Cigar-Shaped UFO Spotted
in the Clear Night Sky
Date: May 29, 1950
Location: Mount Vernon, Virginia; United States
Captain Willis Sperry together with copilot William Gates and flight engineer Robert Arnholt were en route to San Francisco from New York on board a DC-6 aircraft with stops at Washington, DC, Nashville and Tulsa. The clear night sky, together with the full moon, was the perfect condition for a nighttime flight.
It was around 21:15 when the DC-6 aircraft was flying over Mount Vernon in Virginia at an altitude of 7,500 feet. Around that time, copilot Gates saw a bright fluorescent light straight ahead. What made the light stand out from the stars of the night sky was that the light was radiating and appeared to be much brighter than any of the stars in the sky. The light was dead ahead of the airplane and at that point the pilots assumed that it must have been an unregistered aircraft. As the lights continued to approach the DC-6 at a rapid speed, Gates grabbed onto the controls and quickly veered the aircraft to avoid collision. The object’s silhouette was visible against the full moon, and its cigar shape, together with the dark metallic color and the lack of wings or exhaust plumes, convinced Gates, Sperry, and Arnholt that this was not an ordinary aircraft nor was it a terrestrial one. The imagery was somewhere between astonishing and terrifying.
Leveling the aircraft after the sharp turn, Sperry made a left turn, and to his surprise the object followed. The cigar-shaped UFO had halted its course and started moving in a parallel direction, imitating every turn and every maneuver Sperry made. It was crystal clear to these three witnesses that no terrestrial aircraft could possess the unconventional characteristics the disk-shaped UFO did. With that being said, the air traffic control operators at the Washington Air Traffic Control Center in Leesberg, Virginia, were unable to track any object other than the DC-6 aircraft on their radar. Within a few seconds the object made a sudden acceleration and disappeared to the east, not to be seen again.
The Investigation
This case was investigated by Project Blue Book and a formal interview with the three men was conducted on February 4, 1955. Although the investigation was initiated five years after the actual incident, the three men were able to recollect every single detail perfectly. Wolfgang Benjamin Kelmperer, the officer conducting the interview, acknowledged Sperry’s credibility, as well as his sixteen years of experience and fifteen thousand flight hours. It was undeniable that Sperry was an experienced pilot and was a credible eyewitness, which was a vital aspect for the case’s reliability.
Over the years, many other individuals came forward with stories that corroborated the sighting the three men had had. Colonel Henry “Hank” Myers, President Harry Truman’s pilot, was flying from Nashville to Knoxville on the same night of Sperry’s sighting. On his journey, Myers reported seeing a similar bright object that could have been the same UFO Sperry, Gates and Arnholt had encountered.
According to the interview with Kelmperer, “Much later, Sperry learned that ‘Hank Myers, later pilot of President Truman’s plane, was flying an AA airplane on the same evening and observed a brilliant bluish object between Nashville and Knoxville at such a time that it could well have been the same UFO.’
“The possibility that the UFO seen by Sperry and his copilot was a meteor was emphatically discounted by both. Capt. [sic] Sperry does not believe that the seemingly erratic apparent movement of the object could have been an illusion produced solely by the three veering maneuvers of their own aircraft. The observation of the bright light being at what they called the rear of the oblong or cigar shaped silhouette of the object as it passed for a fleeting fraction of a second in front of the disk of the full moon seems hard to reconcile with the brilliant visibility of this light during the earlier head-on approach phase, unless it is assumed that the luminous area was much larger than the cross section of the body.” 18
Conclusion
Sperry held out from involving the authorities of his sighting and perhaps this was the reason why a formal investigation by the air force never took place. With that being said, we must keep in mind that the high status of the second eyewitness, Colonel Myers, enhances the credibility of this UFO case. The characteristics of the UFO are without a doubt unconventional characteristics no terrestrial aircraft would possess. The lack of wings and exhaust plume are details that in and of themselves support the fact that the UFO was interplanetary and extraterrestrial in origin.
18. W.B. Klemperer, February 4, 1955 interview.