(1948/07/24) Chiles-Whitted, Eastern Airlines 576 and The “Rocket Ship”
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Contents |
The ATS Take
This particular compilation is largely thanks to ATS's jkrog08 (aka Justin Krog).
The Encounter
On July 24th, 1948 two pilots of an Eastern Airlines commercial DC-3 airliner witnessed something truly extraordinary. 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.
Overview of Witnesses:
- 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 (bear 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. The following reports give a good indicator something was in the skies in the days and nights around this incident.
- Robins AFB,GA Sighting, July 23rd[1]
- 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.[2]"
"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[who?] 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.[3]"
At 2:45AM on July 24th Eastern flight 576 in transit from Houston to Atlanta noticed a strange light dead ahead in the horizon. Captain Clarence Chiles was the first to spot it as the crew were on a “visual flight plan” and thus highly alert to their surroundings. The reddish-orange glowing object seemed to be closing rapidly on them. Chiles mentioned over to his First Officer, Whitted that he thought it was a new military jet approaching. The object continued its course directly at the DC-9 in a slight dive, when it appeared the object was going to collide with the airplane Chiles banked the plane to the left to avoid a mid-air collision. The object in turn banked to its left as if to avoid collision itself. Whitted looked outside his window and saw the object “streaking silently by” about half a mile from their wingtip (on his side) and 500 feet higher. Whitted reported that it looked like a “rocket ship” straight out of Buck Rogers. It was roughly 100 feet long with two rows of brightly lighted windows. They estimated the crafts speed at least 700mph as the sighting took place in only 5 seconds. The craft was giving of a “blue glow” off its underbelly. As the craft passed its “exhaust plume” nearly blinded the pilots, who had been in the darkness of night for hours. The plume reportedly was an orange-red type of color. This sighting made front page new headlines across the country.
The encounter was taken fairly seriously by the military, if only because the craft resembled German V-2 rockets and the war was 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 case added to the surge in sightings between 1947-1948, when the UFO phenomena took off and the term “Flying Saucer” was coined. The witnesses of this case were solid and in addition the numerous reports of a similar craft in the area in the days prior, during, and after the sighting gave credibility to the case. Also bear in mind that no craft at the time was known to exceed 700mph, let alone 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 called to investigate. The pilots made sketches of the craft for Sign personnel:
They also provided official statements which were subsequently classified SECRET.
Following news of the event ...
"The first thing Project SIGN wanted to do was to impress airline pilots with the idea that they should not reveal such incidents to the press before they reported them to the Air Force. On July 30, Alfred Loedding, Project SIGN's civilian engineering analyst, arrived at Eastern's office in New York and and personally asked the airline's vice president of operations[who?] to forward any future flying object sightings directly to Col McCoy at Wright Field. Eastern's President, Eddie Rickenbacker, was suspicious about Loedding and wrote directly to McCoy to confirm the instructions. When Rickenbacker was satisfied that Loedding was who he said he was, he issued orders to his pilots to do as Project SIGN asked.
It's not difficult to understand the dilemma that the Chiles-Whitted sighting presented to Project SIGN. If the description of the object was accurate, a huge rocket resembling current US concepts for a satellite launcher (which had not been revealed to the public, but obviously were familiar to Air Force Intelligence personnel, since Cabell had requested RAND assessment of UFO propulsion technology just days before) had been hurtling over the southeast US. It was almost impossible to believe that a secret US vehicle of this type actually existed, and even harder to believe that it was foreign. What other alternatives were there?
Had the pilots mistaken some more conventional aircraft for a giant missile? This seemed to be ruled out by the prominent flame the object was emitting. Few jets had afterburners in 1948, and even those that did would not be likely to be mistaken for something as large and weird as the object the pilots reported. A meteor seemed to be another possibility, but the fact that the pilots were sure it had maneuvered and climbed ruled this out in the minds of the investigators.
The double row of windows described by Chiles caught the attention of some of the SIGN investigators when they were studying the newspapers immediately after receiving the report, because by coincidence, stories about the cross-country flight of a new US Navy/Lockheed transport plane, the RV6 Constitution, shared the headlines with stories about the pilot sighting. The huge RV6 was unusual in that it had two decks and two rows of portholes on the sides of its cigar-shaped fuselage. Was it possible that Chiles and Whitted had had a near-miss with the enormous Navy plane? Could fatigue and surprise have led them to perceive it as a bizarre, flame-spewing rocket? Project SIGN was determined to leave no stone unturned in attempting to solve this case, so on August 2 Col McCoy of Project SIGN dutifully sent a teletype to the Navy's flight operations office at Patuxent River Naval Air Station to enquire about the exact position of the RV6 at the time of the sighting.[2]"
All of this suggests the military was deeply concerned and wanted to keep their investigation under wraps. Furthermore,
"The Air Force was besieged with questions. Major General Charles P. Cabell, Director of Air Force Intelligence, personally ordered a Project SIGN investigation of the Chiles-Whitted report. Air Force insiders must have shocked by the sketches the two pilots produced - they looked exactly like the RAND "World-Circling Spaceship" and the Navy HATV studies. General George Kenney, the chief of Strategic Air Command, said wistfully in Santa Monica, Project RAND's headquarters, that the Air Force didn't have anything like the object, but he "wish[ed] it did." The Chiles-Whitted sighting was long considered one of the most significant early UFO reports by both Air Force and civilian researchers, but the existence of the secret space launcher designs, with their strong resemblance to the object, provides an important clue to the urgency and magnitude of the Air Force reaction to the report.[2]
Here is a press memorandum issued to the press on April 27th, 1949. Maybe now we can understand why the military feels the need to suppress this information, even if we don’t agree one can understand the anticipation of mass fear considering there is technology out there that is FAR more advanced than ours is even now.
| “ | MEMORANDUM TO THE PRESS
NO. 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
Alternate Explanations and Official USAF Explanation
"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." [4]
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."[5]
"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."[6]
There are four alternate explanations I should mention, only one seems possible:
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.
