RB-47 Electronic and Visual Encounter

In the pre-dawn hours of 17 July 1957, an RB-47 electronic reconnaissance aircraft with a six-man crew departed Forbes AFB, Kansas, on a training mission. Beginning over Mississippi around 10:30 p.m. local time and continuing through Louisiana, Texas, and into Oklahoma, the crew experienced repeated encounters with an unidentified object. The object was first detected as an anomalous signal on the aircraft's ECM (electronic countermeasures) gear at approximately 2,800 MHz. It then appeared visually to the pilot and co-pilot as a bright blue-white light pacing the aircraft at similar altitude and speed. Simultaneously, it appeared on the aircraft's radar scope. The object repeatedly accelerated ahead of the plane, performed sharp 90-degree turns, and disappeared and reappeared on all three independent sensor systems at the same moments, ruling out individual equipment malfunction. Ground-based radar at Duncanville, Texas, and Carswell AFB also tracked the object at times. The encounter lasted approximately 1.5 hours over a distance exceeding 700 miles. The crew included pilot Lewis Chase, co-pilot James McCoid, and ECM officers Frank McClure and others. James McDonald later interviewed the crew extensively and described it as one of the most puzzling cases in the Blue Book files. The Condon Committee reviewed it but could not identify the phenomenon; Blue Book ultimately left it unexplained.