“We Flew Above
Flying Saucers”
Date: July 14, 1952
Location: Norfolk, Virginia, United States
Just one week prior to the UFO wave in Washington, DC, another significant UFO report was made. While en route to Miami from New York, Captain Fred Koepke, First Officer William Nash, and Second Officer William Fortenberry were on board a Pan American World Airways DC-4 aircraft. With clear skies, it seemed that this would be a routine flight for the three individuals. The weather conditions were perfect for a night-time flight. With no clouds in the sky, the city lights stood out as they were flying eight thousand feet over Norfolk, Virginia. However, just a few minutes into the flight, they came face to face with the unknown.
As Nash was looking down at the city lights, he noticed a red light had suddenly appeared in the sky, flying just below the aircraft’s starboard position. As he got a better look at it, what he thought was one light turned out to be six unidentified flying objects flying in an echelon formation at a tremendous speed toward the aircraft. Nash immediately called out for the others to look out the window to see what was unfolding. Koepke, Nash, and Fortenberry just stared in awe as the lights flew in formation directly below the aircraft. In an article later written by Nash and Fortenberry, the two recounted, “They had the fiery aspect of hot coals, but of much greater glow—perhaps twenty times more brilliant than any of the scattered ground lights over which they passed or the city lights to the right.” 36
The six aircraft were flying in formation approximately two thousand feet above the ground. They had a perfectly circular shape with well-defined edges and a wingspan of over 100 feet. What proved to the three men that these objects were extraterrestrial was that after a few seconds, the six objects flipped on their edge and started flying in a vertical position. Koepke compared the UFOs to a coin standing vertically, and estimated the aircraft were about fifteen feet wide. The objects then returned to their original horizontal position, still in formation, and made a sharp angular turn before they sped off into the distance.
Their encounter did not end there though. Within a few seconds, two other UFOs flew directly below their aircraft, heading toward the same direction the other six UFOs were. Although they were similar in shape, they were considerably less bright and as they caught up with the other six aircraft, the eight red lights started flickering sporadically as they began a vertical climb, blinking out and disappearing one by one. The entire encounter lasted around twelve seconds and the pilots estimated that the objects had covered fifty miles in just twelve seconds, which means that they must have been traveling at twelve thousand miles per hour. Although the objects were traveling at a speed that would have broken the sound barrier, no sonic boom was heard.
The Investigation
The DC-4 aircraft landed in Miami shortly after midnight. The following day, the three men were interviewed separately by Air Force Intelligence officer Major John Sharpe, together with four other officials. Although they did not get an inclination as to what the lights were, the men were told that seven other individuals had made similar reports within thirty minutes of their sighting.
The investigation carried out by Project Blue Book acknowledged the authenticity of the report and the credibility of the witnesses. With that being said, this case was listed as an unknown, which meant that the reported UFOs were not a natural phenomenon, a celestial body, nor a misidentification or a delusion. This did not stop astrophysicist and skeptic Donald Menzel from discounting the encounter. Although the official investigation itself could not find an explanation, Menzel stated that firstly, the pilots were not credible sources and secondly, the red lights were reflections from the cockpit and “immaterial images made of light.” 37
Conclusion
Menzel’s scrutiny of the encounter is not only illogical but also unfounded. In the witness reports, the witnesses stated that the objects could not have been reflections due to their maneuverability. Although the case is officially listed as unknown, it does seem as though these objects were interplanetary; the ability to appear and disappear out of nowhere, breaking the sound barrier without producing a sonic boom, and their unconventional characteristics are all factors that support an extraterrestrial hypothesis.
In Nash and Fortenberry’s article, they write, “Though we don’t know what they were, what they were doing, or where they came from, we are certain in our minds that they were intelligently operated craft from somewhere other than this planet. We are sure that no pilot, able to view them as we did, could conceive of any earthly aircraft capable of the speed, abrupt change of direction, and acceleration that we witnessed, or imagine any airplane metal that could withstand the heat that ought to have been created by friction in their passage through the dense atmosphere at two thousand feet. Whether they were controlled from within or remotely, we can’t say, but it is impossible to think of human flesh and bone surviving the jolt of their course reversal.” 38
36. William B. Nash and William H. Fortenberry, “We Flew Above Flying Saucers,” TRUE Report on Flying Saucers, 1967, http://www.seektress.com/above.htm.
37. Donald H. Menzel and Lyle G. Boyd, The World of Flying Saucers: A Scientific Examination of a Major Myth of the Space Age (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1963), 263.
38. Nash and Fortenberry, “We Flew Above Flying Saucers.”