CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE AIRCRAFT KIND: 1957 AND DANGEROUS SKIES

 Three events - 

July 17, 1957 - Dallas-Ft. Worth area. The flight of an AF RB-47h "ferret" craft - electrical counter-measures aircraft was on a testing run from Forbes AFB in Topeka, Kansas. They plan called for a flight down toward Dallas, Texas, a turn east to Louisiana and some of Mississippi and down into the Gulf of Mexico and wide turn toward the Texas Coast and then a reverse course back the way they had come. Coming back at several points things were registered on both ground and air radar. The first sighting was over Gulfport at 5:10 a.m. and the last reading was at Oklahoma City at 6:20 a.m. At one point the pilot and co-piloted reported seeing two objects with red color. Permission was given for the plane to 'give brief chase' because it was an apparent unknown. Fuel being low, that was cut short after a futile chase, and the aircraft turned back to head toward Oklahoma City and home to Forbes. At Oklahoma City the other object was finally lost. For a detailed and scientific look at the case go here. 

The Project Blue Book file will emphasize several times through the file that the CAA (Civil Aeronautics Administration and predecessor of the FAA), that the counter-measures aircraft had a encountered with the AA Flight # 655.  Yet, note the information below indicates the encounter reported by that plane occurred 50 miles west of El Paso. El Paso is located on the lower jutting quadrant of the state of Texas, far away from the course shown on the map of the RB flight.

July 17, 1957 - El Paso, Texas. An American Airlines Flight # 655 (?) , a DC-4 with 85 people aboard, narrowly missed collision with an unidentified aircraft, "which hurtled out of the early morning darkness over West Texas." An airline spokes man said the incident occurred at 4:30 a.m. "Texas Time" over Salt Flat, about fifty miles east of  El Paso, Texas. The time is a bit confusing because El Paso was on MST and Dallas on CST; time will be important later since neither time will match the report of the RB craft out of Forbes despite the Air Force report. The plane was flying 14,000 feet when the "mystery aircraft suddenly appeared." The Captain of the AA flight was Captain T. Bachner of Fort Worth. He was forced to dive his craft down and to the right to avoid collision. Forced to land at El Paso, two passengers, both from California, were taken to the local hospital. One paper indicated the plane was on a non-stop flight from Dallas to Los Angles. Yet, the encounter with the unknown occurred  over the Salt Flats,  some 50 miles east of El Paso. If this flight encountered the RB flight from Forbes it would have been while that plane was in the Ft. Worth and Mineral Wells region. So why wait to report it until they were 50 miles east of El Paso? Because the flight was coming from El Paso toward Dallas.  Source: "Airliner Misses Mystery Aircraft in Dark." The Daily News Telegram (Sulphur Springs, Texas, July 17, 1957).

July 22, 1957, Amarillo, Texas. Captain Schamel, pilot of a TWA Flight # 21, a DC-6, 4 engine Constellation, dropped some 500 feet attempting to dodge a mystery object on a collision course.  The unknown had lights running down each side when it was encountered around 10 p.m. while the aircraft was flying at 18,000 ft. A woman passenger, 68-year-old Mary Clark of Massachusetts and one of the aircraft hostesses, Dorothy Rekon, were injured slightly. One news article had the pilot saying he thought the craft an Air Force ship but not a jet but most merely stated the other object was not identified. Oddly, the brief Project Blue Book file has this identified as a Dallas to Tuscan flight and the event occurring "Between Amarillo and El Paso".  Since Amarillo is in the Texas Panhandle, the plane would have had to divert course north if heading from Dallas to Tuscan. 

This string of mystery objects and unknown craft in such a truncated time span had to be noted then and should be noted more often now. People, however, tend to be tunnel visioned and focus in on only one event and block out its Sitz im Leben.  Events seldom occur in a vacuum and often are surrounded by other events that expand, explain, or illuminate that other event. A form of chaos theory, if a mystery craft flies in Texas skies - there have to be others somewhere!

The Department of Commerce, Civil Aeronautics Administration (Washington, D.C.) - Stamped dated Nov. 8, 1957.

To Brigadier General Harold E. Watson, USAF, Air Technical Intelligence Center. Writer-Patterson AFB, Dayton, OH. From A.L. Coulter, Roy Keeley, Director of Flight Operations and Airworthiness.

A response to a letter from Watson (AFCUN04E4 of October 7, 1957) regarding investigations into two (2) incidents involving commercial airliners and the sighting of unidentified flying objects...previously reported in local newspapers.

"The first incident mentioned occurred on July 22, 1957, near Amarillo, Texas, and involved  TransWorld Airliner's Flight # 21. Subsequent investigation proved that the unidentified object was another aircraft which was displaying the proper navigation lights.  The true identity of this aircraft was never determined, however, it is assumed that it was a U.S. Air Force KC-97 aircraft which was known to be operating in the area at the time of the incident. [emphasis added]

The second incident mentioned occurred on July 17, 1957, near El Paso, Texas, and involved American Airlines Flight No. 655. Investigation of this incident definitely established the fact that the unidentified flying object was American Airlines' Flight No. 966, which had previously departed El Paso, Texas, en route to Dallas, Texas."

A P.S. at the bottom says: "July 22, En route from Chicago to Tucson- - TWA Airliner almost collided with UFO at 18,000 Altitude! It had lights, reported the Pilot..."

So from this it becomes clear that the Project Blue Book report related to the July 17 El Paso flight ignored the complete CAA information and added it as the explanation for the RB flight case. Add this to the "mistake" made later in the 1960's when the reported date was in September and no searches for information turned up any reports for Condon researcher Roy Craig, the inability of the AF Archives to locate any such file when Craig requested is via the Condon Project, and the fact that Dr. James McDonald was able to a) locate the correct date, b) locate the original files, and c) bring that information to the attention of a special study group indicares something was "afoot."

1957 was the year of the great egg-shaped craft at Levelland and elsewhere. Indeed the months of March and November were very busy in Texas and the cases for 1957 are among the highest in all of Project Blue Book.