Editing UFOs An International Scientific Problem (section)

=== Case 6. Near Barcelona, Spain, September 10, 1967 ===

Over the past twenty years, airline pilots and flight crews have been
a continuing source of scientifically puzzling UFO reports. One of the
earliest, still carried by Bluebook as one of its UNIDENTIFIEDS, is a
July 4, 1947 UAL sighting near Boise2. When some months ago I interviewed
Capt. E. J. Smith, pilot of the DC-3 from which the sighting was made at

sunset, shortly after takeoff, his opinion that the two formations of disc-
like objects that he, his co-pilot, and a stewardess had seen 20 years

earlier were no conventional aircraft seemed as strong as it had been when
he was interviewed by reporters in 1947. From Capt. Smith's sighting down

to the present, the class of airline-pilot reports has remained a most impor-
tant class because of obvious observer-credibility factors. Let me recapitu-
late a much more recent one.

Just before sunset on September 10, 1967, four crew members of an Air
Ferry Ltd. DC-6, bound for England from Majorca, sighted an unconventional
airborne object about 60 miles NW of Barcelona, at 16,000 ft. A brief report
appeared in the Sept. 11 edition of the London Daily Express, independent
British investigators assembled further information, and one of the crew,
F/L Brian Dunlop, submitted a summary account to VFON headquarters (Volunteer

Flight Officers Network, a clearing-house in Denver for meteor, vehicle-
reentry, and other aerial-sighting reports).

When first sighted, according to Dunlop, the unknown was about 30° to
the left of their northbound flight path, heading towards the west at an
altitude slightly above theirs. Its initial estimated distance was put at
a number of tens of miles as it crossed to their right, turned towards them,
and then approached after an apparent deceleration and a descending motion.
The shape of the metallic-appearing object resembled an inverted ice cream
cone, with a rounded base and pointed top. Dunlop stated, "There was a
definite solid object the like of which none of the four crew that saw it had
ever seen before, and we had been quick enough we could have got a good photo
of it." Capt. F. E. C. Underhill stated in another interview that the UFO
"must have been under control...it definitely altered course substantially."
The course alteration brought it on a head-on approach, but it passed under
the DC-6's starboard wing and disappeared to their south. The crew did not
alert any of the 96 passengers aboard in the total viewing time of about
2-3 minutes, not wishing to alarm them. Estimated speed of the object was
600-700 knots, whereas the ambient wind at flight level was only 10 knots
from the north. A check with Barcelona flight controllers indicated there
were no known aircraft in the area, but reports do not indicate if radar cover-
age was available.

The shape, the veering path, the passage under the aircraft's flight level
all rule out meteoric phenomena. That it was not a balloon was indicated not
only by the shape, but its reported motions do not match balloon behavior in
any obvious way. It would seem to be one more airline-reported unidentified
flying object.