Bethel, Alaska DC-3 disc encounter

Captain Jack Peck and co-pilot Vince Daly reported sighting an object near Bethel, Alaska, on 4 August 1947. A signal operator at Bethel, T/4 Harold D. Johnston, wrote to the Alaska Communication System on 5 August that the two had sighted and followed a flying saucer northwest of Bethel. He wrote that it was bigger than their DC-3, crossed their course at right angles at 1,000 feet, and was out of sight in four minutes while they followed at 170 miles per hour. Johnston described Peck as chief pilot for Al Jones flying service and "not a man given to exaggeration".

An Army check-list for the incident, numbered 58, recorded the time as evening, the object's distance as 1,200 feet and its speed as 520 mph. It described the object as black, one in number, and as large or larger than a C-54. The attached narrative said the pair pulled up to about 1200 ft to avoid a possible collision and put the object at 500 to 1,000 feet.

On 4 September 1947 the FBI's San Francisco office forwarded a letter from Lt. Col. Donald L. Springer of Hamilton Field and asked the Anchorage office to interview Peck and Daly, preferably separately. Anchorage reported on 18 October 1947 that it had located Peck. In that memo Peck placed the sighting in July at about 10 PM, with the sun just below the horizon, as the DC-3 came in to land. He said the object looked like a flying wing about the size of a C-54 without a fuselage, and that he saw no propeller, exhaust or vapor trail. He said the Civil Aeronautics Administration station at Bethel had no reports of aircraft. Anchorage added that both men were known to be very reliable and responsible.

The incident was later summarised in two military studies. Air Intelligence Study No. 203 listed it as a flying disk larger than the DC-3 that flew out of sight in four minutes. An Air Materiel Command analysis also listed it among sightings outside the continental United States. None of the pages given states a conclusion about what the object was.