More "Flying Saucers" Seen; Plane Crew Sees Whole Flight

PORTLAND, Ore., July 5 - (AP) - The "Flying Saucer" mystery reached fever pitch today, after "I saw them myself" statements from a veteran United Air Lines crew, scores of Portland residents, and 60 picknickers at Twin Falls Park in Idaho.

The pilot, co-pilot and stewardess, who had scoffed consistently at "Flying Saucer" tales, said they saw such objects last night while flying a passenger plane from Boise, Idaho, to Portland.

Their statements followed a day during which the "Saucers" were reported seen in many parts of the United States and also in Canada.

Many Portlanders, including police, experienced fliers, and three newspaper men, declared they saw silvery discs undulating over Portland.

Describing what they saw as flat, translucent plates 12 to 15 inches in diameter, several Port Huron, Mich. residents reported seeing the "saucers" near Sarnia.

Farmers in Prince Edward Island claimed to have seen more of the mysterious discs and earlier this week, four Summerside residents reported seeing one of them.

At Seattle, Frank Ryman, Coast Guard yeoman, said he took a picture of what some residents north of Seattle thought was a flying disc. The photograph showed a pinhead-size light spot against the dark evening sky.

Dr. M. K. Leisy, a junior interne at the Pennsylvania Hospital for mental diseases, and other persons in the western section of Philadelphia, reported seeing strange craft in the skies last night.

"It was something round with a luminous halo about it," Dr. Leisy declared. "It was not shiny itself, but dark in color and seemed to be propelled by whirling winds."
________

Describes Discs

PORT HURON, Mich., July 5 - (AP) - Mysterious "flying saucers" were sighted last night by several residents southwest of Port Huron, who described them as flat and translucent, 12 to 15 inches in diameter, criss-crossing the sky and moving northward.

"They definitely were not fireworks," said one witness.

Mrs. John R. Warner declared "some of them moved slowly and others sailed out of the horizon, hesitated and then whizzed on. Lights which shone from them occasionally blinked off."

This was the first time the "flying saucers" had been reported over the Michigan area.

Port Huron is across the St. Clair River from Sarnia.

PLANE CREW SIGHTS FLOCK OF STRANGE 'FLYING SAUCERS'

Boise, Idaho, July 5 (AP) - The entire crew of a westbound Boise-to-Seattle United Air Lines plane reported they had seen nine flying discs near the airline's route over Emmett, Idaho.

The incident was one of several reported from various parts of the United States saying the flying objects had been seen. In Seattle, a United States coast guardsman said he photographed one of them. Two policemen in Portland, Ore., also reported seeing the discs and a New Orleans saleswoman said she saw one.

Capt. E. J. Smith said his co-pilot, Ralph Stevens, blinked the transport's lights in the belief the discs were other aircraft.

Smith said it was eight minutes after takeoff from Boise that Stevens and himself saw discs, flying what appeared to be a "loose formation."

They called Marty Morrow, stewardess, to the cockpit to verify that they were actually seeing the discs, said Smith, and she agreed they saw them.

Then they saw four more of the discs, three clustered together, and a fourth flying "by itself, way off in the distance."

Flying discs have been reported over the Northwest for the last two weeks.

"The discs were flat and roundish," they said. "They definitely were not aircraft. But they were bigger than aircraft."

Smith and Stevens said they had the objects under observation for from "10 to 15 minutes" before they disappeared.
______

In Sarnia Area, Too

Port Huron, Mich., July 5 (AP) - Mysterious "flying saucers" were sighted Friday night by several residents southwest of Port Huron, who described them as flat and translucent, 12 to 15 inches in diameter, criss-crossing the sky and moving northward.

"They definitely were not fireworks," said one witness.

Mrs. John R. Warner declared, "some of them moved slowly and others sailed out of the horizon, hesitated and then whizzed on. Lights which shone from them occasionally blinked off."

"This was the first time the flying saucers" had been reported over the Michigan area.

Port Huron is across the St. Clair river from Sarnia.

Mysterious 'It' Spotted By Flyers
Flying Saucers 'Or Something' In News Again

ATLANTA, July 26 - (AP) - The flying saucer - or something - is back again.

Reports from widely-separated sections of the country have described "it" during the weekend as:

1. A wingless craft, spurting flame "like a Buck Rogers rocket ship,"
2. An aluminum-covered balloon,
3. An unusually bright light,
4. A ball of fire,
5. A red and blue flame that burst in mid-air,
6. A flash of cherry-red fire,
7. A meteor.

