a short but fast vertical ascent. By "disappeared", Whitted said he meant that the object vanished instantaneously after its sharp pull-up.

In Watch the Skies,Curtis Peebles says that:

Neither pilot heard any sound. In their report to Project Sign, both agreed "no disturbance was felt from airwaves, nor was there any wash or mechanical disturbance when the object passed."

However, other accounts say that the DC-3 was rocked by the wash from the object, and Above Top Secret contains a copy of a Naval Intelligence Report that states:

A sound similar to that made by a V-2 was reported.

All of the passengers were asleep at the time except Clarence McKelvie, assistant managing editor of the American Education Press at Columbus, Ohio. He said:

I saw no shape or form. It was on the right side of the plane, and suddenly I saw this strange, eerie streak out of my window. It was very intense, not like lightning or anything I had ever seen.

Investigation revealed that observers at Robbins air base near Macon, Georgia, had seen an object of the same description about thirty minutes before Chiles and Whitted's encounter, travelling in a southerly direction at a high rate of speed. It was headed in the right direction to have been the same object. Project Sign spent months tracing the flight records of 225 civilian and military aircraft to eliminate the possibility that Chiles & Whitted had seen a conventional aircraft.

Skeptics called it an illusion. Debunker Donald Menzel first called it an illusion caused by a temperature inversion, then called it a meteor. Project Sign finally settled on calling it a meteor, but admitted that the description of the object and its maneuvers did not fit that explanation.<

This article was previously published in 1998. It has been revised slightly by removing dead links and adding new ones as needed.

Loy Lawhon

Due to past abuses, I do not allow articles to be reprinted on other sites. You may use the first paragraph and provide a link to this page for the rest of the article.

Print References: • Above Top Secret by Timothy Good • The Truth About Flying Saucers by Aime Michel • The UFO Encyclopedia by John Spencer • Watch the Skies by Curtis Peebles