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.
| “ | 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.[2] | ” |
Another major issue with this theory, to add to the other two theories that didn't fit, the craft was, as a Robins AFB personnel stated, 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 Russian-NAZI-RAND conspiracy and a lengthy topic in and of itself. 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:
So was it one of these rockets that was seen? Unlikely, 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 was a Soviet rocket 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 that could drastically change course and become vertical! So either way this one leads to a highly speculative conclusion. 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
Meteor is the USAF Official Explanation
"This is now the official story, but the first official story was "unknown." It was only in 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.
| “ | 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.[7] | ” |
Conclusions
This is clearly one of the better cases, as it 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 the opinion of the USAF many believe it was a truly unknown intelligently flown object seen that morning.
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, advanced rocket test by the Soviets or Americans in the short years following World War Two? 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 strongly doubt it. Furthermore that it is cases like these, that were heavily documented by both civilian and military researchers that truly clinch the fact that, indeed, there are UFOs, or better, unknown objects of unknown origin.
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, and many others, 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! This is clearly 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!
Not all experienced pilots and witnesses are mistaking normal things for UFOs. The odds are stacked against this kind of assertion. This is a serious topic, that deserves serious investigation. I'd like to leave you with a quote from the head of Blue Book himself about the incident:
| “ | "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!"[8] | ” |
Icarus - Book Review: The Condon report, scientific study of Unidentified Flying Objects
`The Report omits completely many of the most outstanding UFO reports on record. Its omission even includes some cases which I know its investigators checked and which warranted serious discussion in the final draft, e.g., Levelland, Texas, Nov. 2, 1957, and Redlands, California, Feb. 4, 1968. Its omissions also include many historically important cases which it was urged specifically to examine by independent investigators such as myself, and for which it had -the basic Air Force files, yet failed to confront (Eastern Airlines, July 24, 1948; Fukuoka, Japan, Oct. 15, 1948; White Sands, New Mexico, April 24, 1949; Longview, Washington, July 3, 1949; and many others).`[9]"
Blue Book News Clippings
Notes
- ↑ Ruppelt 1956: p. 52, Minutes later a crew chief at Robins Air Force Base in Macon, Georgia, reported seeing an extremely bright light pass overhead, traveling at a high speed. A few days later another report from the night of July 24 came in. A pilot, flying near the Virginia-North Carolina state line, reported that he had seen a "bright shooting star" in the direction of Montgomery, Alabama, at about the exact time the Eastern Airlines DC-3 was "buzzed."
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 "A Ghost Rocket Chronology - The Chiles-Whitted Sighting" (in English). Project 1947. http://www.project1947.com/gr/chileswhitted.htm. Retrieved on 2009-6-15.
- ↑ "Chiles-Whitted Air Intelligence Report" (in English). NICAP]. 1949-4-28. http://www.nicap.org/docs/chiles/480724aair.htm. Retrieved on 2009-6-15.
- ↑ Clark 1998: pp. 182
- ↑ Clark 1998: pp. 183
- ↑ "Chiles-Whitted UFO Encounter". Wikipedia. 10-25-2006. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiles-Whitted_UFO_Encounter. Retrieved on 2009-06-17.
- ↑ Keyhoe 2004:pp. 159-160
- ↑ Ruppelt, Edward (July 24, 1948). "Subject: Chiles-Whitted Case" (in English). NICAP. http://www.nicap.org/480724adir.htm. Retrieved on 2009-6-15.
- ↑ J.E.M 1969 pp. 443
References
- McDonald, James (November 1969). "Book Review: The Condon report, scientific study of Unidentified Flying Objects" (in English). Icarus (Institute of Atmospheric Physics University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85721, USA) 11 (1): 443-447. doi:. ISSN 0019-1035. http://wiki.razing.net/index.php/Image:McDonald%2C_J.E._Icarus%2C_Volume_11%2C_Issue_3%2C_November_1969%2C_Pages_443-447.pdf. Retrieved on 2009-6-15.
- Clark, Jerome (1998) (in English), The UFO Encyclopedia: The Phenomenon from the Beginning, Vol. 1 (A-K) (2nd Ed. ed.), Omnigraphics, Inc., pp. 568, ISBN 0-7808-0097-4, http://books.google.com/books?id=B1YCAAAACAAJ, retrieved on 6-15-2009
- Keyhoe, Donald (2004) [1950] (in English), The Flying Saucers are Real, Fawcett Publications, Inc., pp. 175, ISBN 1-59605-002-0, http://books.google.com/books?id=b48A2urDmf4C, retrieved on 6-16-2009
- Ruppelt, Edward (1956). The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects. Garden City, NY: DoubleDay & Company. ISBN 146111828X. http://static.lulu.com/items/volume_10/199000/199898/3/print/ReportOnUFOs.pdf.
Further Reading