Started Fire

"It" first was reported by two Eastern Airlines pilots, each a fighter pilot during the war, who said they encountered a wingless mystery plane, spurting fire, near Montgomery, Ala.

Clarence L. McKelvie of Columbus, Ohio, lent credence to the pilots' report by declaring he had seen "a flash of cherry-red fire" while a passenger on the plane.

"It" was an aluminum-covered balloon to observers at Yakima, Wash., where the police station switchboard was jammed with excited calls and inquiries.

Same Last Year

It was this way last year when someone said he had seen a flying saucer whizzing around. Right away, dozens of persons said they had seen the same thing - or something.

The United States army, as usual, denied any responsibility and simply said in effect, "don't blame us."

Airliner Is Hit By "Ball of Fire"

LISBON, Portugal, Feb. 23 - (AP) - Crew members of a British European Airways plane which arrived here from London last night said their aircraft was hit by a ball of fire in the air.

The crew members said they saw the flaming sphere hurtling towards them in the midst of a storm. They said it bounced off the nose of the plane, then cut a hole in the rudder, shaking the ship violently.

The passengers didn't see the ball, but felt a bump.

The plane is being repaired before taking off again.

Now Bananas Nudge Saucers As Sky Mystery

FORT WORTH - (AP) - Now it's flying bananas!

Ira Maxey, a veteran of 3,600 flying hours in the United States Air Force, said yesterday he saw six of them Sunday plus something he believed to be a flying saucer. Moreover, he took pictures.

"They weren't moving fast and they appeared to be six or seven miles away," he said.

He described the six objects as without tails or noise "not like a saucer but more like a banana." The saucer looked real enough to him, he said. Maxey said the objects definitely were some sort of aircraft. The pictures showed they left vapor trails.

Airline Pilot Reports Seeing Flying Saucer

CHICAGO - (AP) - A Trans-World Airlines pilot reported seeing a "round mass" which "glowed a dull red like hot steel," as it cruised about a half-mile from his Chicago bound plane.

"I used to laugh at all those flying saucer reports but it's no laughing matter now," said Capt. Robert Adickes. "I saw one."

Adickes said the object, "20 to 50 feet" in diameter, overtook his plane bound from Washington to Chicago near South Bend, Ind. It cruised along a parallel course for eight minutes, Adickes said. The plane was at 2,000 feet.

Adickes said he turned north in an attempt to get closer.

"It picked up speed 300 to 400 miles an hour and ran out of sight right over South Bend," the pilot related.

First Officer Robert Manning confirmed Adickes' account. Adickes said about half of the 19 passengers aboard also saw the object.

Flying Saucers Seen By Pilots

MIAMI, Fla. (CP) - Two airline pilots reported seeing flying saucers moving at an estimated 1,000 miles an hour over Chesapeake Bay Monday night.

They said eight of the saucers, 100 feet in diameter and about 15 feet thick, glowing like red coals, passed directly beneath their Pan American Airlines plane, wheeled sharply and zoomed out of sight.

First Officer W. B. Nash, 35, and First Officer W. H. Fortenberry "watched the manoeuvre" for about 10 seconds.

Nash said they "had definite outlines - there was nothing fuzzy about them . . . they were brilliant, far more intense than ground lights."

He said the plane was flying at 8,000 feet and the objects passed beneath them at an estimated 2,000 feet, approaching from the southeast over Newport News.

Nash said he had no doubt in his mind they were missiles of some kind operating under intelligent control.

FLYING SAUCER ENTERS GIANT NATO OPERATION

TOPCLIFFE, Eng. (Reuters) - A "flying saucer" entered the eight-country Operation Mainbrace today.

The R. A. F. base here reported to exercise headquarters that an unidentifiable circular silver object had been sighted 15,000 feet above the airfield.

The object, which appeared five miles behind a jet fighter, maintained a slow forward speed before descending in a swinging pendulum motion. Then it began a rotary motion about its own axis and accelerated at an incredible speed in a westerly direction but later turned southeast.

It was seen by R.A.F. officers and men on the airfield. No one could identify it.

The whole incident lasted between 15 and 20 seconds.

