Certainly some extremely freaky pilot UFO encounters over the years and there are some relevant statements below involving aviation professionals and the reality of the UFO/OVNI/UAP subject (whatever the origins of these objects turn out to be).
The reports are global in nature and consistent over time and although the thread might be a long read hopefully it's an intriguing one as some of the objects being described sound incredibly bizarre.
Testimony from ATC/ Radar Operators is also included and many of the statements have been substantiated in official reports, books, interviews, letters, scientific reviews, open congressional hearings etc. - have tried to provide info for further research but lots of links have gone for good these days (lots of saved content on archived threads though).
If you know of any other relevant statements then please post!
NB • Also some other quotes here regarding the mystery of missing Naval Log books
• Pilots:
• "Their speed was amazing, my pilots estimated it between fifteen hundred and two thousand miles an hour."
U.S. Naval Secretary Dan Kimball - UFO incident over Pacific ocean (Guam to Hawaii) involving Admiral Arthur Radford, Naval Secretary Dan Kimball and two 'disc shaped' objects, March, 1952.
Thread / Video: 9:30
• "It had a bun on top and a bun underneath."
RAF Flight Lieutenant James R. Salandin describes object witnessed from his Meteor jet over North Weald, Essex - October 14th, 1954.
Link / Video: 24:30
• "I got the fright of my life because there appeared to be, smack in front of the aeroplane, three circular objects. Two of them were on a level keel and one of them was canted at a slight angle..They were circular and appeared to be stationary. But as we continued to climb they did in fact change position and to make sure of that we very carefully checked and these things moved across to the right-hand side somewhere. The higher we got, the more they lost this circular effect which appeared when looking at them from underneath. As they came down to your level they lost the circular effect and took on a 'flat plate' appearance.. I remember being told on landing that I looked fairly shaken, almost as if I had seen a ghost."
RAF Air Commodore Michael Swiney O.B.E. - radar/visual objects over Little Rissington, October 21st, 1952.
Link / Video
• "They had opaque grey fuselages and a sort of windshield, but without rivets and completely smooth.. What I would like to make clear is that my personal and professional reputation is safe thanks to the testimony of air traffic controllers. They had the three objects on their screens, making 270-degree turns in a very tight radius of action."
Pilot Carlos Antonio de los Santos Montiel describes three radar confirmed 'disc shaped' objects which flew alonside his aircraft over Lake Tequesquitengo, Mexico, May 3rd, 1975.
Link / Video
• "We've got no conclusions, except after this, do not give us the old routine of Venus, weather balloons, aircraft and the like which has been given as a general panacea for almost every case of UFOs."
Captain Jose Lemos Ferreira (later to become Joint Chief of Staff of Portuguese Armed Forces), UFO also witnessed by Sergeants Alberto Covas, Salvador Oliviera and Manuel Marcilino - flight out of Ota Air Base, Portugal, 1957.
Video: 9:15
• "I was sitting with my mouth open, I just couldn't believe what was happening, it closed in on us with a tremendous rate of speed.. It maintained a hovering position there for roughly a minute, a minute and a half and I must say it seemed like an eternity.. And then it just went straight up, straight up."
Canadian Pacific Airlines Pilot describes UFO encounter to Dr. J. Allen Hynek - flight from Tokyo to Vancouver, June, 1969.
Audio
• "Well, you know it had to have been a UFO. You know, we had nothing that could do the kind of speed that it had back then and to be able to change directions, I mean, flying with the plane and changing directions.. it was phenomenal."
USAF Staff Sergeant Richard Clark describes the radar/visual Minot AFB B-52 UFO incident - October 24th, 1968.
Site / Video
• "It stayed right there off my left wing - no matter what I did."
Pilot Arthur Godfrey, object also witnessed by co-pilot Frank Munciello - flight from New York to Washington.
Audio / PDF / Video: 2:15
• "It was a large, round, silver metal object with six jet black portholes equally spaced around the circumference, which descended into the atmosphere from above.. We have nothing that can do what that object did."
Captain Phil Schultz, TWA flight 842 pilot over Lake Michigan, 1981.
Link / Video: 11:05
• "Its surface was shiny, like tin foil, without a single crease or crinkle."
RAF Flt Sgt Roland Hughes describes a 'silver, metallic disc' encountered on a training mission over West Germany, 1952 - papers released from the Churchill Archive, Cambridge University.
Link
• "The object appeared to be circular, with a diameter of approximately 100 feet..The bottom side appeared to have 9 to 12 symmetrical oval or circular portholes located in a circle approximately 3/4 of the distance from the center to the outer edge. Through these portholes came a soft purple light about the shade of aircraft line without spinning."
DC-3 pilots Capt. Jack Adams and First Officer G. W. Anderson, Jr., Stuttgart, Arkansas, March 20th, 1950 (USAF Battelle Institute Study).
Link
• "It was like looking at a piece of the sun. It was faster than anything I've ever seen. It may have been one very large object with brilliant center lights and surrounding lights of lesser magnitude, or separate objects. The smaller lights were either part of the mysterious object or this was an example of darn good formation flying."
Captain George Wilson - object(s) reported to hurtle toward his airliner then suddenly make an abrupt right turn and disappear to the south - nine hundred miles northeast of Honolulu, July 11th, 1959.
Link
• "I saw a blue flash shoot past our airplane, more like something the size of the moon or smaller, it caught up with us. We flew at 800, 900 KM per hour but this went two, three times as fast. You could say it was a fighter jet or the exhaust but this object instantly stopped. I cannot say how big it was in reality, distances are hard to estimate in the air. It flew a bit higher than us, but the most bizarre thing is that it rushed by and came to a dead stop. It stood still for a few seconds then moved from the right to the left, stood still again for a few seconds and then it shot off on our left to the back. We were both flabbergasted literally - and speechless. So I decided to talk on the inter-pilot radio frequency and asked 'did anybody see that blue light?', I received an immediate response 'yes, yes I saw that, what was that?'. While I say this I am feeling the shivers because I am reliving it so to speak - I am not crazy and for me it was unexplainable."
KLM Pilot Captain Mark Juch.
Video
• "The object was oval shaped and very bright, yellow in its centre with an indistinct flame orange boundary.. The magnetic compass was spinning so fast that I couldn't read the number."
Piper Arrow PA-28 Pilot, Lower Saxony, Germany, August 13th, 1976.
Video: 1:08:00
• “The object looked like two reversed saucers pressed against each other, with a precise contour, a gray metal color on the top and dark blue below, with no lights or port-holes.”
Air Force Captain Jean-Pierre Fartek, witnessed low level UFO in field - Dijon, France, December 9th, 1979.
Link: 1 / 2
• "About a minute into the descent whatever it was moved extremely quickly, I mean within a second and a half, from being three miles off our starboard wing around onto our nose. I turned around away from it and the damn thing followed us, still paralleling us, so it must have accelerated because it was on the outside of the turn."
Pilot Peter Maher describes 1970's radar/visual UFO incident whilst flying NAC Fokker 27 Airplane from Tauranga to Auckland.
