Alternate Perceptions Magazine, April 2025
The Saucer Files
By Rick Hilberg
Advent of The Flying Saucers - 1954
June 30th. THE BOAC CASE
American and British Air Force Intelligence officers studied a logbook of Captain James Howard, pilot of a British Overseas Airways Corporation airliner bound from New York to London. It described seven weird, black flying objects that trailed the plane for 80 miles near Goose Bay, Labrador.
The strange story of what he and his crew and some passengers witnessed at 19, 000 feet over the Atlantic is told in these extracts from the log:
"At 0105 GMT on June 30 about 150 nautical miles southwest of Goose Bay, height 19, 000 feet, flying in clear weather above a layer of low cloud, noticed on our port beam a number of dark objects at approximately the same altitude as our aircraft. I drew the attention of the first officer to them. He said he had just noticed them too."
Captain Howard then saw that they were moving along a track roughly parallel to the plane and keeping the same speed. Goose Bay radioed there were no other aircraft in the area. It was 0107 GMT, and the log continues:
"During this time the shape of the large object changed slightly, also the position of the smaller ones relative to the big one. Some moved ahead, some behind. The first officer then told Goose Bay what we were watching and they said they would send a fighter to investigate."
The large object continued to change shape, as the entire group still moved along with the plane, about five miles away, possibly much more, Howard estimated. The other crew members also watched the objects.
"All agreed they never saw anything like it before. At about 0120 GMT the fighter reported he was approaching, and the objects immediately began to grow indistinct until only one was visible. This grew smaller and finally vanished at 0123 GMT, still at the same bearings from us.
"All who watched the objects are sure that the large one, at any rate, was no sort of winged aircraft. The small ones were just dots. They left no vapor trails, no lights were seen, just black silhouettes."
Captain Howard described the large object to intelligence officers as like "a flying jellyfish." He also stated the smaller objects kept station around the larger object like a group of fighters acting as a bomber escort. Once, the large one "looked like a dart, at another time a dumbbell," Howard reported.
"In my 7,500 hours in the air," he observed, "nothing like this has ever happened before. I am certain these objects were not the result of reflected light or mirage or any other unusual phenomenon one meets at high altitude. This really was something different."
Lee Boyd, the co-pilot, said, "I am willing to swear that what we saw was something solid, something maneuverable, and something that was being controlled intelligently."
Earlier in the year one Michael Kuritz of Weatherly, Pennsylvania, told reporters he saw four saucer-like objects staging what appeared to be a mock dogfight around an airliner. Kuritz said the disks shot ahead of the plane, then reversed and moved behind it. On one occasion they shot straight up into the sky above the plane and then dropped down again. He said they were " fairly large" and shone brilliantly in the bright sunlight. He watched the antics of the disks for about five minutes before they moved out of sight, still trailing the airliner.
Asked if they could have been weather balloons or reflections from the plane's wings, Kuritz said, "absolutely not," also observing they did not even remotely resemble jet aircraft.
The sighting was on March 22nd and was also witnessed by his wife.
September 2nd. KANSAS BOY HAS ENCOUNTER WITH A "SAUCERMAN"
A twelve-year-old Coldwater, Kansas farm boy, John Jacob Swaim, swore that he met being from a flying saucer face-to-face and saw the creature take off from his father's wheat field.
John was running a tractor at about the end of the workday. The setting sun suddenly caught something that startled the boy.
About 20 feet away, and looking straight at him, was a little man with a pointed nose and ears.
"He was sort of crouching, looking at me," he said.
Then young John spotted the saucer, as it was halfway hidden by a terrace. The thing was hovering about five feet above the ground.
Young Mr. Swaim wasn't sure how it happened, but he said he thought the creature quickly flew through the air back to the hovering saucer.
According to the report the boy gave to Sheriff Gloyd Hadley who was quickly called out to the farm, the little man "was pretty dark complexioned", and work clothing "which was sort of shiny." Young John also told Hadley that two shiny cylinders about a foot long each, we're attached to the back of the creature.
The saucer itself, young John said, was about 50 feet in diameter, and hung in the air some 100 yards from the spot where it was first spotted.
The Sheriff was told that as soon as the creature had jumped through a door into the saucer, the contraption took off so fast that the boy had no idea of its speed. "It went awfully fast," he said.
"How fast, son?" the sheriff asked.
"Well, compared to it a jet would seem like a turtle."
"What did you do then?" asked Hadley.
"I went home. I never knew a fellow could get over those terraces so fast."
Young John Jacob's father, John Swaim said that his son " has never been a boy to tell any tall tales. He convinced me he had seen something."
The next morning after examining the area where the alleged little man was seen, Sheriff Hadley found many footprints in the soil. Three were perfect and sharply defined.
"They were pear-shaped, about four and a half inches long, a little less than two inches across at the toes and with the narrowest heels I ever saw," the elder Swaim told reporters. "The prints weren't those of any animal. I know all the wild prints. The impression was deepest at the toes, as if the fellow had been running, but there wasn't any great weight behind the prints. They didn't show a hard impression - more like they had been made by a soft shoe. The boy saw something," Mr. Swaim said.
John Jacob heard no noise when the saucer took off, but the tractor was running and making a lot of racket.
Although the little man "looked mean, " in young John's opinion, the creature didn't seem to have any obvious weapons on him, and his small and human-looking hands were empty.
"I know one thing," said John Jacob's younger brother Robert, "my brother saw what he saw." But he also lamented that his big brother “has all the luck."
Sheriff Hadley believed the whole affair was real and that it was a solid case.