One R. A. F. officer said it might have been a smoke ring caused by one of the jet engines suddenly clearing after a temporary blockade. The ring might have been caught in an air current, and with the sun shining on it, it could have looked like a "flying saucer," he said.

As the second week of the two-week Mainbrace manoeuvres opened, nearly 30 ships of an amphibious "Blue" force waited under orders to sail for North Jutland. The ships are carrying U.S. Marines who will make an unopposed assault landing there to strengthen land forces opposing an imaginary "Orange" invader from the east.

Radar, Pilots See 'Saucers' Off Red-Held Kurile Islands

U.S. AIR BASE, Japan (AP) - Mysterious flying objects - "rotating clusters of red, white and green lights" - have been sighted over northern Japan by United States airmen, the air force disclosed today.

Intelligence reports placed the sightings close to Russian territory in the Kurile islands and Sakhalin. They added:

"There are too many indications of the presence of something . . . to be considered an observation of nothing." And they discounted the possibility the sighted objects were mere "reflections of light."

Col. Curtis R. Low, commander of the northern division of the Japanese air defence force, said the flying clusters were seen by fighter pilots and ground personnel and were tracked on radar.

The reports were similar to those describing "flying saucers" in the U.S. One said the lights appeared to hang motionless at times, and at other times disappeared with blinding speed.

Sightings were made by many persons at many points over northern Japan last Dec. 29. On Jan. 9, a rotating cluster was spotted by two fighter pilots and was tracked on radar.

The sightings occurred over the frozen, ice-locked reaches of northern Japan, a land tense with continued air harassment by near-flying Russian fighter planes.

Russian territory in the Kurile islands is only 4½ miles northeast of Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost island. The Russian island of Sakhalin is only 30 miles north of Hokkaido. The Reds have dozens of air bases on Sakhalin and the Kuriles.

The clusters were seen Dec. 29 by two crew members of an F-94 interceptor for about 40 minutes, by two crew members of a B-26 bomber for five to seven minutes, and by five different airmen on the ground, intelligence said. They were also seen by a pilot who tried to get close to one.

The five ground observers said the objects "were circular ferris wheel disc types with rotational red, green white lights."

Intelligence said the ground observers watched the objects "for varying times, ranging from 30 minutes to three hours."

The air force said a rotating cluster Jan. 9 near an air base in northern Honshu "was observed visually by a pilot of an F-94 jet interceptor for approximately one minute . . . Radar contact for approximately two minutes was verified by both members of the crew."

North Bay, Ontario, DAILY NUGGET, 27 January 1953, Page 1

8-Inch "Saucer" Made Pass at Jet

U.S. AIR BASE, Northern Japan (AP) - The U.S. Air Force today reported a small, metallic, disk-shaped object made a controlled, sweeping pass at an American jet fighter-bomber and was observed at very close range by another pilot.

The report, from air force intelligence files, said the sighting was made over northern Japan at 11:20 a.m. March 29, 1952, by Lieut. David C. Brigham.

It was a bright, cloudless day. Brigham said he had a very good look at the object from about 30 to 50 feet for about 10 seconds.

The pilot described it as "about eight inches in diameter, very thin, round, and as shiny as chromium; had no apparent projections and left no exhaust trails or vapor trails."

He said it caught up with an F-84 Thunderjet, hovered a few moments and then shot out of sight. The F-84 pilot, whose name was not revealed, did not see it. It was the second disclosure in a week by air force intelligence of mysterious flying objects over northern Japan near the Russian-Siberia area.

On Jan. 21, the air force disclosed that "rotating clusters of red, white and green lights" had been sighted over northern Japan by American airmen.

Korea Reports Seem Truthful
Saucers Real? Boss Says Yes

VANCOUVER (CP) - Flying saucers no longer are a joke to Bill Boss, Canadian Press war correspondent.

Back from Korea, he said in an interview Wednesday, that he is impressed with the reports of fighter-bomber pilots telling of flying saucers, disk clusters "or whatever they are called."

Boss told of reports from "seven independent" pilots on the same day, Jan. 9.

"There is more to this than we all thought," he said. "I think the story of the disks was the most significant to come out of Japan."

The evidence of the pilots, two of whom "locked" with the objects, "is too strong to be dismissed."

One disk kept its distance from the 700-mile-an-hour jet in a straight line and then, drew away.

"It must have had a multiple of the speed of sound to do that," said Boss.

The sky clusters were always reported out from the Russian-held island of Sakhalin or the Russian-held mainland.