Video
• "Based on my experience in fighter tactics, it is my opinion that the object was controlled by something having visual contact with us. The power and acceleration were beyond the capability of any known U. S. aircraft."
F-94 pilot Lieutenant Burt Deane, Air Intelligence Report - Hempstead, Long Island, October 29th, 1953.
Link
• "The upper section, partially concealed by cloud, was black and on the lower section there appeared to be four or five panels."
Portuguese Air Force Sergeant José Fransisco Rodrigues describes object encountered flying above Castelo de Bode Dam, Portugal, June 17th, 1977 (power outage of aircraft and dam).
Link / Video
• "As I drew nearer I could see that the object had no wings nor tail nor any other exterior control surfaces protruding from what appeared to be the fuselage. It seemed to be hovering with a little rocking motion. As it rocked up away from me, I could see that it was a disc shaped object. I would guess the diameter at about 50 to 55 feet, the thickness in the middle at about 8 to 10 feet. It had the appearance of sand-blasted aluminum. I could see no windows or doors or any other openings, nor could I see any landing gear doors, protruding, nor showing.. It rose abruptly about 1000 feet above me as I closed in, giving me an excellent view of the underneath side, which was exactly like the upper side as far as I could tell."
Pilot Waldo J. Harris - Salt Lake City, Utah Airport, October 2nd, 1961.
Link / Video
• "This speck suddenly grew extremely quickly until we saw this huge shadow go over the top of us but the most amazing thing about it was there was no noise and absolutely no movement or turbulence at all. We looked at each other, saying, 'What the hell was that'? Several pilots have seen UFOs in England, so it didn't surprise me, but I was surprised that we actually got a picture of it."
Pilot David Hastings, object also witnessed by co-pilot David Paterson - Mojave Desert, September 9th, 1985.
Video
• "It was 20 to 30 feet long and looked like a rifle bullet."
F-61 pilot describes radar confirmed object over Japan - October 15th, 1948.
Link 1 / 2
• "It was a bullet shape, rounded at the front that widened out and tapered to a point at the end. Around the main body, the centre of it, there was a ring that was spinning."
Flight instructor Shannon Davis describes UFO over California, November 5th, 1980.
Video: 8:00
• "It was as clear as seeing a Cadillac drifting by at 100 yards.. The overall configuration was discoidal; the base was bright red, and the dome was glistening white."
Pilot William C. Powell, object also witnessed by passenger Muriel McClave - Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, May 21st, 1966.
Link / PDF
• "On the 24th of August I was flying an F-84 at 35,000 feet, en route to Turner Air Force Base, in Georgia. At 10:15, Mountain Standard Time, I sighted two round silvery objects flying abreast over Hermanas, New Mexico. One made a right turn, in front of my F-84. Both objects disappeared at very high speed, then reappeared over El Paso, Texas. I saw one climb straight up, two or three thousand feet. Then the second one came across in front of me and joined the other in close formation. In a few minutes they both vanished. From their maneuvers and their terrific speed, I am certain their flight performance was greater than any aircraft known today."
USAF Colonel Carl Sanderson.
Link
• "I decided to climb at full thrust to get above the object, but it began to ascend almost parallel to my plane, and when I reached 63,000 ft., it stopped. At this point, I came to within about 300 feet of the UFO. It was about 30 feet in diameter. It was an enameled, cream-colored dome, with a wide, circular, metallic base. It had no engines, no exhausts, no windows, no wings or antennae. It lacked all the typical aircraft components, with no visible propulsion system. It was at that moment that I realized this it was not a spying device, but that it was a UFO, something totally unknown."
Peruvian Air Force Sukhoi S-22 Jet Pilot Commander Oscar Santa Maria Huertas describes UFO encounter over La Joya Military Base, Arequipa, Peru, April 11th, 1980.
Document / Video 1 / 2
• "The Meteor, meanwhile, turned towards Dishforth and the object, while continuing its descent, appeared to follow suit. After a further few seconds, the object stopped its pendulous motion and its descent, and began to rotate on its own axis. Suddenly it accelerated at an incredible speed towards the west turning onto a south easterly heading before disappearing. All this occurred in a matter of fifteen to twenty seconds. The acceleration was in excess of that of a shooting star. I have never seen such a phenomenon before. The movements of the object were not identifiable with anything I have seen in the air and the rate of acceleration was unbelievable."
RAF Flight Lieutenant John Kilburn of 269 Squadron, September 19th, 1952.
Link / Document
• "All of a sudden I was able to make out the complete form of a saucer shape or round object.. I could see the dome, also very vividly clear, including all the windows, I observed it to be of a very bright metal - it was more of a nickel or highly polished chrome or stainless steel type of metal than aluminum because it had more of a mellow glow than if it was of the type finish on a high finish aluminum."
Pilot Floyd P. Hallstrom, Navy combat air crewman (Ret.) - Santa Monica, California, January 1st, 1978.
Link
• "The UFOs appeared, from the ground, to be round in shape and metallic in color. The objects approached the aircraft from the northeast at a speed about three or four times that of the aircraft.. Some of the air crew members reported seeing a pale band of red color about halfway between the top and the edge of the object."
Major Rudy Pestalozzi, USAF Base Intelligence Officer - object also witnessed by B-36 Bomber crew. Davis Montham Air Force base, May 1st, 1952.
Link / Document
• "I found myself astounded but curious, but at 12 miles distance these objects were becoming uncomfortably large, and I was glad to descend and land the aircraft. Many of my passengers saw the objects as did the pilots of another aircraft, 25 miles further south."
Captain Ray Bowyer describes two stationary, cigar-shaped objects emitting a brilliant yellow light (also witnessed by passengers) - flight from England to the Channel Islands, April 23rd, 2007.
Video
• "I looked up in time to see a dark object pass down the right hand side of the aircraft at high speed, it was wedge-shaped with what could have been a black stripe down the side."
Captain Roger Wills and co-pilot Mark Stuart on descent towards Manchester Airport (pilot ducked in his seat) January 6th, 1995.
Link / News Article / Sketch
• “Suddenly, it shot past our left wing not more than twenty or thirty feet off my wingtip. I got an unobstructed view of it. It was football-shaped but wasn’t sharp at the points. It was about three feet long and a foot and a half to two feet thick.”
Pilot flight instructor Lloyd List, object also witnessed by Dr. John Ferguson Clark - Red Bluff, California, September, 1980 (Bob Pratt Archives).
Link
• "During close approaches, the Cessna instruments went crazy.. The ADF was moving around indiscriminately, without any sense of direction. When the light moved a little farther away, everything returned to normal. It repeated this game several times. It seemed to be under intelligent control."
Pilot César Escobar, Paraguay, June 8th, 1991.
Link: Page 8
• "It was a round mass that glowed a dull red like hot steel. It picked up speed 300 to 400 miles an hour and ran out of sight right over South Bend. I used to laugh at all those flying saucer reports but it's no laughing matter now."
Captain Robert Adickes,
object also witnessed by co-pilot and passengers.
