our course. Whatever it was, it flashed down toward us at terrific
speed. We veered to the left. It veered

{p. 68}

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.