Chiles saw it first and took it to be a jet plane. But the next instant both pilots saw that this was no jet fighter.
“It was heading southwest,” Chiles said later, “exactly opposite to our course. Whatever it was, it flashed down toward us at terrific speed. We veered to the left. It veered sharply, too, and passed us about seven hundred feet to the right. I saw then that it had no wings.”
The mystery ship passed on Whitted’s side, and he had a fairly close look.
“The thing was about one hundred feet long, cigar-shaped, and wingless,” he described it. “It was about twice the diameter of a B-twenty-nine, with no protruding fins.”
Captain Chiles said the cabin appeared like a pilot compartment, except for its eerie brilliance. Both he and Whitted agreed it was as bright as a magnesium flare. They saw no occupants, but at their speed this was not. surprising.
“An intense dark-blue glow came from the side of the ship,” Chiles reported. (It was later suggested by engineers that the strange glare could have come from a power plant of unusual type.) “It ran the entire length of the fuselage—like a blue fluorescent light. The exhaust was a red-orange flame, with a lighter color predominant around the outer edges.”
Both pilots said the flame extended thirty to fifty feet behind the ship. As it passed, Chiles noted a snout like a radar pole. Both he and Whitted glimpsed two rows of windows.
“Just as it went by,” said Chiles, “the pilot pulled up as if he had seen the DC-three and wanted to avoid its. There was a tremendous burst of flame from the rear. It zoomed into the clouds, its jet wash rocking our DC-three.”
Chiles’s estimate of the mystery ship’s speed was between five hundred and seven hundred miles an hour.
As the object vanished, Chiles went back into the cabin to check with the passengers. Most had been asleep or were drowsing. But one man confirmed that they were in their right senses. This passenger, Clarence McKelvie of Columbus, Ohio, told them (and a Project “Saucer” team later) that he had seen a brilliant streak of light flash past his window. It had gone too swiftly for him to catch any details.