Project Blue Book documents on the Killian case, compiled by Dan Wilson

Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.

ATIC had been collecting facts and trying to analyze them. The basic piece of evidence was Captain Killian's own report to American Airlines. made a few hours after the incident took place. After describing the circumstances of the sighting, the appearance and behavior of the lights, the statement continues:

The only possible explanation other than flying saucers could be a jet-tanker refueling operation. Never having witnessed refueling operations at night, I am not aware of the lighting of the jet tanker.

"My air speed during this complete flight was 250 knots indicated. I also do not know the air speed of tankers during operation if this could be so. I contacted ATC to find out if they had any airplanes on a clearance and no three airplanes were given.

"In summary, it was difficult for me to believe they were jets because of low speed and configuration. If they weren't jets I still don't know any more than I did before even though I watched them for forty minutes before. Due to the dark and strong lights I was not able to ascertain any size or shape. The altitude of the objects was 30 degrees above my horizon. Distance away is unknown." [2]

Almost equally important was the evidence of other witnesses. During the forty-minute period of observation, the crews of five other planes, all flying west in the Pennsylvania-Ohio region, had watched the lights for varying lengths of time. Several persons on the ground in and near Akron had seen them between 9:15 and 9:30.

Air Force investigators methodically gathered the facts and made their analysis and on March 16, only twenty days after the sighting, they released a summary to the press. The mysterious lights belonged to normal terrestrial aricraft. Although ATC at Detroit had apparently not had the information when first asked, three B-47 bombers of the Strategic Air Command had been carrying out a night refueling operation from KC-97 tankers at the time and place reported. The tanker has several groups of lights which, from a distance, can seem to be one or more lights, and would have looked very much like the three objects described by Captain Killian. Such a refueling operation takes from about forty minutes to more than an hour.

Captain Killian had been flying at an altitude of 8500 feet, and he had given the location of the unknowns as 30 degrees above his horizon; this agreed with the position of the tankers, which were operating at an altitude of 17,000 feet. Captain Killian had been flying west at an indicated air speed of 250 knots; the refueling tankers had also been flying west at a true air speed of 230 knots (ca. 270 mph). Since the courses of plane and tankers were roughly parallel, the tankers had remained in view and would have arrived over Akron at about 9:15. the time that ground observers reported the lights.

Everything checked. Every detail of the incident was accounted for [11]. Nevertheless the solution caused an explosion in the camps of the savcer enthusiasts, who called it among other things. "Imaginative." Forgetting that the "Orion" theory suggested immediately after the sighting had been only tentative, UFO addicts ridiculed it and asked why the experts had been "forced to come up with this second explanation"—which they greeted with equal ridicule [12].

Captain Killian, too, had apparently forgotten his first report. On March 24, a month after the sighting, in an interview by the Long