Capital Airlines Flight 77: the skeptic captain and the blue-white light (1956)

Captain William J. Hull, known as Joe, was no believer. In September 1953 the Capital Airlines pilot published "The Obituary of the Flying Saucers" in The Air Line Pilot. It endorsed Donald Menzel's explanations and dismissed believers as gullible. Donald Keyhoe replied in the October issue.

Then came the letters. Captain William B. Nash, a witness in the 1952 Nash-Fortenberry sighting, criticised the article sharply. By November 22, 1953, Hull had accepted the criticism. He dropped his skeptical stance and promised a corrective column.

November 14, 1956. Capital Airlines Flight 77, a Vickers Viscount, was flying from New York to Mobile. Southeast of Jackson, Alabama, about 60 miles from Mobile, it was descending at about 300 mph. Hull had 17 years of experience and 3 million flight miles. First Officer Peter H. Macintosh flew beside him.

At about 10:10 p.m. a light appeared at the top of the windshield. It fell across their path from left to right, like a meteor. It did not burn out. It "halted abruptly directly in front of the plane." Hull described an intense blue-white light, "approximately 7 or 8 times as bright as Venus when this planet is at its brightest magnitude," about one tenth the size of the moon and at roughly 10,000 feet.

Then it moved. "It darted hither and yon, rising and falling in undulating flight, making sharper turns than any known aircraft, sometimes changing direction 90 degrees in an instant." It hovered again. Hull radioed the tower. "Bates Tower, this is Capital 77. Look out toward the north and east and see if you can see a strange white light hovering in the sky."

As the tower answered, the light began again. "Another series of crazy gyrations, lazy 8's, square chandelles, all the while weaving through the air with a sort of rhythmic, undulating cadence." The airliner was closing at more than 5 miles a minute, but the light kept the same distance. Then it left, and Hull wrote, "The object shot out over the Gulf of Mexico, rising at the most breathtaking angle and at such a fantastic speed that it diminished rapidly to a pinpoint." About two minutes had passed.

The ground could not confirm it. "We are unable to see much of the sky because of a thick cloud cover," the tower replied, although a NICAP summary says the tower watched later manoeuvres. Radar at Brookley Field was not operational. No photograph or film of the light is known.

Project Blue Book classified the case as unexplained. It appears in Brad Sparks' catalogue of Blue Book Unknowns as case 1214. The Condon Committee discussed it in its 1968 report, and NICAP counts it among that study's unexplained cases. The crew's own first reading was a meteor, rejected because the light stopped and manoeuvred. No official or skeptical explanation of this specific sighting has been found.

In 1957 the story ran through the UFO press. NICAP's UFO Investigator headlined it "UFO Encounter Convinces Airline Captain, Former Skeptic." The APRO Bulletin covered it as well. One unverified account says Hull saw another brilliant object over Chesapeake Bay that same year.

He did not fly much longer. On April 6, 1958, Hull died in the crash of Capital Airlines Flight 67, a Viscount that went down near Freeland, Michigan. All 47 people aboard were killed. His sighting is still cited as the case of the skeptic who became a witness.