Link
• "We all looked to the left at that time and there was this very bright, very brilliant lighted object off to the left of the aircraft.. it did disrupt all three compasses on the aircraft and this was what the concern was."
DC10 Pilot Captain Neil Daniels.
Video
• "From the time we were off the ground at Albany, until we - it's about 15 miles by air to Schenectady and it was off our wingtip, and we watched it go through a ninety degree arc, go right straight to the west."
American Airlines Capt. Raymond Ryan, object also witnessed by First Officer William Neff - April 8th, 1956.
Link / Newsclipping 1 / 2
• "At various times the object had been very close to me and I was able to verify that it was round with two halves shaped like two tight-fitting skullcaps. I carefully looked at the lower one, which seemed to be somewhere between red and brown with a hole or dark spot in the center. The center band looked like it had some kind of a grid, and possibly a few lights, but it was hard to tell since the sun was so bright and was reflected."
Captain Júlio Miguel Guerra, Flight instructor for the Portuguese Air Force in 1982. CNIFO Case Report.
Link 1 / 2
• "I saw several bright lights. I was at my maximum speed, but even then I had no closing speed.. Later I chased a single bright light which I estimated about ten miles away. I lost visual contact with it at about two miles."
F-94 Pilot Lieutenant William Patterson over Washington DC, July 23rd, 1952.
Link / Document
• "On radar I got to do four interceptions and radar contact with all, but I could not see anything at any time, just on the radar. And what impressed me was taken by the target acceleration from a certain moment. Accelerated rapidly until he desacoplasse the radar and I believe around MACH 15, more or less, because it was very fast acceleration. now I was 1.2, 1.3 times the speed of sound and the object reached a speed much higher than I was."
Captain Armindo de Sousa Viriato, Brazil, May 20th, 1986.
Video / Link 1 / 2
• "The UFO never levelled off. It just continued to climb. Aircraft always show movement in relation to the stars but as this light moved higher it seemed to become stabilized with the stars. In other words it appeared to move right out into space."
Captain Darryl Clark, Capt. 329th Fighter Interceptor Squadron (FIS), Edwards Air Force Base, California, October 7th, 1965.
Link / PDF
• "There was something definite in the sky.. If it had proved to be hostile we would have destroyed it."
Major Gerald Smith, USAF. One of the F-106 pilots scrambled under orders from NORAD to investigate a UFO over West Palm Beach, Florida, September 14th, 1972. The UFO was viewed through binoculars by the FAA supervisor George Morales, sighted by an Eastern Airlines captain, police and several civilians, as well as being tracked on radar by Miami International Airport and Homestead AFB.
Link
•"I am convinced there was thought behind the thing's manoeuvres."
F51 pilot Lieutenant George Gorman after being in a 30 minute 'dogfight' with a UFO in 1948.
Link 1 / 2
• "At the moment when I started the last descent, I suddenly saw a white light which came directly on us at full speed in front of me, before instantly stopping at a hundred meters. When I started again the manoeuvers, the object made an odd turn to accompany our descent turn and to pace us at a hundred meters of us. After a while, the saucer, the size of an airliner, changed color, two green lights appearing at the ends with an orange gleam in the center which ignited intermittently."
Flight Captain Jorge Polanco - object also witnessed by passengers (power outage at airport).
Link / 2
• "We're listening to the Command Post tell the cell formation leader 'listen, the UFO is over the base again right now'."
U.S. Air Force KC-135 Stratotanker pilot Michael Wallace discussing UFO incident over Loring Air Force Base, Maine, 1975.
Video / Link 1 / 2
• "I was the pilot of the plane when we saw the UFO. Also on board were Governor Reagan and a couple of his security people. We were flying a Cessna Citation. It was maybe 9 or 10 o'clock at night. We were near Bakersfield, California when Governor Reagan and the others called my attention to a big light flying a bit behind my plane. It appeared to be several hundred yards away. It was a fairly steady light until it began to accelerate, then it appeared to elongate. Then the light took off. It went up at a 45-degree angle-at a high rate of speed. Everyone on the plane was surprised. Governor Reagan expressed amazement. I told the others I didn't know what it was.. The UFO went from a normal cruise speed to a fantastic speed instantly - If you give an airplane power it will accelerate, but not like a hot rod, and that's what this was like."
USAF Colonel Bill Paynter (Ret.) - pilot of Ronald Reagan's Cessna Citation jet plane.
Link
• "I had the impression of a shape and an important mass behind us, much larger than my Mirage. When we landed at Luxeuil, we were shaken."
Colonel René Giraud, French Air Force - Chaumont, France, March 7th, 1977.
Link
•"The object we saw dived at us on a collision course to the extent that I actually called out to my passengers that the object was going to ram us. After the object came at us it reversed course and climbed rapidly into a clear night sky."
Pilot Ernest Stadvec - July, 1961.
Link
• "I looked out ahead of the helicopter and observed an aircraft I have never seen before. This craft positioned itself directly in front of the moving helicopter. This craft was 50 to 60 feet long with a grey metallic structure. On the front of this craft was a large steady bright red light. I could delineate where the red stopped on the structure of this craft because red was reflecting off the grey structure. The design of this craft was symmetrical in shape with a prominent aft indentation on the undercarriage. From this portion of the undercarriage, a green light, pyramid-shaped, emerged with the light initially in the trail position. This green light then swung 90 degrees, coming directly into the front windshield and lighting up the entire cockpit of the aircraft. All colors inside the cabin of the helicopter were absorbed by this green light. That includes the instrument panel lights on the aircraft. As a result of my experience, I am convinced this object was real and that these types of incidents should require a thorough investigation."
Lieutenant Colonel Lawrence J. Coyne describes UFO witnessed with three other airmen over Mansfield, Ohio, October 18th, 1973.
Link / Video
• "There were bright objects hanging over the sea. The closest object was luminous, round and four to five times larger than a Whirlwind helicopter.
The objects separated. Then one went west of the other, as it manoeuvred it changed shape to become body-shaped with projections like arms and legs."
RAF Flight Lt A.M. Wood, RAF Boulmer, Northumberland - object confirmed on radar and witnessed by two RAF personnel (British MOD document so sensitive that 'an extra three years added to its 25 year release date').
Link
• "A mysterious elliptical luminous object appeared just after I had passed Himeji. I was flying at the time at an altitude of about 2,000 metres. The object followed for a while, and then stopped for about three minutes, and then followed along my left wing across the Inland Sea for a distance of about 90 kilometres until we reached Matsuyama on Shikoku Island. It then disappeared."
Yoshiaka Inaba, TOA Airlines pilot over the Leshima Islands in the Seto Inland Sea, Japan - March, 1965 (Tokyo Japan Times / UPI Agency release originating from Hiroshima).
Link
• "The sighting was definitely of some flying object unlike anything then or even presently known."
Cmdr. M. B. Taylor, USNR (Ret.), former Navy pilot and guided missile expert under Rear Adm. Delmer S. Fahrney - July 3rd, 1949.
