"Frankly, I'm Baffled," Says Airliner Pilot After Observing Queer Airborne Objects

Emil J. SmithSmith, Emil J.: The Oregonian, Sunday, July 6, 1947
"They weren't aircraft. They were bigger than aircraft and flat and circular," Capt. E. J. Smith, UAL pilot, told The Oregonian when he landed here after seeing "discs."
"They weren't aircraft. They were bigger than aircraft and flat and circular," Capt. E. J. Smith, UAL pilot, told The Oregonian when he landed here after seeing "discs."
In Portland, First Officer Ralph Stevens described strange "discs" he and other crew members of a United Air Liner transport plane sighted on a flight from Boise Friday.
In Portland, First Officer Ralph Stevens described strange "discs" he and other crew members of a United Air Liner transport plane sighted on a flight from Boise Friday.

Written expressly for International News Service

How the "flying discs" appear from the air is described by Capt. Emil J. SmithSmith, Emil J., United Airlines pilot, who got an aerial view Friday night while on the northwest leg of a Salt Lake City to Seattle flight.

SEATTLE, July 5 (INS)

I didn't believe the stories about flying discs myself when I first heard about them. Now I don't know what to believe.

We were on our regular run from Salt Lake City to Seattle just eight minutes out of Boise when my co-pilot, First Officer Ralph Stevens, who was flying at the time, blinked our landing lights.

I asked him what he was doing and he replied: "There's a plane approaching off our bow.

But a few seconds later we both decided the object was not a plane, it was a flying disc.

Four More Appear

We saw only one of them at first, but soon four more appeared to the left of our plane, in a northwesterly direction.

We couldn't tell what their exact shape was except to notice that they definitely were larger than our plane (a DC-30), fairly flat, smooth on the bottom and rough on top.

Just to check, I called our stewardess, Marty Morrow, to the cockpit, and simply asked her

"Do you see anything in the sky around us?

Immediately she pointed at the discs and said, "Yes, what are those?

That's what we wanted to know, so I contacted our ground radio station at nearby Ontario, Or., gave them our estimated direction and altitude and asked if they could see them. They couldn't.

Shortly thereafter, the discs disappeared for a few minutes then reappeared again. This time they were in our view for 15 minutes.

None of our eight passengers saw the discs because they were off our bow, and we didn't think to turn the plane, so intense was our interest.

It was impossible to estimate their speed or if they were moving at all. All I know is that when they did disappear they vanished suddenly.

In all the time Ralph and I were flying during the war, and in my 14 years with United Airlines, I've never seen anything like it.

I leave Saturday night on a flight for Chicago and you can bet your life I'm going to keep my eyes open.

Up until last night, we all had discounted 90 per cent of the reports we'd read in the papers or heard over the radio, but now.

Frankly, I'm baffled.