Both pilots had only recently voiced their opinions regarding the
flying saucers and they weren't complimentary.
As they watched the UFO, it passed across the nose of their DC-3 and
they got a fairly good look at it. Neither the pilot nor the copilot
was positive of the object's shape because it was "shadowy" but they
assumed it was disk-shaped because of the circular arrangement of
eight or ten "portholes," each one glowing from a strong bluish-white
light that seemed to come from the inside of whatever it was that
they saw. The UFO also had a blinking white light on top, a fact that
led many people to speculate that this UFO was another airliner. But
this idea was quashed when it was announced that there were no other
airliners in the area. The crew of the DC-3, when questioned on this
possibility, were definite in their answers. If it had been another
airplane, they could have read the number, seen the passengers, and
darn near reached out and slugged the pilot for getting so close to
them.
About a month later, over northern Indiana, TWA treated all the
passengers of one of their DC-3 nights to a view of a UFO that looked
like a "big glob of molten metal."
The official answer for this incident is that the huge orange-red
UFO was nothing more than the light from the many northern Indiana
blast furnaces reflecting a haze layer. Could be, but the pilots say
no.
There were similar sightings in North Korea two years later--and
FEAF Bomber Command had caused a shortage of blast furnaces in North
Korea.
UFO sightings by airline pilots always interested me as much as any
type of sighting. Pilots in general should be competent observers
simply because they spend a large part of their lives looking around
the sky. And pilots do look; one of the first things an aviation
cadet is taught is to "Keep your head on a swivel"; in other words,
keep looking around the sky. Of all the pilots, the airline pilots
are the cream of this group of good observers. Possibly some second
lieutenant just out of flying school could be confused by some
unusual formation of ground lights, a meteor, or a star, but airline
pilots have flown thousands of hours or they wouldn't be sitting in
the left seat of an airliner, and they should be familiar with a host
of unusual sights.
One afternoon in February 1953 I had an opportunity to further my
study of UFO sightings by airline pilots. I had been out at Air
Defense Command Headquarters in Colorado Springs and was flying back
East on a United Airlines DC-6. There weren't many passengers on the
airplane that afternoon but, as usual, the captain came strolling
back through the cabin to chat. When he got to me he sat down in the
next seat. We talked a few minutes; then I asked him what he knew
about flying saucers. He sort of laughed and said that a dozen people
a week asked that question, but when I told him who I was and why I
was interested, his attitude changed. He said that he'd never seen a
UFO but he knew a lot of pilots on United who had. One man, he told
me, had seen one several years ago. He'd reported it but he had been
sloughed off like the rest. But he was so convinced that he'd seen
something unusual that he'd gone out and bought a Leica camera with a
105-mm. telephoto lens, learned how to use it, and now he carried it
religiously during his flights.
There was a lull in the conversation, then the captain said, "Do you
really want to get an opinion about flying saucers?"