My mind was still reluctant to accept the space-travel answer, in
spite of the old reports. But I kept thinking of the famous aircraft
designer who thought the disks were space craft; the airline pilots
Purdy had mentioned; Blake's copilot, Chuck. . . .

Now that I recalled it, Blake had been more embarrassed than seemed
called for when he told about Chuck. Perhaps he had been the one who
believed the saucers were space ships, instead of his absent copilot.

After breakfast, I went over the list of sightings since June 1947.
There were several saucers that actually had been described as
projectile-like ships. The most famous of all was the Eastern Airlines
case.

It was 8:30 P.M., July 23, 1948, when an Eastern Airlines DC-3 took
off from Houston, Texas, on a flight to Atlanta and Boston. The
airliner captain was Clarence S. Chiles. During the war, he had been
in the Air Transport Command, with the rank of lieutenant colonel. He
had 8,500 flying hours. His first officer was John B. Whitted, a
wartime pilot on B-29's. Both men were known in Eastern as careful,
conservative pilots.

It was a bright, moonlit night, with scattered clouds overhead. The
DC-3 was twenty miles west of Montgomery, at 2:45 A.M., when a
brilliant projectile-like craft came hurtling along the airway.

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