The Pacific Smoke Ring: BOAC, Pan Am and the S.S. Iberville

September 21, 1961. About 1700 GMT. Over the empty North Pacific between Japan and Hawaii, airliners and a merchant ship were crossing the same stretch of ocean. Within minutes of each other, several crews looked up at the same strange thing.

Capt. R. F. Griffin of BOAC was about 1100 miles out of Tokyo, bound for Honolulu, at 37,000 feet. It was 3 a.m. Tokyo time. He saw something "in appearance like a large smoke ring", "not unlike aurora in texture and color". It hung "about 50 degrees up" and "moved rapidly east-southeast".

The center of the ring was clear sky. Stars showed through it. NICAP's version adds that it was about 2 degrees across, four times the size of the full moon, and that it came up from behind and overtook the airliner. "A ray of light seemed to project downward from the object." By 3:06 a.m. it had disappeared over the horizon.

Griffin was not alone. Five minutes before he saw it, he had talked with an Air Force pilot who had seen it. A Pan American Boeing 707 pilot reported a "doughnut-shaped object moving easterly about 10 degrees above the horizon".

On the American S.S. Iberville, Second Officer William C. Ash wrote it into the ship's log. "A white opaque mass about twice the size of a full moon appeared in the northwest at an elevation of about 20 degrees."

Then it changed. At about 40 degrees "the mass opened gradually to appear as a huge halo with a satellite in the center." The central point had "very nearly the brightness of a first magnitude star." By the zenith it had more than doubled in size. Then it moved to the southeast and faded out completely at about 20 degrees. The entire mass was in view for approximately 8 to 10 minutes.

The crews reported to the FAA, which offered no explanation. The Honolulu Advertiser ran "3 pilots report seeing unknown object in sky" on September 29, and Notice to Mariners printed the Iberville log on October 28. Project Blue Book closed its file as "Other (MISSILE ACTIVITY)", noting a "Missile exercise in area at the time of the sighting." It never said which launch.

NICAP was unconvinced. In The UFO Evidence it declared: "The object was not an ICBM missile. Nor was it a satellite re-entering the atmosphere." It argued the ring was at least several hundred feet in diameter and compared its shape to a space station proposed by Wernher von Braun.

In 2013, Tim Printy offered a candidate in SUNlite. A Soviet R-7A ICBM test was launched from Baikonur on September 21, 1961, toward an impact zone about 1,000 to 1,100 miles southwest of Hawaii. Jonathan McDowell confirmed a maximum range launch in that direction. Venting fuel, Printy argued, would form a huge sunlit cloud, and the rocket's track passed almost directly over the Iberville. The launch time was never found. "Unless somebody can produce a launch time that falsifies this potential explanation, I would consider it likely that the Soviet ICBM test produced these sightings."

Loose ends remain. Griffin's 3 a.m. Tokyo time is an hour later than the ship's log. NICAP's map put the airliner northeast of the ship, while Printy placed it to the northwest. But the witnesses agreed on the essentials. A white, luminous ring, clear at its heart, crossing the Pacific sky at speed.