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This Project Blue Book case file, digitized by the Internet Archive, covers Incident 144: two Eastern Airlines pilots reported that a wingless, cigar-shaped object with a flaming exhaust passed their DC-3 about 20 miles southwest of Montgomery, Alabama, on 24 July 1948. The file includes an OSI interview with a Robins Air Force Base employee who saw a similar object, negative aircraft traffic reports from many bases, and later correspondence. A December 1948 intelligence report found fairly consistent descriptions across four related sightings.
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
# Flame-Shooting Vingless Plane Reported Met in Alabama Skies ATLANTA, July 24.—Two Eastern Air Lines pilots said they met a wingless two-deck plane early today southwest of Montgomery, Ala. They said the strange ship, shooting red flames and with a blue glow underneath the fuselage, passed the E. A. L. ship at 5,000 feet headed toward New Orleans. The pilots said the stranger looked like a "Buck Rogers rocket ship." The two pilots—Captain C. S. Childs and Co-pilot J. B. Whitted—were flying the Houston-to-Atlanta-to-Boston run. They left Houston, Tex., at 8:30 o'clock last night. They sighted the strange craft at 2:45 o'clock this morning twenty miles southwest of Montgomery. After reaching Atlanta at 3:49 a.m. they told of their strange experience. Captain Childs said they first sighted the object up ahead when nearing Montgomery. "It was in line almost with our flight," he said. "We veered off to the left and this object turned to its left. When it came nearer to us, within better sight, its fuse-lage appeared to be about 100 feet in length and about four times the circumference of a B-28 fuselage. "It had two rows of windows, an upper and a lower. They were square. Out of the rear of the ship red flames were shooting twenty-five to fifty feet. There was a blue glow underneath the fuselage. The ship appeared to be doing between 500 and 700 miles an hour, heading toward New Orleans. "When it got alongside of us it pulled up with a tremendous burst of flame out of the rear. The flames were so bright they blinded us for a second. Then the ship disappeared into the broken clouds. The moon was shining intermittently and the ship could be seen for a few seconds and would then be obscured. The ship had no wings. It seemed to have an upper deck, and a lower deck and was fully lighted inside. We saw no occupants." Of the twenty passengers Captain Childs said only one was awake and saw the ower ship. The third saucer classic did not involve a saucer at all, but a "wingless aircraft, 100 feet long, cigar-shaped and about twice the diameter of a B-29." It was sighted the night of July 21, 1948, of an Eastern Airlines plane. The underside of the thing had a deep blue glow, "there were "two rows of windows from which red flames!" Only one passenger of the flight was awake at the time. He saw only "a trail of fire." On the basis of later experience, the project was fairly sure that this was a meteor. At about the same time, a plane flying between Blackstone, Va., and Greensboro, S. C., reported independently that it had seen a "bright shooting star" in the direction of Montgomery. Whitted Something into another "mother ship." It was in sight vanished into the black night. But it flies on endlessly in the pages of saucer lore, a transport from outer space packed to the guawakes with flying disks.
Document, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 161 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.