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This Project Blue Book file, released through The Black Vault, covers the RB-47 encounter of 17 July 1957 over Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas and Oklahoma. It includes the record card, which lists the sighting as identified as American Airlines flight 655, and Air Defense Command correspondence that carried the sighting as unknown. There is also Major Lewis D. Chase's observer data sheet and an electronic analysis finding it difficult to conclude nothing was present. James McDonald's reconstructed account is included, along with a CAA letter about airliner incidents.
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
McClure, when plotted against the RB-47 flight path, generally coincide with the direc tion to the Duncanville radar. The match is not perfect, but McClure never had the oppor tunity to check the accuracy of the figures contained in the Piwetz report and we are almost certain that there was at least one typographical error [11:02Z vs. 11:20Z.]
If the S-band signals displayed on the ALA-6 came from ground radars, and if the unidentified radar target briefly observed on the Duncanville scopes was later identi field as ordinary air traffic, then this case really boils down to the bright luminous object that flashed by the RB-47 at 10:10Z, which had all the earmarks of a bright meteor, and the various colored lights later observed in the general vicinity of Dallas/ Ft. Worth. The latter could have a variety of explanations, including other air traffic.
IT IS NOT SURPRISING THAT THE SERIES OF UNUSUAL INCIDENTS PROMPTED THE RB-47 CREW TO BELIEVE THAT THEY HAD HAD AN ENCOUNTER WITH A UFO. In 1957, with UFO reports and interest at nearly an all-time high, it would have been surprising if the RB-47 crew had not reached such a conclusion.
## CREW COMMENTS:
A draft of this analysis-report was submitted to the two principal RB-47 crew members involved in this incident for their reactions, which follow:
## Lewis D. Chase, RB-47 aircraft commander/pilot:
"I think this study is an excellent work! I apologize for fearing you would not go in deep enough with your analysis. Congratulations, and my thanks, for giving me a plausible explanation for the events that happened to my crew that night in 1957."
## Frank B. McClure, ECM Monitor #2:
"I am certain that for some reason we had intercepted ground signal that moved up-scope. I know that once we were near Dallas and (flying) north toward Forbes (AF Base), the signals were undoubtedly CPS-6B/FPS-10 air defense radars. I do not believe any UFO was emitting these signals."
## IMPLICATIONS:
In presenting this case to AIAA members, the AIAA's UFO Subcommittee observed: "This sample case may serve to illuminate the difficulties in deciding whether or not the UFO problem presents a scientific problem." This case does indeed illuminate two central aspects of the entire UFO issue:
1. If it were not for the belated discovery of the original ("contemporary") records, meager as they are, this case would be unexplainable simply because of the discrepancies that have--understandably--crept into the current recollections by the principals of events that transpired 14 years ago. Because most of the old UFO cases lack such original documentation, they must remain unexplained. But this lack-of-explanation should not imply that they involve extraterrestrial spaceships or other exotic phenomena.
2. Even when original data are available, if an investigator approaches his task with a conscious, or unconscious, desire to find no conventional explanation so as to end up with extraterrestrial spaceships as the only possible alternative, then the investigator will find no plausible conventional explanation.
Philip J. Klass December 30,1971 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. 57 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.