Link / PDF
• "Just after this exchange, the object began to maneuver. It darted hither and yon, rising and falling in undulating flight, making sharper turns than any known aircraft, sometimes changing direction 90 degrees in an instant. All the while the color remained constant, a brilliant blue-white, and the object did not grow or lessen in size. Macintosh and I sat there completely flabbergasted at this unnerving exhibition. I thought of calling the passengers over the public address system, but the object was dead ahead of us and putting on its performance in an area whose arc was not large enough to enable anybody in the cabin to get a view of it out the side windows. After a half minute or so of this dancing, unorthodox flight the object suddenly became motionless and hovered dead still. We were simply confounded by this."
Capital Airlines Pilot Captain W. J. Hull, object also witnessed by Co-Pilot Macintosh - Alabama, 1956.
Link / PDF
• "Off my wing. a little below us, in the direction of Cologne, I saw four or five objects that looked like silvery footballs. They didn't seem to be moving. but they must have been, for they stayed even with us."
Photo Reconnaissance Pilot Joe Thompson Jr. - WWII mission over the Rhine Valley, Germany.
Link / PDF / Reports: Video 1 / 2
• "I noticed an object coming toward us from the direction of Youngstown to the southeast, I swung over to get a closer look when the object headed directly toward our airplane. It stopped and hung motionless in the air momentarily, and as our aircraft came closer, it moved swiftly upward and came back at us from another angle. It appeared metallic and had a light beaming from its underside, it was from six to ten feet in diameter and from 16 to 20 feet tall. It suddenly sped in an easterly direction at amazing speed and was quickly out of sight."
Cessna 172 Skyhawk Pilot Richard Montgomery - Warren, Ohio, July 8th, 1968.
Link
• "Suggestions that the three objects were balloons, stars or satellites, strange clouds or reflections are quite unacceptable to us. As I looked to the west we saw this very bright headlamp in the sky. All the cabin staff saw it too and I told the passengers. Then it was joined by two cigar-shaped objects as big and solid as battleships."
British Airways Captain Dennis Wood, Portugal, July 30th, 1976.
Link / Video
• "I set my course and walked back aft and Dr Mosier was sitting back there and he was a Commander in the Navy at the time and I asked him, 'Doc did you see what we saw?' and he said 'Yes, it was a flying saucer - I didn't look at it because I don't believe in such things'."
Naval Pilot Lieutenant Graham Bethune, object also witnessed by Co-Pilot Lt. Fred W. Kingdon - Flight 125 from Keflavik, February 10th, 1951.
Link / Video
• "It definitely had no wings. It was brown, appeared to be round and had a number of projections, looking rather like some kind of radio antennae, on its surface. I have never seen anything like it before."
Captain Gordon Pendleton, object also witnessed by First Officer J.P. Murphy - Irish Times, Reuters News Agency, May 22nd, 1962.
Link / Video
• "I approached the object, which was flashing with intense red, green, orange and blue light so bright that I was not able to see its body. The sequence of flashes was extremely fast, like a strobe light. We locked on it with radar; it was at 30° left, at a range of 25 miles. The size on the radar scope was comparable to that of a 707 tanker."
General Parviz Jafari (Ret.), Tehran, Iran, September, 1976.
Documents: PDF / Video: 1 / 2 / 3
• "The object was humongous, whatever it was.. I don't know if it was a biblical experience or somebody from a different universe or whatever but it was definitely not from around these parts."
Private Pilot Steve Allen, Stephenville, Texas, January 8th, 2008.
Interview: 7:30 / Link
• "Mayday, Mayday, Ercoupe ocho cero, eight zero, zero, Hotel. We can see a strange object in our course, we are lost, Mayday, Mayday. Ah we are going from Santo Domingo to ah San Juan International but we found ah a weird object in our course that made us change course about three different times we got it right in front of us now at one o’clock, our heading is zero seven zero degrees.. our altitude one thousand six hundred a zero seven zero degrees.. our VORs got lost off frequency.. Right now we are supposed to be a about thirty five miles from the coast of Puerto Rico but we have something weird in front of us that make us lose course all the time I changed our course a second (unintelligible) our present heading right now is three hundred we are right again in the same stuff sir.”
Pilot Jose Pagan Santos (last words of) - Puerto Rico, June 28th, 1980.
Video / Link
• "In concealing the evidence of UFO operations, the Air Force is making a serious mistake."
USAF Lieutenant Colonel James McAshan.
• "Now all pilots today by law in the civil aviation regulation are required to report any observation that may come under the heading of unidentified flying object. It seems strange in some way that the government position frequently appears to be to obtain this information and then through government policy (or whatever motivates the government position) to try and immediately ridicule the experiences of these people."
USAF Lieutenant Colonel J. B. Hartranft, Jr. (Ret.), Pilot and President of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) - Press Conference, March 28th, 1966.
Audio
• "There is a publication called JANAP 146E that had a section that says you will not reveal any information regarding the UFO phenomenon under penalty of $10,000 fine and ten years in jail. I never reported anything to FAA or the military. A lot of pilots just did not want to get involved in this because of peer pressure and ridicule. So the secret has been kept."
US Navy Pilot Lieutenant Frederick M. Fox.
Video
• "We've seen something, I've seen something, hundreds of pilots have seen something in the skies - we have dutifully reported these things and we have to have 15 million witnesses before anybody is going to look into the problem seriously? Why this is utterly fantastic, this is more fantastic than flying saucers or people from Venus or anything as far as I'm concerned."
Pilot Kenneth Arnold.
Video / E-Book
• Pilot statements from NICAP report on 'Air Force Observations':
• Pilot statements from NARCAP's technical report into 'under reporting bias' of the UFO/UAP phenomenon:
• Pilot UFO Encounters - Newsclippings:
PDF
The reports are global in nature and consistent over time and although the thread might be a long read hopefully it's an intriguing one as some of the objects being described sound incredibly bizarre.
Testimony from ATC/ Radar Operators is also included and many of the statements have been substantiated in official reports, books, interviews, letters, scientific reviews, open congressional hearings etc. - have tried to provide info for further research but lots of links have gone for good these days (lots of saved content on archived threads though).
If you know of any other relevant statements then please post!
NB • Also some other quotes here regarding the mystery of missing Naval Log books
• Pilots:
• "Their speed was amazing, my pilots estimated it between fifteen hundred and two thousand miles an hour."
U.S. Naval Secretary Dan Kimball - UFO incident over Pacific ocean (Guam to Hawaii) involving Admiral Arthur Radford, Naval Secretary Dan Kimball and two 'disc shaped' objects, March, 1952.
Thread / Video: 9:30
• "It had a bun on top and a bun underneath."
RAF Flight Lieutenant James R. Salandin describes object witnessed from his Meteor jet over North Weald, Essex - October 14th, 1954.
Link / Video: 24:30
• "I got the fright of my life because there appeared to be, smack in front of the aeroplane, three circular objects. Two of them were on a level keel and one of them was canted at a slight angle..They were circular and appeared to be stationary. But as we continued to climb they did in fact change position and to make sure of that we very carefully checked and these things moved across to the right-hand side somewhere. The higher we got, the more they lost this circular effect which appeared when looking at them from underneath. As they came down to your level they lost the circular effect and took on a 'flat plate' appearance.. I remember being told on landing that I looked fairly shaken, almost as if I had seen a ghost."
