24 July 1948. Near Montgomery, Alabama. A crew reported a cigar shape with two rows of lit windows and a flame exhaust. The Chiles-Whitted report became a benchmark, and Edward J. Ruppelt later ranked it with Mantell and the Gorman Dogfight as the three 1948 classics that convinced Air Force intelligence specialists UFOs were real. Later cases were measured against it. Write-ups compare it with Captain Sames's Cortez Road object of 1949, and LIFE set it beside Clyde Tombaugh's sighting at Las Cruces. The Hazen, Arkansas porthole disc of 1950 sits beside it too. Another DC-3 crew, another object with windows in the night.
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