"Possibly, it is significant that saucer stories always appear over Western places of strategic interest, like northern Japan or Texas, but never where satellite forces are committed."

"It looks like a Russian experiment?" a reporter asked.

"It looks like a Russian accomplishment," Boss replied.

North Bay, Ontario, DAILY NUGGET, 18 December 1953, Page 1

Looked Like a Robot
Swedish Pilot Spots Disc Hitting "Colossal Speeds"

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - A veteran Swedish pilot reported sighting a "symmetrical metal object" travelling at a "colossal speed" over southern Sweden Thursday.

The pilot's statement was released by the Swedish defence staff which said it was making a thorough investigation of the report.

The pilot who fought during the Second World War with the RAF was Capt. Ulf Christiernsson.

He said he saw the object while flying his DC-3 airliner at about 6,500 feet over Haessleholm. Visibility was good.

"As I got nearer, I saw it was completely a symmetrical metal object. It is difficult to find words to describe something one has not seen before, but it looked like a robot."

Capt. Christiernsson said he was absolutely sure it was neither a meteor nor any other sort of celestial body.

Flying "Objects" Intrigue Veteran Canadian Airman

Something new in flying "objects" has been reported by a veteran Canadian pilot. Francis Lehman Boyd of Fillmore, Sask., said he and fellow crew members of a British airliner observed a "mother" ship and six satellites craft for 20 minutes last Wednesday over the Atlantic near Labrador.

Mr. Boyd's experience may revive some of those flying saucer stories of recent years. Few people had much faith in them, and even those who had observed the phenomena could hardly believe what they had seen. And more than one scientist tried to debunk the "objects" by describing them as meteors or some freak of the weather.

But the veteran pilot's story sounds convincing. He said the things, whatever they were, were intelligently controlled and manoeuvred. And he did not think any science on this planet could produce them.

There was one large ship which "changed shape from time to time" and six smaller craft moving around it. Boyd and his friends had a perfect view. They watched the objects for 18 minutes during which they travelled about 80 miles and all crew members were called to confirm the sight.

Mr. Boyd could rightfully be described as an "expert" witness. He has been trained to observe the sky about him, and he could hardly be fooled off as a crackpot whose eyes had deceived him.

Mr. Boyd's experience is naturally intriguing to most of us. Many people will wonder whether one of the big powers has a new type of aircraft up its sleeve. We have heard and read about flying saucers and "secret weapons" about which no one in authority will speak. Boyd may have had his peek at one of these secrets.

But Mr. Boyd's own surmise that these "ships" had come from some other planet sounds more interesting. If there were "people" aboard, did they come to scout us? Were they friendly or hostile? If they know about us and our way of life, do they hold us in contempt for our wars, our atomic bombs and our general progress on the ladder of civilization?

If they are friendly and have a civilization superior to ours, we would welcome them as visitors. Perhaps they could tell us a few helpful things that may save us trouble in the future. Perhaps they have had their own atomic bomb wars and could tell us what would actually happen if we started to drop such death-dealing objects.

Mr. Boyd's experience could set us all thinking and wondering about the "visitors" who did not land.

RCAF Confirms Pilot's Report Of Rocket Ship
By THE CANADIAN PRESS

Reports from both sides of the Atlantic told Wednesday of a strange flying object seen off the coast of Labrador Tuesday night.

The pilot of a Pan American jet airliner said he thought it might have been a space rocket. An RCAF report described it as "glowing red and with a vertical tail."

Both sightings lasted 30 seconds, and were located about 130 miles east of Labrador.

Capt. Howard Cone was quoted by a Pan American spokesman in London as saying the airliner was at 2,000 feet when the object was sighted moving from south to north "at tremendous speed."

The RCAF report, filed to air defence command at St. Hubert, Que., said the object was moving in a north-to-south direction, exactly opposite from the Pan American sighting.

A United States missile base in Maine said there were no Snark missile firings which would account for the sighting.

Sudbury, Ontario, STAR, 9 August 1962, page 1

Mystery Object Seen in Flight Of X-15 Plane

MUROC, Calif. (AP) - Space agency officials released photographs of a mysterious hand-sized object seen tumbling above the X-15 rocket plane as it streaked to a record 314,750-foot altitude, last July 17.

They said they could not identify or explain the object's presence in space.