RAF Air Commodore Michael Swiney O.B.E. - radar/visual objects over Little Rissington, October 21st, 1952.
Link / Video
• "They had opaque grey fuselages and a sort of windshield, but without rivets and completely smooth.. What I would like to make clear is that my personal and professional reputation is safe thanks to the testimony of air traffic controllers. They had the three objects on their screens, making 270-degree turns in a very tight radius of action."
Pilot Carlos Antonio de los Santos Montiel describes three radar confirmed 'disc shaped' objects which flew alonside his aircraft over Lake Tequesquitengo, Mexico, May 3rd, 1975.
Link / Video
• "We've got no conclusions, except after this, do not give us the old routine of Venus, weather balloons, aircraft and the like which has been given as a general panacea for almost every case of UFOs."
Captain Jose Lemos Ferreira (later to become Joint Chief of Staff of Portuguese Armed Forces), UFO also witnessed by Sergeants Alberto Covas, Salvador Oliviera and Manuel Marcilino - flight out of Ota Air Base, Portugal, 1957.
Video: 9:15
• "I was sitting with my mouth open, I just couldn't believe what was happening, it closed in on us with a tremendous rate of speed.. It maintained a hovering position there for roughly a minute, a minute and a half and I must say it seemed like an eternity.. And then it just went straight up, straight up."
Canadian Pacific Airlines Pilot describes UFO encounter to Dr. J. Allen Hynek - flight from Tokyo to Vancouver, June, 1969.
Audio
• "Well, you know it had to have been a UFO. You know, we had nothing that could do the kind of speed that it had back then and to be able to change directions, I mean, flying with the plane and changing directions.. it was phenomenal."
USAF Staff Sergeant Richard Clark describes the radar/visual Minot AFB B-52 UFO incident - October 24th, 1968.
Site / Video
• "It stayed right there off my left wing - no matter what I did."
Pilot Arthur Godfrey, object also witnessed by co-pilot Frank Munciello - flight from New York to Washington.
Audio / PDF / Video: 2:15
• "It was a large, round, silver metal object with six jet black portholes equally spaced around the circumference, which descended into the atmosphere from above.. We have nothing that can do what that object did."
Captain Phil Schultz, TWA flight 842 pilot over Lake Michigan, 1981.
Link / Video: 11:05
• "Its surface was shiny, like tin foil, without a single crease or crinkle."
RAF Flt Sgt Roland Hughes describes a 'silver, metallic disc' encountered on a training mission over West Germany, 1952 - papers released from the Churchill Archive, Cambridge University.
Link
• "The object appeared to be circular, with a diameter of approximately 100 feet..The bottom side appeared to have 9 to 12 symmetrical oval or circular portholes located in a circle approximately 3/4 of the distance from the center to the outer edge. Through these portholes came a soft purple light about the shade of aircraft line without spinning."
DC-3 pilots Capt. Jack Adams and First Officer G. W. Anderson, Jr., Stuttgart, Arkansas, March 20th, 1950 (USAF Battelle Institute Study).
Link
• "It was like looking at a piece of the sun. It was faster than anything I've ever seen. It may have been one very large object with brilliant center lights and surrounding lights of lesser magnitude, or separate objects. The smaller lights were either part of the mysterious object or this was an example of darn good formation flying."
Captain George Wilson - object(s) reported to hurtle toward his airliner then suddenly make an abrupt right turn and disappear to the south - nine hundred miles northeast of Honolulu, July 11th, 1959.
Link
• "I saw a blue flash shoot past our airplane, more like something the size of the moon or smaller, it caught up with us. We flew at 800, 900 KM per hour but this went two, three times as fast. You could say it was a fighter jet or the exhaust but this object instantly stopped. I cannot say how big it was in reality, distances are hard to estimate in the air. It flew a bit higher than us, but the most bizarre thing is that it rushed by and came to a dead stop. It stood still for a few seconds then moved from the right to the left, stood still again for a few seconds and then it shot off on our left to the back. We were both flabbergasted literally - and speechless. So I decided to talk on the inter-pilot radio frequency and asked 'did anybody see that blue light?', I received an immediate response 'yes, yes I saw that, what was that?'. While I say this I am feeling the shivers because I am reliving it so to speak - I am not crazy and for me it was unexplainable."
KLM Pilot Captain Mark Juch.
Video
• "The object was oval shaped and very bright, yellow in its centre with an indistinct flame orange boundary.. The magnetic compass was spinning so fast that I couldn't read the number."
Piper Arrow PA-28 Pilot, Lower Saxony, Germany, August 13th, 1976.
Video: 1:08:00
• “The object looked like two reversed saucers pressed against each other, with a precise contour, a gray metal color on the top and dark blue below, with no lights or port-holes.”
Air Force Captain Jean-Pierre Fartek, witnessed low level UFO in field - Dijon, France, December 9th, 1979.
Link: 1 / 2
• "About a minute into the descent whatever it was moved extremely quickly, I mean within a second and a half, from being three miles off our starboard wing around onto our nose. I turned around away from it and the damn thing followed us, still paralleling us, so it must have accelerated because it was on the outside of the turn."
Pilot Peter Maher describes 1970's radar/visual UFO incident whilst flying NAC Fokker 27 Airplane from Tauranga to Auckland.
Video
• "Based on my experience in fighter tactics, it is my opinion that the object was controlled by something having visual contact with us. The power and acceleration were beyond the capability of any known U. S. aircraft."
F-94 pilot Lieutenant Burt Deane, Air Intelligence Report - Hempstead, Long Island, October 29th, 1953.
Link
• "The upper section, partially concealed by cloud, was black and on the lower section there appeared to be four or five panels."
Portuguese Air Force Sergeant José Fransisco Rodrigues describes object encountered flying above Castelo de Bode Dam, Portugal, June 17th, 1977 (power outage of aircraft and dam).
Link / Video
• "As I drew nearer I could see that the object had no wings nor tail nor any other exterior control surfaces protruding from what appeared to be the fuselage. It seemed to be hovering with a little rocking motion. As it rocked up away from me, I could see that it was a disc shaped object. I would guess the diameter at about 50 to 55 feet, the thickness in the middle at about 8 to 10 feet. It had the appearance of sand-blasted aluminum. I could see no windows or doors or any other openings, nor could I see any landing gear doors, protruding, nor showing.. It rose abruptly about 1000 feet above me as I closed in, giving me an excellent view of the underneath side, which was exactly like the upper side as far as I could tell."
Pilot Waldo J. Harris - Salt Lake City, Utah Airport, October 2nd, 1961.
Link / Video
• "This speck suddenly grew extremely quickly until we saw this huge shadow go over the top of us but the most amazing thing about it was there was no noise and absolutely no movement or turbulence at all. We looked at each other, saying, 'What the hell was that'? Several pilots have seen UFOs in England, so it didn't surprise me, but I was surprised that we actually got a picture of it."
