UFOs - Leslie Kean [31]
In America, the case of Captain Phil Schultz is exceptional—one that I personally investigated. I interviewed the captain extensively and received a six-page, handwritten Aerial Sighting Report from him.
Captain Schultz was piloting TWA flight 842 from San Francisco to John F. Kennedy Airport over Lake Michigan one bright clear summer day in 1981. Suddenly he saw a “large, round, silver metal object” with six jet-black “portholes” equally spaced around the circumference, which quickly “descended into the atmosphere from above.” Captain Schultz and his copilot were so close to the object that it appeared as large as a grapefruit held at arm’s length. Expecting a midair collision, they braced themselves for impact. The object then made a sharp, high-speed turn, avoiding the aircraft, and departed.
Schultz did not file a report with TWA, but instead worked diligently with me to accurately reconstruct the event in the cockpit of his aircraft. This allowed me to ascertain many important facts about the event. Its approach and departure speed was calculated to be about 1,000 mph, with a high G turn, as well. No shock wave or turbulence was felt at any time. The aircraft’s autopilot remained coupled throughout the encounter, and no electromagnetic effects were noticed. The first officer saw the final two-thirds of the event, but the flight engineer did not see anything as a result of his position in the rear of the cabin. Chicago Center had no other air traffic in the area, although their radar at the time had a range of about 150 miles.
My sketch of the cockpit windows and apparent size, shape, location, and flight path of the UAP seen by Captain Schultz. R. Haines
With extensive experience as a U.S. Navy fighter pilot in the Korean War and afterward, Captain Shultz never accepted the reality of UFOs prior to this incident. This encounter instantly changed his belief. When I asked him what he thought the object was, he quickly replied, “There is no doubt in my mind. It was an extraterrestrial craft.” He said as much in his handwritten report that he filled out for me, saying he believed the thing was a “spaceship.”8
Also in America, a very puzzling, low-altitude, in-flight apparent collision occurred on October 23, 2002, just northeast of Mobile, Alabama, according to a National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) accident report. En route from Mobile to Montgomery, Thomas Preziose, fifty-four, with 4,000 total flight hours to his credit, was piloting alone, carrying about 420 pounds of paper records cargo. He took off for this flight at 7:40 p.m. The preliminary accident report stated that the Cessna 208B, a Cargomaster with the FAA registration number N76U—a high-wing, single-engine commercial airplane—“collided in-flight with an unknown object [italics mine] at 3,000 feet and descended uncontrolled into swampy water in the Big Bateau Bay in Spanish Fort, Alabama.”9 The crash occurred about six minutes after take-off, at approximately 7:46 p.m. Interestingly, the NTSB saw fit to issue a later report that did not mention the collision with an unknown object.
Based on data from an automated surface-observing system 7.7 miles from the accident site, recorded at 6:53 p.m., there was a layer of scattered clouds at 700 feet and a more solid overcast beginning at 1,200 feet with clear air in between, and a visibility of five miles. The wind was 11 knots at 60 degrees. It may be significant to this fatal accident to note that a DC-10 passed about 1,000 feet above the Cessna after approaching him from about his eleven-o’clock position at 7:45—seconds before the crash—and would have produced wing-tip vortex turbulence.10 Afterward, the pilot uttered