The pictures were released Wednesday after air force Maj. Robert Rushworth completed a routine X-15 flight to 90,000 feet and told reporters he saw bits of insulation floating between the twin panes of the rocket plane's windshield.

The photographs, taken by a movie camera in the tail of the X-15, show a grey-white object above and behind the spacecraft. They were taken as the plane, piloted by air force Maj. Robert White, roared upward to 270,000 feet on his way to the record.

Officials said they could not positively identify the photographed object as the one seen by White. Rushworth added that he did not believe the particles he saw were the same as the one White reported.

Rushworth was positive the particles were bits of insulating material.

"They were not outside the plane, as Maj. White said the larger object was," he said.

None of the 15 or 20 particles, Rushworth said, was larger than the end of a cigarette.

The insulating material protects the glass windshield from extreme heat caused by air friction.

Flying Object Gets Governor's Pursuit

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) - Governor Haydon Burns of Florida saw a funny thing on his way to the capital - a UFO.

The governor ordered his airplane pilots to give chase, but the unidentified flying object's lights winked out and it disappeared - upward bound - as Burns' Convair bore down on it.

So says Burns, his assistant, a highway patrol captain and four newspaper men who were flying with the governor to Tallahassee from a re-election campaign session at Orlando Monday night. The sighting was at 6,000 feet over Ocala.

"I much prefer to let the newspaper representatives be quoted," he said Tuesday. "I will confirm that I saw the same unidentified flying object they have alluded to in their writings."

Don Meiklejohn of The Times placed the sighting at 9:52 p.m. EDT Monday and said "I first became aware of something when Governor Burns shouted 'It's a UFO!'"

Meiklejohn's timecheck was about 90 minutes after the flash of a vivid fireball, described by scientists as a meteor, excited thousands from the Carolinas to Toronto and as far west as Ohio.

BURNS ORDERS CHASE

"Governor Burns ordered the pilots to 'turn into it'. The plane turned to the right and as it did, the light pulled ahead quickly and began to rise steeply. It disappeared, as one of the pilots said, 'like someone turned off the juice.'"

Bill Mansfield of The Herald said the lights "generally followed the flight of the governor's plane, although there were some definite changes of brightness."

Burns' executive assistant, Frank Stockton, estimated the distance the lights travelled with the plane as "at least 40 miles."

Co-pilot Herb Bates said he radioed air traffic control at Miami and was told it had the Burns plane on radar, but nothing resembling the object as Bates described it.

Sudbury, Ontario, STAR, 11 January 1967, page 1

CPA Crew See Flying Saucer During Flight

VANCOUVER (CP) - Five members of a Canadian Pacific Airlines DC-8 crew never believed before, but they believe in flying saucers now.

The crew reported Tuesday they saw one on a recent flight from Lima, Peru, to Mexico City, and couldn't explain it away.

"We tried to discredit the thing from beginning to end, but it couldn't be anything we could think of," said Capt. Robert Millbank of suburban Burnaby.

He said he saw two beams of light during the Dec. 29 flight. Second officer John Dennis Dahl of White Rock, B.C., navigator Mike Mole of Mexico City, purser Joseph Lugs of Vancouver and pilot trainee Wolfgang Poepperl of Richmond gathered to watch the object.

"It was getting bigger all the time, and at one point shot out a trail of sparks like a rocket," Capt. Millbank said.

"Then it seemed to be getting closer and we could see a string of lights between two white lights."

"It then levelled off at our left wing-tip and, in the full moon, we could see a shape between the two lights which appeared thicker in the middle."

He said the object remained a couple of minutes then disappeared behind the big passenger plane. He said he filed a report in Mexico City after the flight.

Crew and passengers reported seeing UFO

MOSCOW (AP) - Amazed crew and passengers on a Soviet airliner say they saw a star-like unidentified flying object beam a thin ray on the ground, suddenly turn its dazzling light on the aircraft and - just as abruptly - become a green cloud that "escorted" the plane, a newspaper reports.

Gennady Lazurin, co-pilot of the Aeroflot flight, told an air controller in Minsk about the sighting and was told at first that nothing could be seen on ground radar, the newspaper Trud reported Wednesday.

"Oh well, they'll be saying we're not normal," Lazurin was quoted as saying.

But then, ground control "registered splashes on its screens in the same part of air space," Trud said. The date of the flight was not given.

