List of alleged aircraft–UFO incidents and near misses

Alleged aircraft-UFO incidents and near misses involve incidents whereby plane pilots have come into visual contact with unidentified flying objects. Sometimes these have involved near misses.

See also: Unidentified flying object

1930s

1936

• The Black forest incident is an event where Nazi Germany secretly made contact with a Ufo crash in the Black Forest. The UFO was in perfect shape and preserved to create more man-made UFOs. Led by Victor Shauberger the research, like the V2 rocket, was continued within the United States Government in the 1950s.

1940s

1942

• On 25 March, over the Zuiderzee an RAF Vickers Wellington from No. 301 Polish Bomber Squadron at RAF Hemswell commanded by 2nd Lt Roman Sobinski was followed by an orange-coloured luminous disc on a journey back from a mission over Essen in the Ruhr Valley. The disc followed the bomber for five minutes at a distance of 150m and height of 14,000 ft and was fired on by the tail gunner, then disappeared at a very high speed. Such sightings were later christened foo fighters and many were seen in November 1944 on bombing missions over Germany.

1947

• Kenneth Arnold UFO sighting – on 24 June, Kenneth Arnold saw up to 20 objects over Mount Rainier in Washington State.

1948

• Mantell UFO incident – on 7 January an object was seen by four P-51 Mustangs over Fort Knox in Kentucky
• Chiles-Whitted UFO Encounter – on 24 July an object collided with an Eastern Air Lines Douglas DC-3 near Montgomery, Alabama.
• Gorman Dogfight – on 1 October an object was seen by North Dakota National Guard P-51 Mustang over Fargo, North Dakota.

1950s

1950

• Sperry UFO case – on 29 May an object was seen by an American Airlines Douglas DC-6 near Mount Vernon, Maryland.

1952

• Nash-Fortenberry UFO sighting – on 14 July, eight objects were seen by two commercial pilots over Chesapeake Bay in Virginia.
• Carson Sink UFO incident – on 24 July an object was seen by two pilots in a B-25 Mitchell over Carson Sink in Nevada.
• Operation Mainbrace – from 14 to 25 September many UFOs were observed. On 19 September at 11am a silver disc-shaped object followed a Gloster Meteor returning to RAF Topcliffe, and seen by observers on the ground. It rotated whilst hovering. It then travelled towards the west at high speed. On 21 September, six RAF planes followed a spherical object over the North Sea. It followed one of the planes back to the base.

1953

• Ellsworth UFO sighting – on 5 August an unknown object over Bismarck, North Dakota was seen by people on the ground and by two F-84 Thunderjet pilots.

1954

• On 14 October Flt Lt James Salandin of the Royal Auxiliary Air Force, flying in a No. 604 Squadron RAF Gloster Meteor F8 from RAF North Weald, narrowly missed two UFOs over Southend-on-Sea at around 4.30pm at 16,000 ft. The objects were circular with one being coloured silver and the other gold. He narrowly avoided having a head-on collision with the silver object.

1956

• Lakenheath-Bentwaters incident – on 13 August, 12 to 15 objects were picked up by USAF radar over East Anglia. One object was tracked at more than 4,000 mph by USAF GCA radar at RAF Bentwaters. The objects sometimes travelled in formation, then converged to form a larger object and performed sharp turns. One object was tracked for 26 miles which then hovered for five minutes then flew off. One object at 10pm was tracked at 12,000 mph. RAF de Havilland Venoms from RAF Waterbeach had sightings of the objects.

1957

• West Freugh incident – on 4 April, a large object was seen on radar at RAF West Freugh near Stranraer at 50,000 ft which was stationary for 10 minutes over the Irish Sea. It moved vertically to 70,000 ft and was also tracked by radar at Ardwell. The object did an 'impossible' sharp turn and was described as being as large as a ship, bigger than a normal aircraft.
• Milton Torres 1957 UFO Encounter – on 20 May, a USAF F-86D Sabre based at RAF Manston intercepted an object over East Anglia.
• UFOs seen by Portugal Air Force – on 4 September an object was seen by four Portuguese Air Force pilots

1959

• On 24 February an American Airlines Douglas DC-6 was followed for 45 minutes by three saucer shaped objects on its flight from Newark to Detroit. It was seen by the crew and the 35 passengers, and by Captain Peter Killian.

1960s

1965

• On 18 March a Convair CV-240 from Toa Airways heading from Osaka to Hiroshima was followed over Iejima by an oblong 15 metre long green luminescent object, forcing the pilot, Yoshiharu Inaba, to make a 60 degree turn to avoid a collision. The object stopped and flew alongside the plane for about three minutes, and affected the Automatic Direction Finder.