Pilot David Hastings, object also witnessed by co-pilot David Paterson - Mojave Desert, September 9th, 1985.
Video
• "It was 20 to 30 feet long and looked like a rifle bullet."
F-61 pilot describes radar confirmed object over Japan - October 15th, 1948.
Link 1 / 2
• "It was a bullet shape, rounded at the front that widened out and tapered to a point at the end. Around the main body, the centre of it, there was a ring that was spinning."
Flight instructor Shannon Davis describes UFO over California, November 5th, 1980.
Video: 8:00
• "It was as clear as seeing a Cadillac drifting by at 100 yards.. The overall configuration was discoidal; the base was bright red, and the dome was glistening white."
Pilot William C. Powell, object also witnessed by passenger Muriel McClave - Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, May 21st, 1966.
Link / PDF
• "On the 24th of August I was flying an F-84 at 35,000 feet, en route to Turner Air Force Base, in Georgia. At 10:15, Mountain Standard Time, I sighted two round silvery objects flying abreast over Hermanas, New Mexico. One made a right turn, in front of my F-84. Both objects disappeared at very high speed, then reappeared over El Paso, Texas. I saw one climb straight up, two or three thousand feet. Then the second one came across in front of me and joined the other in close formation. In a few minutes they both vanished. From their maneuvers and their terrific speed, I am certain their flight performance was greater than any aircraft known today."
USAF Colonel Carl Sanderson.
Link
• "I decided to climb at full thrust to get above the object, but it began to ascend almost parallel to my plane, and when I reached 63,000 ft., it stopped. At this point, I came to within about 300 feet of the UFO. It was about 30 feet in diameter. It was an enameled, cream-colored dome, with a wide, circular, metallic base. It had no engines, no exhausts, no windows, no wings or antennae. It lacked all the typical aircraft components, with no visible propulsion system. It was at that moment that I realized this it was not a spying device, but that it was a UFO, something totally unknown."
Peruvian Air Force Sukhoi S-22 Jet Pilot Commander Oscar Santa Maria Huertas describes UFO encounter over La Joya Military Base, Arequipa, Peru, April 11th, 1980.
Document / Video 1 / 2
• "The Meteor, meanwhile, turned towards Dishforth and the object, while continuing its descent, appeared to follow suit. After a further few seconds, the object stopped its pendulous motion and its descent, and began to rotate on its own axis. Suddenly it accelerated at an incredible speed towards the west turning onto a south easterly heading before disappearing. All this occurred in a matter of fifteen to twenty seconds. The acceleration was in excess of that of a shooting star. I have never seen such a phenomenon before. The movements of the object were not identifiable with anything I have seen in the air and the rate of acceleration was unbelievable."
RAF Flight Lieutenant John Kilburn of 269 Squadron, September 19th, 1952.
Link / Document
• "All of a sudden I was able to make out the complete form of a saucer shape or round object.. I could see the dome, also very vividly clear, including all the windows, I observed it to be of a very bright metal - it was more of a nickel or highly polished chrome or stainless steel type of metal than aluminum because it had more of a mellow glow than if it was of the type finish on a high finish aluminum."
Pilot Floyd P. Hallstrom, Navy combat air crewman (Ret.) - Santa Monica, California, January 1st, 1978.
Link
• "The UFOs appeared, from the ground, to be round in shape and metallic in color. The objects approached the aircraft from the northeast at a speed about three or four times that of the aircraft.. Some of the air crew members reported seeing a pale band of red color about halfway between the top and the edge of the object."
Major Rudy Pestalozzi, USAF Base Intelligence Officer - object also witnessed by B-36 Bomber crew. Davis Montham Air Force base, May 1st, 1952.
Link / Document
• "I found myself astounded but curious, but at 12 miles distance these objects were becoming uncomfortably large, and I was glad to descend and land the aircraft. Many of my passengers saw the objects as did the pilots of another aircraft, 25 miles further south."
Captain Ray Bowyer describes two stationary, cigar-shaped objects emitting a brilliant yellow light (also witnessed by passengers) - flight from England to the Channel Islands, April 23rd, 2007.
Video
• "I looked up in time to see a dark object pass down the right hand side of the aircraft at high speed, it was wedge-shaped with what could have been a black stripe down the side."
Captain Roger Wills and co-pilot Mark Stuart on descent towards Manchester Airport (pilot ducked in his seat) January 6th, 1995.
Link / News Article / Sketch
• “Suddenly, it shot past our left wing not more than twenty or thirty feet off my wingtip. I got an unobstructed view of it. It was football-shaped but wasn’t sharp at the points. It was about three feet long and a foot and a half to two feet thick.”
Pilot flight instructor Lloyd List, object also witnessed by Dr. John Ferguson Clark - Red Bluff, California, September, 1980 (Bob Pratt Archives).
Link
• "During close approaches, the Cessna instruments went crazy.. The ADF was moving around indiscriminately, without any sense of direction. When the light moved a little farther away, everything returned to normal. It repeated this game several times. It seemed to be under intelligent control."
Pilot César Escobar, Paraguay, June 8th, 1991.
Link: Page 8
• "It was a round mass that glowed a dull red like hot steel. It picked up speed 300 to 400 miles an hour and ran out of sight right over South Bend. I used to laugh at all those flying saucer reports but it's no laughing matter now."
Captain Robert Adickes,
object also witnessed by co-pilot and passengers.
Link
• "We all looked to the left at that time and there was this very bright, very brilliant lighted object off to the left of the aircraft.. it did disrupt all three compasses on the aircraft and this was what the concern was."
DC10 Pilot Captain Neil Daniels.
Video
• "From the time we were off the ground at Albany, until we - it's about 15 miles by air to Schenectady and it was off our wingtip, and we watched it go through a ninety degree arc, go right straight to the west."
American Airlines Capt. Raymond Ryan, object also witnessed by First Officer William Neff - April 8th, 1956.
Link / Newsclipping 1 / 2
• "At various times the object had been very close to me and I was able to verify that it was round with two halves shaped like two tight-fitting skullcaps. I carefully looked at the lower one, which seemed to be somewhere between red and brown with a hole or dark spot in the center. The center band looked like it had some kind of a grid, and possibly a few lights, but it was hard to tell since the sun was so bright and was reflected."
Captain Júlio Miguel Guerra, Flight instructor for the Portuguese Air Force in 1982. CNIFO Case Report.
Link 1 / 2
• "I saw several bright lights. I was at my maximum speed, but even then I had no closing speed.. Later I chased a single bright light which I estimated about ten miles away. I lost visual contact with it at about two miles."
F-94 Pilot Lieutenant William Patterson over Washington DC, July 23rd, 1952.
Link / Document
• "On radar I got to do four interceptions and radar contact with all, but I could not see anything at any time, just on the radar. And what impressed me was taken by the target acceleration from a certain moment. Accelerated rapidly until he desacoplasse the radar and I believe around MACH 15, more or less, because it was very fast acceleration. now I was 1.2, 1.3 times the speed of sound and the object reached a speed much higher than I was."
Captain Armindo de Sousa Viriato, Brazil, May 20th, 1986.
