USAF Pilot/Cadet Encounters a UFO
An old Fighter pilot’s late report.When the Korean war began in June 1950 I was about to enter my 3rd year of college at the University of New Hampshire.
But the local draft board’s decision to call me up led to my having to enlist in the USAF in December 1950 while completing my application for pilot training.
I was sent to Lackland AFB in San Antonio, TX for basic training and the completion of my application for the Aviation Cadet program. Having been accepted, I was them sent to James Connally AFB in Waco, Tx to work on their T-6 trainers pending selection for flying school class.
I was selected in November 1951 for pilot training in class, 52-H and was sent to Hondo, TX, to begin the Cadet program, which I completed and was then transferred to Williams AFB in Phoenix, AZ to complete my Aviation Cadet program and get my wings.
T-6’s and F-80 jets were used at Williams to train pilots.
While we were scheduled to complete training in December 1952 in Class 52-H, I was delayed in my training by contracting a local ailment known as Valley Fever, a lung infection which put me in the hospital to recover for 10 days, thereby forcing me to be moved back to the next flying class, 53-A as I had fallen behind on school work and flying.
This class then graduated from Williams AFB in February 1953.
The event which I am about to relate occurred during one of my last flying missions in either December 1952 or January 1953 and involved a night instrument flight check on a cross country from Williams Field to Hill AFB, UT, then to Nellis AFB NV and return to Williams AFB at night. I was assigned an instructor pilot to conduct the check ride, but he was someone that I was not acquainted with.
The instrument check ride necessitated the use of a coated canvass hood to cloak off the rear cockpit that could be slid into place such that it blocked any reference to outside the cockpit or horizon, simulating flying in solid weather conditions.
It is effective. Just after takeoff from Hill AFB, I went under the hood and began flying the 2 place T-33 up to altitude and down the airway to Las Vegas. This was not a difficult process and the red lights of the instrument panel were the only lights in use, as other lights are damaging to night vision.
As we proceeded down the airway at 30,000' passing by Wendover and Dugway UT proving ground/sites, my cockpit began to brighten up as if my internal lights had been turned on. I asked the check pilot if he was turning up my white lights and he said:
No, Come out from under the hood and look up to the right.
I slid the hood forward and what I saw passing by was the reason that my cockpit had begun to brighten up, a massive, glowing airship shaped like a reddish fat cigar was passing by us about 2000' above and a mile or so distant. It had 5 distinct rows of what seemed like portholes or reddish colored windows while the rear appeared to be a bit diffused. Its glowing appearance brightened up the area around it and the light had penetrated the hood under which I had been flying.
I estimate that it was a large as several battleships.
We both were in such shock at seeing this huge ship that we did not speak to each other for some few minutes and watched as the ship made a right turn and remained off as a distant light, which we then flew past. The IP made a call ahead to Nellis AFB to alert them as to what we had just experienced, we were advised to call the local intelligence office upon landing. We did so and spent an hour with them at Nellis AFB answering questions.
We refueled and continued on home to Williams AFB, AZ.
This was one of my final flights as an Aviation Cadet as we were all shortly commissioned and got our wings. Most of us proceeded on further to gunnery training at Nellis AF and continued flying both the old F-80 and then the F86 enroute to Korea.
But several days before we were to depart Nellis, our assignments were cancelled and a number of us were sent to form a new squadron at Hamilton AFB, CA. I stayed there for less than one year and was then sent to the 18th Fighter wing in K-55, Osan, Korea.
The incident with the huge UFO was forgotten and almost never came to mind until years later when my old class, 52-H had their 50th reunion at an old downtown hotel in San Diego, CA. While there, I mentioned the incident to a classmate, but I could not recall who was the instructor pilot who conducted the check flight had been. But in describing him to Michael, as a black who was very light skinned and a trimmed mustache, Michael said that that was his old flight instructor.
He was then living in Walnut Creek, CA. just above Oakland. He later sent me the instructor pilot's name telephone number, and I called him a week or so later.
His wife answered the phone and said that he was not there at the time, but then asked, what was it that I wanted to discuss? I told her about the night instrument flight check so many years ago and she said she would pass this along to her husband. And to call back later.
Which I did after several days and again, she answered the phone. When I told her who I was, she said that he did not want to talk to me, which surprised me, but I persisted and finally he came to the phone.
His first comment was:
Don’t you remember that we signed some papers to never talk about what we had seen?
I said no, that I could not recall signing anything but also noted that I had said very little about that incident over the years.
Then he said:
Then you don’t know all of the story. After we got back to Williams field, the next morning the staff duty officer called me at home and told me that the Wing Director of Operations wanted to see me asap in his office. I went there and saw that 2 men in black suits and hats were sitting there with the D.O. They moved me into another room and for the next 3 hours, grilled me as if I was a criminal, insisting that we has not seen any such thing, and that we were not to ever mention it. He then spoke about his subsequent experiences with these men. He said that one of them would appear suddenly, as if checking up on him over the years as a warning it appeared. When he was assigned to fly with the Air America crowd during the Vietnam war, into Laos, on one mission he needed a Flight engineer, and when he showed up, it was one of the 2 black suited men from long before. He refused to let him fly with them.
Of interest also, is a TV program which was run by the late ABC Television newscaster, Peter Jennings. Several years before he passed away, Jennings had a 2+ hour TV show about UFO’s which included a number of former military pilots, airline pilots and others who had experienced similar incidents with UFOs… While watching the show, one airline pilot was describing his sighting of a cigar shaped ship.
He went to a blackboard and drew the exact shape of the ship with we had witnessed so many years earlier, including the lighted windows and diffused rear, and the glowing brightness of its hull.
Confirmation of our sighting as well.
Of interest also, is another event over which I have no knowledge or recall. About 10 years ago, I suffered from a bit of vertigo and my Dr. suggested getting a CT Scan of my head… When this was done, the technican came out to tell me that I had a BB sized something at the top of my head. She gave me the disk which I put into my computer and there it was a bright white object that I do not know what it was or how it got there…Later,
I discovered another hard round object under the skin of my right wrist. And as regards other flying missions, I know that some have been monitored by divine eyes, as how I managed to avoid termination, had to come via divine intervention.