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UFO UpDates Mailing List

From: jan@cyberzone.net (Jan Aldrich)
Date: Fri, 05 Sep 1997 11:43:35 -0700
Fwd Date: Fri, 05 Sep 1997 23:54:09 -0400
Subject: Re: Aircraft/UFO Encounter Prior to 1942

When Dominique Weinstein started his Aircraft/UFO
Encounters Catalogue, he began with the year 1942.   I told
him that no doubt there were aircraft encounters before 1942
which should be easy to find.  Was I ever wrong.

        After consulting much of the literature, talking to
UFO historians, and visiting Dr. Richard Haines, here are
the few cases, some of very doubtful reliability, which I
have found.  Jeff Lindell told me he had vague references to
sightings by French military pilots in War World I, but he had
nothing specific.  New cases and further details are welcome.


1916 Jan 31,  2045 hours, local,  Near Rochford, England,
Flight Sub Lieutenant J. E. Morgan.  Flying at 5000 feet,
he saw a row of lights like lighted windows on a railway
carriage with the blinds drawn.  Thinking he had encountered
a German Zeppelin, he fired his Webley Scott pistol.  The
light rose and rapidly disappeared.   (First sighting from an
aircraft, first firing on UFO from an aircraft.)

        Source: THE GERMAN AIR RAIDS ON ENGLAND, 1914-1918,
by Capt. Joseph Morris (London 1925), page 81 (Credit: Dr.
Thomas E. Bullard)

1926 Jan,  1300 hours, local, Between Wichita, Kansas and
Colorado Springs, Colorado. Bert Anacosta, a stunt pilot saw
six "flying manhole covers."   (This is a third hand report.
C. W. Finch, an Ohio researcher, went to a lot of trouble to
verify the original story which came from Frank Edwards.
Fitch had no luck.  Some accounts give 1922 as the date, but
1926 is the date in all of Finch's documents.)

   Source: PROJECT DELTA, by Dr. Richard Haines, page 152.

1931 June 10, afternoon, Tasman Sea, Sir Francis Chinchester.
"A flashing airship" seen from a converted "Gypsy Moth" aircraft.
Chincherster first published his account first in 1932.

      Source:  THE OZ FILES, William Chalker
               THE LONELY SEA AND THE SKY, Sir Francis
Chinchecster (Pan , London, 1964,), page 185.

1932, Daytime, East Coast of Greenland, LTC Peter Grunnet
and LT Tage Anderson, Royal Danish Air Force.  (See account
below.)

THE SAGA UFO REPORT for October 1977 carried an article
entitled "UFO Crisis over Greenland" by Rufus Drake.  (SAGA
magazine like many other magazines in the late 1960s and
1970s, also had a UFO magazine with the same title.  Barry
Greenwood wrote to several and found that many of the stories
originated from letters the magazines received.  He had no luck
in getting the magazines to show him their material.)

Here is a very interesting--if true--report from the article:

    "The earliest UFO sighting by Danish fliers occurred in
1932 when three H. E. 8 seaplanes were dispatched to the east
coast of Greenland to conduct a photogrammetric survey.

    "In those days, manned aircraft had no heaters, insulation
or pressure suits.  Only the daring and hardy ventured into
the glacier zone in wood and canvas planes, and many failed
to return.  The pilot during this particular UFO incident was
Lt. Col. Peter Grunnet, a supremely rugged figure who lives
quietly in retirement today.  His copilot was Lt. Tage Anderson,
who in later years became Commander-in-Chief of R. D. A. F., and
died in 1961.

    "'We had many adventures flying under primitive conditions
in the frozen north,' says Grunnet.  'But none compared with
this.'

    Huddled under body-length parkas and numbed by the cold,
their breath forming clouds of condensation in front of them,
Grunnet and Anderson coaxed the trouble-prone H. E. 8 over a
mirror like section of sprawling glacier.  Suddenly, the copilot
spotted a second shadow pursuing the shadow of their seaplane
across the ice.

    "'I looked back and saw something that didn't make sense,"
Anderson was quoted.

    "About a mile behind their plane partly obscured by the
glare of sun against snow, a flying object was following their
flight course.  Grunnet eased his throttle forward.   The
engines of his H. E. 8 gnashed and vibrated noisily as he
forced the plane into a shallow turn, to get a better view of
the alien object.

    "'It was nothing like flying machines of that period,'
Grunnet, recalling the UFO sighting recently during a visit to
the U. S.  'It was hexagonal, flat, and seemingly made of
aluminum or some other metal, with no breaks in the surface and
no rivets.

    "'At the time, I had a spooky feeling.  I can't explain it.
It was as if I 'felt' the presence of whoever was inside that
craft--and the feeling was hostile.  In the years since, I've
realized that the craft was 'saucer' shaped, and I believe it
really was a flying saucer.'"

    Do our Scandinavian colleagues know anything about this
story?  Was it made up by the SAGA writer?

1937 Jan, Van Buren, Missouri, A local pilot chased a flying
disk.  The pilot would later became a state government official.

    Source: PROJECT IDENTIFICATION by H. D. Rutledge, page
213                       Hatch, Larry, *U* database

1937 Jan 1, 1200 hours, local, At the Virginia-North Carolina
border, Howard S. Behr, LTC, USAF, retired.  He was flying a
plane south at 3000 feet.  A gondola shaped object of gun metal
color crossed his flight path.  He was flying a Curtis Wright
Sedan.  He was military pilot flying in a non-duty status in a
private plane.

     Source: CUFOS files.  (Credit: Jerry
Clark.)
Jan Aldrich
Project 1947