Video / Link 1 / 2
• "The UFO never levelled off. It just continued to climb. Aircraft always show movement in relation to the stars but as this light moved higher it seemed to become stabilized with the stars. In other words it appeared to move right out into space."
Captain Darryl Clark, Capt. 329th Fighter Interceptor Squadron (FIS), Edwards Air Force Base, California, October 7th, 1965.
Link / PDF
• "There was something definite in the sky.. If it had proved to be hostile we would have destroyed it."
Major Gerald Smith, USAF. One of the F-106 pilots scrambled under orders from NORAD to investigate a UFO over West Palm Beach, Florida, September 14th, 1972. The UFO was viewed through binoculars by the FAA supervisor George Morales, sighted by an Eastern Airlines captain, police and several civilians, as well as being tracked on radar by Miami International Airport and Homestead AFB.
Link
•"I am convinced there was thought behind the thing's manoeuvres."
F51 pilot Lieutenant George Gorman after being in a 30 minute 'dogfight' with a UFO in 1948.
Link 1 / 2
• "At the moment when I started the last descent, I suddenly saw a white light which came directly on us at full speed in front of me, before instantly stopping at a hundred meters. When I started again the manoeuvers, the object made an odd turn to accompany our descent turn and to pace us at a hundred meters of us. After a while, the saucer, the size of an airliner, changed color, two green lights appearing at the ends with an orange gleam in the center which ignited intermittently."
Flight Captain Jorge Polanco - object also witnessed by passengers (power outage at airport).
Link / 2
• "We're listening to the Command Post tell the cell formation leader 'listen, the UFO is over the base again right now'."
U.S. Air Force KC-135 Stratotanker pilot Michael Wallace discussing UFO incident over Loring Air Force Base, Maine, 1975.
Video / Link 1 / 2
• "I was the pilot of the plane when we saw the UFO. Also on board were Governor Reagan and a couple of his security people. We were flying a Cessna Citation. It was maybe 9 or 10 o'clock at night. We were near Bakersfield, California when Governor Reagan and the others called my attention to a big light flying a bit behind my plane. It appeared to be several hundred yards away. It was a fairly steady light until it began to accelerate, then it appeared to elongate. Then the light took off. It went up at a 45-degree angle-at a high rate of speed. Everyone on the plane was surprised. Governor Reagan expressed amazement. I told the others I didn't know what it was.. The UFO went from a normal cruise speed to a fantastic speed instantly - If you give an airplane power it will accelerate, but not like a hot rod, and that's what this was like."
USAF Colonel Bill Paynter (Ret.) - pilot of Ronald Reagan's Cessna Citation jet plane.
Link
• "I had the impression of a shape and an important mass behind us, much larger than my Mirage. When we landed at Luxeuil, we were shaken."
Colonel René Giraud, French Air Force - Chaumont, France, March 7th, 1977.
Link
•"The object we saw dived at us on a collision course to the extent that I actually called out to my passengers that the object was going to ram us. After the object came at us it reversed course and climbed rapidly into a clear night sky."
Pilot Ernest Stadvec - July, 1961.
Link
• "I looked out ahead of the helicopter and observed an aircraft I have never seen before. This craft positioned itself directly in front of the moving helicopter. This craft was 50 to 60 feet long with a grey metallic structure. On the front of this craft was a large steady bright red light. I could delineate where the red stopped on the structure of this craft because red was reflecting off the grey structure. The design of this craft was symmetrical in shape with a prominent aft indentation on the undercarriage. From this portion of the undercarriage, a green light, pyramid-shaped, emerged with the light initially in the trail position. This green light then swung 90 degrees, coming directly into the front windshield and lighting up the entire cockpit of the aircraft. All colors inside the cabin of the helicopter were absorbed by this green light. That includes the instrument panel lights on the aircraft. As a result of my experience, I am convinced this object was real and that these types of incidents should require a thorough investigation."
Lieutenant Colonel Lawrence J. Coyne describes UFO witnessed with three other airmen over Mansfield, Ohio, October 18th, 1973.
Link / Video
• "There were bright objects hanging over the sea. The closest object was luminous, round and four to five times larger than a Whirlwind helicopter.
The objects separated. Then one went west of the other, as it manoeuvred it changed shape to become body-shaped with projections like arms and legs."
RAF Flight Lt A.M. Wood, RAF Boulmer, Northumberland - object confirmed on radar and witnessed by two RAF personnel (British MOD document so sensitive that 'an extra three years added to its 25 year release date').
Link
• "A mysterious elliptical luminous object appeared just after I had passed Himeji. I was flying at the time at an altitude of about 2,000 metres. The object followed for a while, and then stopped for about three minutes, and then followed along my left wing across the Inland Sea for a distance of about 90 kilometres until we reached Matsuyama on Shikoku Island. It then disappeared."
Yoshiaka Inaba, TOA Airlines pilot over the Leshima Islands in the Seto Inland Sea, Japan - March, 1965 (Tokyo Japan Times / UPI Agency release originating from Hiroshima).
Link
• "The sighting was definitely of some flying object unlike anything then or even presently known."
Cmdr. M. B. Taylor, USNR (Ret.), former Navy pilot and guided missile expert under Rear Adm. Delmer S. Fahrney - July 3rd, 1949.
Link / PDF
• "Just after this exchange, the object began to maneuver. It darted hither and yon, rising and falling in undulating flight, making sharper turns than any known aircraft, sometimes changing direction 90 degrees in an instant. All the while the color remained constant, a brilliant blue-white, and the object did not grow or lessen in size. Macintosh and I sat there completely flabbergasted at this unnerving exhibition. I thought of calling the passengers over the public address system, but the object was dead ahead of us and putting on its performance in an area whose arc was not large enough to enable anybody in the cabin to get a view of it out the side windows. After a half minute or so of this dancing, unorthodox flight the object suddenly became motionless and hovered dead still. We were simply confounded by this."
Capital Airlines Pilot Captain W. J. Hull, object also witnessed by Co-Pilot Macintosh - Alabama, 1956.
Link / PDF
• "Off my wing. a little below us, in the direction of Cologne, I saw four or five objects that looked like silvery footballs. They didn't seem to be moving. but they must have been, for they stayed even with us."
Photo Reconnaissance Pilot Joe Thompson Jr. - WWII mission over the Rhine Valley, Germany.
Link / PDF / Reports: Video 1 / 2
• "I noticed an object coming toward us from the direction of Youngstown to the southeast, I swung over to get a closer look when the object headed directly toward our airplane. It stopped and hung motionless in the air momentarily, and as our aircraft came closer, it moved swiftly upward and came back at us from another angle. It appeared metallic and had a light beaming from its underside, it was from six to ten feet in diameter and from 16 to 20 feet tall. It suddenly sped in an easterly direction at amazing speed and was quickly out of sight."
Cessna 172 Skyhawk Pilot Richard Montgomery - Warren, Ohio, July 8th, 1968.
Link
• "Suggestions that the three objects were balloons, stars or satellites, strange clouds or reflections are quite unacceptable to us. As I looked to the west we saw this very bright headlamp in the sky. All the cabin staff saw it too and I told the passengers. Then it was joined by two cigar-shaped objects as big and solid as battleships."
