Chiles-Whitted UFO Encounter — Eastern Airlines

On the night of July 24, 1948, Captain Clarence S. Chiles and co-pilot John B. Whitted were piloting an Eastern Airlines DC-3 on a routine flight near Montgomery, Alabama. At approximately 2:45 AM, both pilots observed a large, brightly lit object approaching them head-on at high speed. Both men described the object as a torpedo or rocket-shaped craft approximately 100 feet in length, with a double row of windows along its fuselage that emitted a warm, soft light from within. The object had no wings and trailed a 50-foot tongue of reddish-orange flame from its rear. It passed within 700 feet of the aircraft, close enough for both pilots to observe the windows in detail, and appeared to pull up sharply before disappearing into the cloud deck. A single passenger, Clarence McKelvie, was awake in the rear of the aircraft and reported seeing a bright streak pass the window, corroborating that something had passed at high speed. The encounter was immediately reported and became one of the central cases reviewed by Air Force Project Sign. Project Sign analysts produced an "Estimate of the Situation" document concluding the sighting was evidence of interplanetary craft. This estimate was reportedly suppressed by Air Force Chief of Staff General Hoyt Vandenberg, who refused to accept its conclusions and ordered the document destroyed. The Chiles-Whitted case thus became not only a landmark pilot sighting but a documented instance of high-level official suppression of findings pointing toward an extraordinary conclusion.