🚀 Forgotten in the Skies: The Chiles-Whitted UFO Encounter Over Montgomery, Alabama
In the early morning hours of July 24, 1948, something strange sliced through the skies over Montgomery, Alabama—something that left seasoned pilots stunned and sparked one of the earliest and most compelling UFO investigations in U.S. history. The Chiles-Whitted UFO Encounter, as it came to be known, has since faded into relative obscurity, but it remains a cornerstone of American UFO lore. Let’s take a journey back to that eerie summer night and explore one of the South’s most chilling brushes with the unknown.
👨✈️ The Men in the Cockpit: Clarence Chiles and John Whitted
Captain Clarence Chiles, a decorated World War II pilot, and co-pilot John Whitted were flying an Eastern Air Lines DC-3 passenger plane from Houston to Atlanta. Around 2:45 AM, about 20 miles southwest of Montgomery, their routine flight turned into something out of The Twilight Zone.
Chiles was the first to notice it—a glowing object rapidly approaching head-on from the east. At first, he thought it might be a jet. But this was 1948, and jet airliners were still years away from becoming commercial staples.
What the two pilots and their one wakeful passenger described was incredible: a cigar-shaped craft, roughly 100 feet long, with no wings and double rows of brightly lit windows. A flame—yes, a literal flame—trailed from the rear as it flew past their cockpit at astonishing speed before banking sharply and shooting upward into the clouds.
👁️ Witnesses and Visual Detail
The description offered by Chiles and Whitted was chillingly detailed:
- Cigar-shaped fuselage, glowing white
- Two rows of square windows, emitting a blue light
- Orange-red flames shooting from the tail
- Estimated speed: “Faster than any aircraft known to man at the time”
- Silent, except for a rush of air as it passed
A passenger sitting near the cockpit also saw a flash of bright light, corroborating the pilots’ testimony. These weren’t confused observers or frightened civilians—these were experienced military aviators trained to identify aircraft in all conditions.
👨🔬 The Air Force Response: Project Sign
At the time, the U.S. Air Force was deep into Project Sign, the military’s first official attempt to study unidentified flying objects. Chiles and Whitted’s sighting was taken very seriously. In fact, it prompted Project Sign analysts to initially draft a now-infamous report concluding that UFOs were interplanetary in origin.
Yes—you read that right. The U.S. Air Force was ready to say we were not alone.
However, that enthusiasm was quickly shut down. The report was allegedly destroyed, and the Pentagon took a sharp left turn. The official story was revised: what the pilots saw was a meteor.
But meteors don’t fly level. They don’t have windows, and they don’t pull up and bank away from airplanes mid-air.
👻 Lost to Time… or Buried?
Over time, the Chiles-Whitted encounter became a footnote—quietly buried under a mountain of redacted files and forgotten sightings. UFO researcher David Booth, writing for US UFO Center, called it “a classic UFO event that has all but been forgotten.”
Why? Possibly because it was too compelling—too credible, too detailed, and too hard to debunk. And perhaps because it took place in the Deep South, far from the hubs of media and military might.
But make no mistake—this was no swamp gas or stray balloon. This was a full-on, head-on encounter with something otherworldly, witnessed by professionals, documented by the government, and swept under the rug.
🌌 A Southern Sky Mystery Worth Remembering
As someone who has spent a lifetime investigating the strange, the paranormal, and the unseen, I believe it’s vital to preserve and re-examine cases like this. The Chiles-Whitted encounter happened just miles from where I live and work—right over Montgomery, Alabama. It’s not just a UFO story; it’s a part of our local haunted history, a cosmic echo waiting to be rediscovered.
And maybe, just maybe, the skies of Alabama still hold secrets yet to be revealed.
Stay curious,
Shawn Sellers