1970s

1970

• On April 24, a Soviet bomber disappeared on its flight from Moscow to Vladivostok without a trace. On the same day several UFOs were observed in the area of the Soviet-Chinese border, which could not be shot down by the Russian military.
• William Schaffner on 8 September intercepted an unknown object over the North Sea. His BAC Lightning was later retrieved from the sea.
• On September 21st at 20:01pm The Emergency controller at West Drayton was informed of two reports of a great ball of fire seen by pilots flying over the North Sea.

1974

• Coyame UFO incident – on 25 August an object collided with an aircraft near Coyame, Chihuahua in Mexico near the USA border.

1976

• On 30 July at 8pm, 42 year old Captain Dennis Wood and his crew in a British Airways Hawker Siddeley Trident from Edinburgh to Faro saw objects near Lisbon, seen by all passengers on board. They looked "due west and saw an incredibly brilliant white object", which "took off vertically at very high speed and disappeared". The pilots were alerted by the radar operator at Lisbon who picked up two unknown objects. It was observed for around eight minutes. An astrophysicist, Dr David Ramsden, from the University of Southampton believed it was a large research balloon that was released on 29 July and drifted from Italy to America.
• 1976 Tehran UFO incident – on 19 September over an area 40 miles north of Tehran two F-4 Phantom IIs from Hamedan Air Base (Shahrokhi) attempted to intercept an unknown object seen on ground radar. When closing in on the target, all the plane's communications systems would not work, which regained their function when the plane turned away from the unknown object. Another object emerged from the main unknown object and headed towards the intercepting planes. The pilots tried to discharge a AIM-9 Sidewinder missile but when engaging their weapons system, it would momentarily not lock-on to the target or even function until the planes changed to a less hostile course.

1977

• On 7 March a Dassault Mirage IV piloted by Major René Giraud and navigated by Captain Jean Paul Abraham was returning to Luxeuil Air Base when at 8pm they encountered an unknown object over Chaumont, Haute-Marne. It was reported to the air traffic control at Contrexéville and it briefly followed the aircraft twice, although nothing was noticed on radar.

1978

• Valentich disappearance – on 21 October, 20 year old Frederick Valentich was piloting a Cessna 182 over Bass Strait in Australia when he was "buzzed" by an unknown object with four bright lights about 1000 ft above him and reported this to air traffic controllers at Melbourne with his last message being it's not an aircraft.

1979

• Manises UFO incident – on 11 November a TAE Sud Aviation Caravelle from Salzburg to Las Palmas was forced to make an emergency landing at Manises in Spain.

1980s

1986

• Japan Air Lines flight 1628 incident – on 16 November on a Japan Airlines flight in a Boeing 747 from Paris to Tokyo whilst near Alaska, an object was seen that was twice the size of an aircraft carrier. In subsequent months, two other aircraft reported unidentified objects over Alaska.

1990s

1990

• Belgian UFO wave – on 31 March two Belgian Air Component F-16 Fighting Falcons flew from Beauvechain Air Base to intercept a UFO seen near Wavre. They were unable to maintain a radar lock for their missiles because the object changed position too quickly. Such rapid changes of position would involve g-forces fatal to human pilots.
• On 4 August at 9pm a 75 ft wide diamond object was seen by an RAF Harrier 20 miles north of Pitlochry in Perth and Kinross. It appeared to hover for 10 minutes above the A9 near Calvine.

1991

• On 21 April, pilot Achille Zaghetti from Grosseto, Tuscany, in a Alitalia McDonnell Douglas MD-80 on a flight from Milan to Heathrow saw a three-metre-long khaki-coloured object over Lydd in Kent at 22,000 ft about 300m away. It was seen on radar.

1994

• On 28 January on Air France Flight AF3532 in an Airbus A320 flying from Nice to London, Jean-Charles Duboc saw an unusual object near Paris at around 1pm which looked like a huge red-brown disc at 35,000 ft of approximately 800 ft in diameter. The object was reported to air traffic control at Reims in Champagne-Ardenne, and was determined to be close to Taverny Air Base, the headquarters of the French Air Force. It was stationary in the sky for around one minute then disappeared in around 10–20 seconds.

1995

• On 6 January pilots aboard a Boeing 737 on British Airways Flight BA5061 from Milan saw an object on their descent to Manchester at 4,000 ft when over the southern Pennines.

1996

• Westendorff UFO sighting – on 5 October a large object was seen over Lagoa dos Patos in Brazil.

2000s

2007

• 2007 Alderney UFO sighting – two huge craft observed near Alderney and Guernsey respectively
• 2007 Romania UFO incident - a Romanian military plane taking off from Gherla allmost hit 2 solid entities which could not be identified.

See also

• List of UFO sightings

External links

• 2008 MOD files

Video clips

• Sky News October 2008