Chiles-Whitted Eastern Air Lines sighting

Two Eastern Air Lines pilots, Capt. Clarence S. Chiles and co-pilot John B. Whitted, reported an unidentified object near Montgomery, Alabama, at about 0245 on 24 July 1948. An Air Force check-list gave the location as 20 miles south of Montgomery, one object in sight for 5 to 10 seconds at 5,000 feet. In his statement of 3 August 1948, Chiles wrote that an aircraft with no wings passed to the right, with two rows of lighted windows, flame shooting about fifty feet from the rear and a blue glow underneath. It then pulled up into broken clouds. Whitted's statement put the object at about a hundred feet long and the speed at roughly 700 MPH, which he called a rough estimate.

The Atlanta Journal of 25 July 1948, clipped in an FBI file, reported that the pilots described a wingless craft with a fiery tail. It said passenger C. L. McKelvie told reporters he saw no form of ship, only a continuous light. Major R. A. Llewellyn interviewed McKelvie in Columbus, Ohio. His 31 July 1948 report recorded that McKelvie saw only a streak of flame and heard no sound.

The same newspaper article said the Army Air Forces in Washington and the Weather Bureau at Montgomery both suggested a radar weather balloon. Gen. George C. Kenney and Boeing's president said the craft was not theirs. Project Blue Book Special Report No. 14 listed the sighting as Case V and gave the time as 0340.

Other records placed the event in wider context. A 1948 Air Intelligence study noted that the pilots' drawings closely resembled an object reported at Arnhem, Netherlands, on 20 July 1948. An Australian chronology said the near-collision prompted ATIC to write an Estimate of the Situation. A San Antonio FBI memo of 31 January 1949 described the report as an unconventional aircraft and said little concrete information had been obtained on such phenomena.