Charleston Radar-Visual Case: Braniff Flight 42 and the Light at 33,000 Feet (Hynek RV-2)

The year was 1966, the year of a wave of UFO reports. In the early hours of Wednesday, May 4, two airliners flew east on a jet airway over Charleston, West Virginia. Braniff Airlines Flight 42, a Boeing 707, cruised at 33,000 feet. American Airlines Flight 20 followed about 20 miles behind. On the ground, one FAA controller with 13 years of air traffic experience had only those two aircraft to watch.

"At approximately 04:30 a Braniff Airlines Flight 42 called me on a VHF frequency of 134.75 and asked if he had any traffic for his flight," the controller wrote. The scope showed a target with no transponder. It sat about 5 miles off the airliner's 11 o'clock, above it and descending through 33,000 feet.

From the cockpit, the Braniff captain watched it come down at about 20 degrees off the horizon. "Whatever it was, it was not an aircraft … the object was giving off brilliant flaming light consisting of alternating white, green, and red colors."

It swung out to eight or ten miles at the 10 o'clock position. Then it came at the airliner, closing to about three miles. It made a left turn and headed northwest, back the way it had come. "The target I observed was doing approximately 1,000 miles an hour and made a complete 180-degree turn in the space of five miles, which no aircraft I have ever followed on radar could possibly do."

Project Blue Book concluded "landing lights." It leaned on the American Airlines pilot, who submitted no report but said: "to me it only appeared to be an airplane at some distance, say six or eight miles, who turned on his landing lights." And: "I presume it was the air force refuelling." When the controller later asked for details, that pilot "politely clammed up."

The Condon Committee told the story differently. In case 76-B, Gordon D. Thayer recorded what looked like a fast-flying aircraft with landing lights at the 8:30 or 9:00 position. Braniff's own airborne radar recorded it. The return made a sweeping turn and disappeared off scope to the southwest. Thayer found the Air Force explanation consistent with the facts.

J. Allen Hynek was not convinced. In The UFO Experience in 1972, the case became radar-visual RV-2. "It is inconceivable that an air force refueling mission … would be in progress six or eight miles ahead of an airliner on a commercial jetway," Hynek wrote. Blue Book had never obtained depositions, so "this case and many similar to it do not constitute scientific data."

Martin Shough's RADCAT catalogue added that such an operation "would, presumably, not be difficult for the Air Force to trace." Yet Blue Book never found one. RADCAT rates the case Unknown.

NICAP says the case was "partly the basis for the now-famous re-enactment of the radar/visual from the opening scenes" of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. In Steven Spielberg's 1977 film, two airliners narrowly avoid a bright UFO under Indianapolis Center, and neither pilot wants to file a report. Hynek served as the film's scientific consultant. Over Charleston, one real pilot had already made the same choice.