Capital Airlines Flight pilot Capt. W. J. Hul was flying a Capital Airlines Viscount at 12,000 feet approaching Norfolk, Virginia . There was a Northeast Airlines DC-6 flying at 20,000 feet "directly above" the Viscount. The object "was brilliant; it flew fast and then abruptly halted 20 miles in front of us at 60,000 feet altitude." The Northeast pilot looked for the object on radar and "could get no return on his screen with the antenna straight ahead but when tilted upward 15° he got an excellent blip right where I told him to look for the object."

This object "dissolved right in front of my eyes, and the crew above lost it from the scope at the same time. They said it just faded away. This sighting covered "several minutes." (Hull, W J).

Condon Report: 14-N. This file actually consists of two similar cases reported by a Capital Airlines pilot with 17 years and 3,000,000 mi. logged. The first case occurred over central Alabama the night of 14 November 1956; the second case was on the night of 30 August 1957, over Chesapeake Bay near Norfolk, Va.

The first sighting took place about 60 mi. NNE of Mobile, Ala. while on a flight from New York to Mobile in a Viscount at "high altitude," probably about 25,000 ft. It was a moonless, starry night and there was an occasionally broken undercast. The object seen was described as an intense blue-white light about 1/10 the size of the moon (~3' arc) and about "seven or eight times as bright as Venus at its brightest magnitude." It first appeared 2210 LST at the upper left of the Viscount's windshield falling towards the right and decelerating rapidly as a normal meteor would. Pilot and co-pilot both took it to be an unusually brilliant meteor. However, this "meteor" did not burn out as expected, but "abruptly halted directly in front of us and began to hover motionless." The aircraft at this time was over Jackson, Ala. and had descended to 10,000 ft. The pilot contacted Bates Field control tower in Mobile and asked if they could see the object which he described to them as "a brilliant white light bulb." They could not see it. The pilot then asked Bates to contact nearby Brookley AFB to see if they could plot the object on radar. He never learned what the result of this request had been. The object began maneuvering "darting hither and yon, rising and falling in undulating f light, making sharper turns than any known aircraft, sometimes changing direction 90° in an instant -- the color remained constant, -- and the object did not grow or lessen in size. "After a "half minute or so" of this maneuvering, the object suddenly became motionless again. Again, the object "began another series of crazy gyrations, lazy eights, square chandelles, all the while weaving through the air with a sort of rhythmic, undulating cadence." Following this last exhibition, the object "shot out over the Gulf of Mexico, rising at the most breath-taking angle and at such a fantastic speed that it diminished rapidly to a pinpoint and was swallowed up in the night."

The whole incident took about two minutes. The pilot remembers noting that the time was 2212 EST. The object appeared to be at the same distance from the aircraft, which was flying a little faster than 300 mph. during the entire episode. The second incident reported by this pilot, the 30 August 1957, Chesapeake Bay report, occurred as he was flying another Capital Airlines Viscount at 12,000 ft. approaching Norfolk, Va. There was a Northeast Airlines DC-6 flying at 20,000 ft. "directly above" the Viscount. In this case, the object "was brilliant; it flew fast and then abruptly halted 20 mi. in front of us at 60,000 ft. altitude." The Northeast pilot looked for the object on radar and "could get no return on his screen with the antenna straight ahead but when tilted upward 15° he got an excellent blip right where I told him to look for the object."

This object "dissolved right in front of my eyes, and the crew above lost it from the scope at the same time. They said it just faded away. This sighting covered "several minutes."

These two similar sightings are very difficult to account for. The first sighting over Alabama has most of the characteristics of an optical mirage: an object at about the same altitude seeming to "pace" the aircraft, the meanderings being easily accountable for as normal "image wander." However, there are two aspects that negate this hypothesis:

- the manner of appearance and disappearance of the UFO is inconsistent with the geometry of a mirage; the high angle of appearance at the top of the windshield is particularly damaging in this regard;

- there was no known natural or astronomical object in the proper direction to have caused such a mirage. Venus, the only astronomical object of sufficient brightness, was west of the sun that date; Saturn had set 4 hr. 30 mm. earlier, and there was not even a first magnitude star near l90° -2l0° azimuth, 0° elevation angle.

The second sighting is equally difficult to explain as a mirage, which seems to be the only admissable natural explanation in view of the pilot's experience as an observer. The reasons are twofold:

- the apparent angle at which the object was observed is incompatible with a mirage;

- there was apparently a radar return obtained from the object which is incompatible with the hypothesis that it was an astronomical object, the most likely mirage-producer.

The pilot stated that the Northeast DC-6 flying at 20,000 ft. "painted" the UFO at 15° elevation and a range of 20 mi. This would place the UFO at about 48,500 ft., the pilots estimate of 60,000 ft. apparently being in error. Presumably then, the elevation angle as viewed from the Capital Viscount was about 19°. It is very unlikely that any temperature inversion sufficient to produce a mirage would be tilted at such an angle. For a near-horizontal layer to have produced such an image (plus the radar return) by partial reflection of a ground-based object seems equally unlikely. The largest optical partial reflection that such a layer might produce at an angle of 19° would be about 10-14 as bright as the object reflected (see Section VI, Chapter 4). This is a decrease of 35 magnitudes. Such a dim object would be ordinarily invisible to the unaided eye.

In summary, these two cases must be considered as unknowns.

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