Nikolai Zheltukhin, a corresponding member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences and deputy chairman of a state commission on unexplained phenomena, told Trud the occurrence "is indeed of interest, although the commission already knows of similar cases."

"That the object reversed course instantaneously and reached the ground with a ray of light of unusual intensity from a very high altitude is undoubtedly abnormal," Zheltukhin was quoted as saying.

The plane was flying northwest from the Georgian capital of Tbilisi to Tallinn in Estonia and was approaching Minsk when "what appeared to be a large, unblinking star suddenly shed a thin ray of light which fell plumb down on the ground" from an altitude of 40 to 48 kilometres, the newspaper said.

PROVIDES VIEW

All four crew members reported that they "could see distinctly everything down in the sector of the ground illuminated by the cone-shaped shaft of light - the houses and the roads," the newspaper said.

It said the ray suddenly focused on the plane.

"The pilots saw a dazzling white spot surrounded by concentric colored rings," Trud said.

The unidentified flying object then came toward the airliner "at flashing speed," leaving a green cloud in its wake and hovered next to the plane at an altitude of 10,000 metres for the rest of the flight "like an honorary escort," the newspaper quoted one of the pilots as saying.

Nervous passengers asked the flight attendant what was happening.

"Tell them it is some sort of cloud," the captain, Igor Cherkashin was reported to have replied. "Say the yellow thing is a reflection of city lights, the green thing of polar lights."

Chased UFOs

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) Multicolored UFOs the size of ping-pong balls were seen over Brazil and fighter jets were sent to chase them, the air force minister said. The objects "saturated our radar system," Brig.-Gen. Otavio Moreira Lima said. They were reported flying at about 1,350 kilometres an hour and the fighters tracked them for almost three hours before turning back when they started to run out of fuel. "I can't give an explanation for this because we don't have any," Moreira Lima said.

U.S. officials reopen their probe into pilot's report of UFO incident

ANCHORAGE (AP) - The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration is reopening its investigation into an incident in which an apparent UFO dogged a Japan Air Lines cargo jet across Alaska's night sky for almost an hour last November.

"We looked at it about six weeks ago, but since then we've gotten a lot of public interest, so we went back and reinterviewed the pilot," FAA spokesman Paul Steucke said Sunday.

The veteran pilot, Kenji Terauchi, told investigators that the large UFO showed up on his cockpit weather radar. But images on military radar screens at the time were dismissed as "clutter," and a blip that showed up on FAA screens was analysed as a coincidental "split image" of the aircraft, Steucke said.

Radar tapes, transcribed interviews and radio messages are to be sent to the FAA in Washington, D.C., later this week for review, Steucke said.

A JAL spokesman said Sunday that Terauchi was on a flight to Europe and was unavailable.

As Flight 1628 - a Boeing 747 - flew at 35,000 feet into Alaska from Canada, just northeast of Fort Yukon, Terauchi told investigators he saw three lights 13 kilometres in front of his aircraft.

The pilot reported the lights were yellow, amber and green, Steucke said, but not red, the international color for aircraft beacons.

"He flew for about six minutes before he decided to report anything," Steucke said. "I can't say I blame him for that."

Terauchi radioed Anchorage FAA air controllers, who direct all aircraft traffic in the state, except for planes near airports, Steucke said. Fairbanks controllers checked their screens but saw only Flight 1628, Steucke said.

The pilot reported the object was staying with him and controllers told him to take any evasive action needed. Terauchi decreased altitude to 31,000 feet, but the lights went down with him "in formation," Steucke said.

South of Fairbanks, Terauchi turned the plane in a complete circle to see if the lights would follow.

"That was pretty clever," Steucke said. "It allowed him to eliminate any natural phenomenon which would have stayed stationary."

The lights stayed with the cargo jet, and moved to its left side, the pilot told the FAA.

The lights vanished, heading east, when the JAL jet was about 130 kilometres north of Anchorage, Steucke said.

UFO nearly hit plane - Swissair

ZURICH, Switzerland (AP) - An unidentified, wingless object travelling at high speed passed dangerously close to a Swissair jetliner between Philadelphia and Boston, the airline said Friday.

The pilot and copilot gave U.S. investigators different descriptions of the object that passed about 45 metres from the Boeing 747 after it had taken off from Philadelphia on Aug. 9.

The pilot told the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board that the object was long and wingless, but the copilot said it was more spherical, Swissair spokesman Erwin Schaerer said.