TWA Flight 117 "red wheel" sighting, Goshen, Indiana

Thursday, April 27, 1950. Trans World Airlines Flight 117, a Douglas DC-3, was flying west toward Chicago. In the left seat sat Captain Robert Adickes, ex-Navy, ten years with TWA. Flying as first officer was Robert F. Manning, also a four-stripe captain, ex-Air Force, with more than 6,000 hours. At about 8:25 p.m. the airliner was cruising over Goshen, Indiana. Altitude 2,000 feet. Speed about 175 mph.

Manning saw it first. A strange red light, moving swiftly near the horizon. In notes written that night at a Chicago hotel, Manning called it "a glowing red object aft of the starboard wing," "similar in appearance to a rising blood red moon." Then it climbed up on the right, overtaking the plane.

It settled in, maintaining "its position relative to us, about one-half mile away." "It was like flying formation with another plane," Manning said. Adickes turned toward it. The glowing disc slid away, keeping its distance. "Each time it veered away, as if it were controlled by repulse radar," Adickes said.

Adickes saw "a huge round wheel rolling down a road," at least twenty feet in diameter, probably closer to fifty. To FLYING magazine the captain called it "definitely round, with no irregular features at all." It "glowed evenly with a bright red color as if it were heated stainless steel." Then it dived. In barely more than a second, by TRUE's account, it dropped to 1,500 feet and raced off to the north past South Bend at close to 400 miles per hour. Within a few minutes it was gone.

Adickes called stewardess Gloria Hinshaw forward as a witness and had the passengers alerted. Hinshaw saw something "like a big red wheel rolling along." Passenger Samuel N. Miller, a jewellery-firm manager, described "the color of a neon sign." Jacob Goelzer said "It looked something like a spinning exhaust, all aflame." C. W. Anderson caught the end of it: "a big red light bulb, fading off fast." Two Boeing engineers, Clifford H. Jenkins and Dean C. Bourland, were also aboard.

TRUE magazine commissioned Donald E. Keyhoe to investigate. Keyhoe's team traced all but five of the 16 passengers. Air traffic control, TRUE reported, had no record of anything near the airliner. The case later surfaced in Brad Sparks's Blue Book Unknowns Catalogue as Case 368, a pointer to a US Air Force file.

In 1968 McDonald interviewed both pilots and set the case before the House Committee on Science and Astronautics, as Case 7 under "Why don't pilots see UFOs?" The verdict was plain. "The Goshen case has no evident meteorological, astronomical, or optical explanation." The downward line of sight, McDonald added, ruled out a meteor.

McDonald found indirect signs that the official answer had been "blast-furnace reflections off clouds." Adickes called that "absolutely out of the question." The furnaces at Gary were about 90 miles away, and no reflection could climb and manoeuvre like that. Burning barns were floated too. Manning's reply: "Even a first-trip passenger would hardly be fooled that easily." The two pilots never fully agreed on the shape. They agreed on the red glow, and that it was no aircraft.

The next day the papers had it. "TWA Pilot Races Fireball In Flight," ran the Long Beach Press-Telegram. FLYING followed in July 1950, TRUE in August, and Keyhoe retold it in Flying Saucers from Outer Space. NICAP's The UFO Evidence kept it in circulation. No photo. No radar. Just two captains, a cabin of witnesses and a red wheel rolling through the dark.