UFO. United States

3 Pentagon officials, 2 USAF combat flying officers, pilot Capt. G. B. Edwards and copilot Capt. Theron C. Fehrevach flying C-45 transport plane heading 26° at 5,000 ft, saw a dark 200-250 ft diameter hemispherical parachute-shaped or B-35 flying wing shaped object at about 20° azimuth at about 7,000 ft about 5-10 miles away with a large black smoke region below it almost looking like a large suspended black object about 3x the object’s diameter, possibly obscuring a lower portion of a sphere instead of the object being just an upper hemisphere. UFO was darker than the 50% cloud cover and “easy to distinguish as not being cloud.” Object moved smoothly horizontally to the right to about 32° azimuth at about 300+ mph then back again without any noticeable turn radius. Edwards put the C-45 into a climb to 7,000 ft so they would be on the same height level as the UFO and turned left slightly to 20° to head directly toward it. Army Courier Service passenger 1st Lt. John H. Van Santen was alerted by Fehrevach and now also saw the object move right then left by 12° again, then they all saw the object recede at high speed radically away and disappear [at possibly 6,000 mph to reduce angular size below visual resolution by increasing distance at least 200 miles in About 1-1/2 minutes later object reappeared about 30°-45° to the right of their heading at the same level but at greater distance, stationary in position, then oscillating or “wiggling” about that position horizontally right-left about 1-1.5x object’s width. Object moved horizontally to dead ahead again and disappeared by receding in the distance at high speed. The ball was observed by three witnesses for over 15 minutes (Edwards, G B; Fehrevach,Theron C).