Air Ferry DC-6 Metallic Cone Sighting near Reus

The late 1960s. British holidaymakers flew to Spain on charter aircraft, and Air Ferry was one of the airlines carrying them. It had already known tragedy that year. On 3 June 1967, one of its DC-4s crashed on Canigó, in the French Pyrenees, while flying a Costa Brava package holiday.

Spanish press accounts later described the British charter aircraft in this story as returning to England.

11 September 1967. About 17:35. An Air Ferry DC-6 was in the air west of Barcelona. The Spanish Air Force file places it north of Reus, at 16,000 feet.

In command was Captain F. E. C. Underhill. NICAP described him as a pilot with 30 years of flying, 18 of them with the RAF. With him were a co-pilot and a steward.

The object approached from the west. It was a metallic-looking cone. It crossed the aircraft's flight track. It turned toward the plane. Then it sped away to the south. The crew put its speed at 600 to 700 knots. Underhill was certain of one thing. The object must have been "under control." In his words, "it definitely altered course substantially." Brian Dunlop, named by NICAP as Flight Officer, was just as firm: "There was a definite solid object the like of which none of the crew...had ever seen before." According to the Spanish press, passengers and crew alike were alarmed.

Here the record splits. A later NICAP report, in early 1968, dated Underhill's cone to 10 September 1967 and placed it "over the Pyrenees," where it passed beneath his plane at high speed. The Spanish Air Force file lists two sightings. On 10 September, an Air Ferry aircraft saw something shaped like a cone 80 miles northeast of Barcelona. On 11 September, another Air Ferry DC-6 crew saw an object north of Reus. One encounter or two? Nobody has settled it.

In London, NICAP member Julian J. A. Hennessey took up the case. Underhill went on to join Hennessey's European investigative subcommittee, as the U.F.O. Investigator reported in its March and April 1968 issue.

In Spain, the intelligence section of the Air Operations Command compiled file 670910/11, "Avistamiento de fenómenos extraños en Reus, Barcelona y Torrejón: 10 y 11 de Septiembre de 1967." Ten handwritten pages. According to the press, the file holds an English-language letter from London asking about the sighting, and a note that specialist journalists in the United States had asked about it too. It was declassified on 16 September 1997.

The Air Force ruled out a weather balloon. It ruled out an artificial satellite. Its conclusion was brief: "La naturaleza de dichos objetos no ha podido ser determinada." The nature of these objects could not be determined.

It went further. It recommended a defence information and analysis centre that would exchange data on unidentified flying objects with international bodies. No hoax claim or later debunking of the case has been recorded.

The file is now online, scanned by Spain's Ministry of Defence. Regional newspapers such as the Diari de Tarragona and Crónica Global have revisited it. What remains is simple and stubborn. An experienced airline crew. A solid, metallic shape. A deliberate turn toward their aircraft. And an official file that admits it has no answer.