Chiles–Whitted 1948: two airline pilots, a flaming 'rocket ship' and a probable meteor

In the early hours of 24 July 1948 two Eastern Air Lines pilots reported a wingless object trailing flame, with two rows of lit windows, passing their DC-3 near Montgomery, Alabama. The Air Force file holds their statements, an astronomer's meteor hypothesis and a final evaluation of probable meteor.

32.1742° N · 86.5497° W · 20 mi SW of Montgomery, Alabama · 24 Jul 1948

Source: NARA Archive

Trip 576

Eastern Air Lines Trip 576 left Houston, Texas, at 8:40 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on a Friday night in July 1948, bound for Atlanta. The co-pilot, John B. Whitted, wrote that at 0245 EST the crew, flying at 5,000 feet about 25 miles southwest of Montgomery, Alabama, saw a strange object coming toward them at a high rate of speed, with a stream of red fire coming from its tail ^[2].

Captain Clarence S. Chiles set down his own account for Eastern Air Lines in Atlanta on 3 August 1948. He placed the encounter twenty miles southwest of Montgomery on 24 July. At 2:45 a.m., he wrote, what looked like a jet aircraft came toward them to their right and slightly above, on a clear moonlit night with excellent visibility. They watched it for around ten seconds. It had no wings, shot flame some fifty feet from the rear and had two rows of windows, which he took to mean an upper and a lower deck, with a very bright light glowing inside. Underneath it there was a blue glow. It pulled up into light broken clouds and was lost from view ^[1].

Whitted wrote that he could see no wings, that the object was cigar shaped and about a hundred feet long, and that its fuselage looked about three times the circumference of a B-29's. Its windows were very large and seemed square. He estimated that they watched it for at least 5 seconds and not more than 10, at a distance of about half a mile ^[2].

It was clear there were no wings present

— Capt. Clarence S. Chiles, statement written in Atlanta, 3 August 1948 [1]

What the crew did next

Whitted wrote that Chiles had the company radio operator at Columbus, Georgia, ask Lawson Field at Fort Benning whether the Army had any jet or experimental planes nearby. The answer came back that Lawson Field had no planes flying in the area, and Chiles radioed that a strange aircraft had just passed them that looked like some type of rocket ship. Ground fog made them skip Columbus, and they flew on to Atlanta ^[2]. Chiles added that the only passenger awake at the time saw only the trail of fire as the object passed and pulled into the clouds ^[1].

An unsigned Air Force summary in the case file, headed "TRUE 'UNKNOWN'", records Chiles turning to his co-pilot and saying, "Look, here comes a new Army jet job." It gives the object as a wingless aircraft 100 feet long, cigar-shaped and about twice the diameter of a B-29, passing on the right at about half a mile before pulling up sharply into a cloud ^[3]. The pilots' own figures for distance, size and duration therefore differ from each other and from the summary.

Both pilots wrote that they felt nothing as the object went by: Chiles reported no prop wash or rough air, and Whitted no noise or turbulence ^[1][2]. Ruppelt's 1956 book, a main source for later retellings, says the DC-3 hit turbulent air just as the object flashed past; the crew's written statements contradict this ^[10].

We heard no noise nor did we feel any turbulence from the object.

— First Officer John B. Whitted, statement in the Blue Book file [2]

The witness at Robins Air Force Base

On 10 August 1948 Lt. Col. Cropper of the 6th District Office of Special Investigations interrogated a Robins Air Force Base employee near Macon, Georgia, whose name is blacked out in the released file. He was 23, a member of the Transient Maintenance Alert Crew on the midnight shift, and said the object appeared between 0140 and 0150 Eastern Standard Time while he stood fire guard on a C-47. It came out of the north, stayed in view for about twenty seconds and was last seen taking a southwest course ^[4].

J. Allen Hynek, the astronomer who reviewed the case as Incident #144, also linked it to two sightings near Blackstone, Virginia, that same night ^[5]. He noted that the Robins and Montgomery reports were exactly one hour apart if both times really were in Eastern Standard Time ^[6].

appeared to be a cylindrical shaped object with a long stream of fire coming out of the tail end.

— Robins AFB employee, OSI interrogation, 10 August 1948 [4]

Hynek's meteor hypothesis

Hynek wrote that the two reliable pilots obviously saw something. Taking only some parts of their description (tremendous bursts of flame, cigar shape, orange-red flame, five to ten seconds in sight, a disappearance into a cloud), he judged that this much at least could be satisfied by a brilliant, slow-moving meteor. He found the orange-red flame particularly suggestive, and noted that the one passenger awake gave a description that agreed with a meteor rather than a space ship. Whether a bright meteor's trail could produce the impression of lit windows, he wrote, would have to be left to the psychologists ^[5].

His conclusion turned on the clock. If the one-hour gap was real, the object was some form of aircraft; if it was not, and the airline had been keeping daylight saving time, it must have been an extraordinary meteor. Two separate objects on the same course, exactly one hour apart, he considered too improbable ^[6]. A typed evaluation sheet in the Blue Book file records the sighting as "Probable Astro (METEOR)" ^[7].

For #144, there is no astronomical explanation if we accept the report at face value.

— J. Allen Hynek, analysis of Incident #144 [5]

The Estimate of the Situation

Edward Ruppelt, who later headed Project Blue Book, wrote that a few days after the DC-3 encounter people at the Air Technical Intelligence Center decided to write an "Estimate of the Situation", and that its estimate was that the objects were interplanetary. He says it reached Air Force Chief of Staff General Hoyt S. Vandenberg, who rejected it because the report lacked proof. Months later, he wrote, it was declassified and burned, though a few copies were kept and he saw one ^[10]. No copy is in this archive, and Ruppelt's account is the only source cited here for its contents.

Popular accounts often say Vandenberg ordered every copy destroyed, but Ruppelt, the source of the story, says only that the Estimate was rejected, later declassified and burned, and that copies survived ^[10]. Records from the same weeks do survive. On 3 November 1948 Major General C. P. Cabell wrote to Air Materiel Command that the conclusion appeared inescapable that some type of flying object had been observed, and asked for its conclusions ^[8]. The command's reply of 8 November listed cigar-shaped aircraft without wings or fins among the reported types, said no physical evidence had been obtained, and found that there was as yet no conclusive proof these objects were real aircraft ^[9].

The possibility that the reported objects are vehicles from another planet has not been ignored.

— Air Materiel Command reply to Headquarters USAF, 8 November 1948 [9]

Last fact-checked: 2026-10-03. Every claim cites its source.