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This NICAP compilation by Dan Wilson gathers Project Blue Book records on the sighting of 24 February 1959, when American Airlines Flight 139, flying from Newark to Detroit, and two United Airlines crews saw three lights over Pennsylvania and Ohio. It includes the record card, pilot statements, Air Force letters and correspondence with an Akron UFO committee. The Air Force concluded that the lights came from three B-47s refueling from KC-97 tankers. Book excerpts disputing Captain Killian's later claims are also included.
“Long John Nebel”1 page
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about 15 hours before the sightings of the UFO's reported here. The color of the meteor at first appeared as orange, changing to blue, green and white, and then apparently the object exploded. It came from the northeast, moving west, and disappeared in the northwest. It was visible in Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and Minnesota. Except for the fairly long time it was in sight some observers believed they watched it for 15 to 30 seconds and had time to stop their cars and get out before the object disappeared there seems no reason to doubt that this was a meteor. It was not, obviously, a temperature inversion. THE HUMAN MIND is a strange instrument. It seeks constantly to explain the inexplicable in terms of the familiar. It rejects the unfamiliar almost automatically, and it forgets facts that do not square with its own remembered patterns. So it was that Mr. Puscas, a month after he had enthusiastically endorsed the descriptions of Captain Killian, was relieved to accept the Air Force explanation of jet tanker refueling operations. He told the Detroit Times, "I never attached any importance to the fact that they may have been fying saucers-but I'm surprised that it's something as easily recognizable as jet planes. Anyway, I'm glad to hear what it was because I knew darned well I saw something." Other persons were not that easily impressed. Killian himself declared, "I am sure there are people on other planets who have solved the problem of space travel. I sincerely believe their vehicles are coming close to the earth." American Airlines itself, in commenting on sighting locations, declared that its pilots had had a considerable number of sightings in the Midwest, where this encounter occurred. Lieut. Col. Lee B. James, an Army missile expert from the Huntsville, Ala.. group directed by Wernher von Braun, spoke before the Michigan Society of Professional Engineers the day after the Killian sighting and declared it was quite possible that the UFO's sighted the night of February 24 were from outer space. "I know they are not from here and they are not coming from Russia." Colonel James declared. "We in this civilization are not that advanced yet." If Killian and the other airline crews and passengers really saw what they reported the UFO's would have to come from a civilization in outer space far more advanced than ours, declared Colonel James. The fact that the objects did not
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