British Airways Captain Dennis Wood, Portugal, July 30th, 1976.
Link / Video
• "I set my course and walked back aft and Dr Mosier was sitting back there and he was a Commander in the Navy at the time and I asked him, 'Doc did you see what we saw?' and he said 'Yes, it was a flying saucer - I didn't look at it because I don't believe in such things'."
Naval Pilot Lieutenant Graham Bethune, object also witnessed by Co-Pilot Lt. Fred W. Kingdon - Flight 125 from Keflavik, February 10th, 1951.
Link / Video
• "It definitely had no wings. It was brown, appeared to be round and had a number of projections, looking rather like some kind of radio antennae, on its surface. I have never seen anything like it before."
Captain Gordon Pendleton, object also witnessed by First Officer J.P. Murphy - Irish Times, Reuters News Agency, May 22nd, 1962.
Link / Video
• "I approached the object, which was flashing with intense red, green, orange and blue light so bright that I was not able to see its body. The sequence of flashes was extremely fast, like a strobe light. We locked on it with radar; it was at 30° left, at a range of 25 miles. The size on the radar scope was comparable to that of a 707 tanker."
General Parviz Jafari (Ret.), Tehran, Iran, September, 1976.
Documents: PDF / Video: 1 / 2 / 3
• "The object was humongous, whatever it was.. I don't know if it was a biblical experience or somebody from a different universe or whatever but it was definitely not from around these parts."
Private Pilot Steve Allen, Stephenville, Texas, January 8th, 2008.
Interview: 7:30 / Link
• "Mayday, Mayday, Ercoupe ocho cero, eight zero, zero, Hotel. We can see a strange object in our course, we are lost, Mayday, Mayday. Ah we are going from Santo Domingo to ah San Juan International but we found ah a weird object in our course that made us change course about three different times we got it right in front of us now at one o’clock, our heading is zero seven zero degrees.. our altitude one thousand six hundred a zero seven zero degrees.. our VORs got lost off frequency.. Right now we are supposed to be a about thirty five miles from the coast of Puerto Rico but we have something weird in front of us that make us lose course all the time I changed our course a second (unintelligible) our present heading right now is three hundred we are right again in the same stuff sir.”
Pilot Jose Pagan Santos (last words of) - Puerto Rico, June 28th, 1980.
Video / Link
• "In concealing the evidence of UFO operations, the Air Force is making a serious mistake."
USAF Lieutenant Colonel James McAshan.
• "Now all pilots today by law in the civil aviation regulation are required to report any observation that may come under the heading of unidentified flying object. It seems strange in some way that the government position frequently appears to be to obtain this information and then through government policy (or whatever motivates the government position) to try and immediately ridicule the experiences of these people."
USAF Lieutenant Colonel J. B. Hartranft, Jr. (Ret.), Pilot and President of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) - Press Conference, March 28th, 1966.
Audio
• "There is a publication called JANAP 146E that had a section that says you will not reveal any information regarding the UFO phenomenon under penalty of $10,000 fine and ten years in jail. I never reported anything to FAA or the military. A lot of pilots just did not want to get involved in this because of peer pressure and ridicule. So the secret has been kept."
US Navy Pilot Lieutenant Frederick M. Fox.
Video
• "We've seen something, I've seen something, hundreds of pilots have seen something in the skies - we have dutifully reported these things and we have to have 15 million witnesses before anybody is going to look into the problem seriously? Why this is utterly fantastic, this is more fantastic than flying saucers or people from Venus or anything as far as I'm concerned."
Pilot Kenneth Arnold.
Video / E-Book
• Pilot statements from NICAP report on 'Air Force Observations':
Quote:• "I was on a mission from Ceylon, bombing Palembang, Sumatra. The date was August 10, 1944.. the right gunner and my co-pilot reported a strange object pacing us about 500 yards off the starboard wing. At that distance it appeared as a spherical object, probably 5 or 6 feet in diameter, of a very bright and intense red or orange in color. It seemed to have a halo effect. My gunner reported it coming in from about five o'clock position at our level. It seemed to throb or vibrate constantly. Assuming it was some kind of radio controlled object sent to pace us, I went into evasive action, changing direction constantly as much as 90 degrees and altitude about 2000 feet. It followed our every maneuver for about 8 minutes, always holding a position of about 500 yards out and about 2 o'clock in relation to the plane. When it left, it made an abrupt 90 degree turn, up and accelerating rapidly; it disappeared in the overcast."
USAF Captain Alvah M. Reida, Airplane Commander on B-26's, B-24's and B-29's.
• "I was making a scheduled flight from Langley Field, Virginia to MacDill Field, Tampa, Florida. At approximately 6 p.m. while flying a C -47 at 4000 feel northeast of Tampa I observed what I thought to be a shooting star to the southeast over the Atlantic Ocean. My copilot, Lt. Henry F. Glass and my engineer both observed this object at the same time. This object continued toward us on a collision course at our exact altitude. At about 1000 yards it veered to cross our path. We observed it to be a long, cylindrical shape approximately twice the size of a B-29, with luminous portholes."
USAF Captain Jack Puckett, Flying Safety Officer, Tactical Air Command, 300th Base Unit, Langley Field, August 1st, 1946.
• "I chased the light up and down and around for about 10 minutes, then as a last resort I made a pass and turned on my landing lights. Just before the object made a final tight turn and headed for the coast I saw that it was a dark gray oval-shaped object, smaller than my T-6."
USAF Lt. Henry G. Combs describes a UFO which took 'violent evasive action' over Andrews AFB on November 18th, 1948.
Link
• Pilot statements from NARCAP's technical report into 'under reporting bias' of the UFO/UAP phenomenon:
Quote:• "We didn't say anything. We figured nobody would believe us."
Charter Pilot.
• "Upon return to my domicile, JFK, I reported our sighting to the proper authorities. I was shortly visited by two federal investigators who evidently thought I was hallucinating for one of them stated he had seen spaceships while fishing in Great South Bay and was quite obviously trying to prove that I was a loony."
Captain, Pan Am (Ret.)
• "It must have been Huge! We were all due back at JFK about the same time two days later so I waited in the crew ready room to talk to them. None of them wanted to talk! They were afraid management would take them off of flying status and have them tested for booze and drugs. The story never came out!"
Flight Engineer, TWA (Ret.)
• "A group of lights in the air appeared at our 12o'clock position. I called departure control and asked them if they had any traffic in that area. When they came back and said NO, what do you see, I said no, just checking. For at that time when a pilot reported seeing a UFO he was in a lot of trouble."
Captain, Ozark Airlines (Ret.)
• "I, and Flight crew saw something (in broad daylight) that did things that no known aircraft could do without killing any living thing inside. I will only give sketchy details to protect the privacy of the rest of the crew. If you are interested, and all information (is) kept anonymous, contact me. I will not present myself for public ridicule."
Captain, NW (Ret.)
• Pilot UFO Encounters - Newsclippings:
