Editing UFOs An International Scientific Problem (section)

=== Case 7. Peruvian coast, December 30, 1966 ===

South America has been a source of extremely large numbers of UFO reports.
I have never been in a good position to evaluate the credibility and creden-
tials of witnesses in these reports and hence pass no present judgment on most
of them, but stress that they warrant searching study. One rather interesting
case that has been cross-checked sufficiently to appear well authenticated
involves observations by the 6-man flight-crew of a Canadian-Pacific Airlines
DC-8, who sighted an unconventionally behaving airborne object over the Peru-
vian coast as they headed northwest at 35,000 ft altitude on the indicated
date early in the morning (0300 LST). A report to VFON, and other reports in
the press and elsewhere, give salient features of the event.

Capt. Robert Millbank's report stated that the unknown was first spotted
70° to the left of their flight path, at an estimated elevation angle of about
10°. There was a clear sky, with stars visible. At first detection, the
unknown seemed to consist of a pair of lights of high luminosity, hovering for
perhaps a minute, and pulsating. It next moved down towards the plane, and
assumed a position off their left wing, seeming to pace the DC-8 for another
minute or two.

All six crewmen took turns looking at the unknown through various windows
to be positive that window-reflection effects were not involved. As the
unknown paced the aircraft, it appeared to be a pair of bright lights, sepa-
rated by 3-4°, and with some vaguely perceptible structure joining the lights,
according to some of the crew's accounts. Others felt that no interconnecting
structure was discernible, in the estimated 1-2 minutes that the object lay
off the port wing (at a distance that could not be reliably estimated, but was
felt to be of the order of perhaps a mile). A V-shaped pair of thin light
beams emanated from the object, pointing upwards initially, but downwards
later, according to Millbank's account. All passengers were asleep, and no
photographs were made.

Millbank stated that "in 26 years of flying I have never seen anything
like this before." Second Officer J. D. Dahl said, "...in my opinion, the
only answer to this sighting is a craft with speed and controllability unknown
to us." Other sighting details will be omitted here. After a few minutes of
pacing to the DC-8's port side, the object was seen to accelerate, pull away,
and climb rapidly out over the Pacific to the west, where it was lost in the
distance.

Here, as in such a disturbingly large number of commercial airline UFO
reports that have been ignored or explained away during the past two decades,
one is hard put to give any conventional explanation. Clearly, unless one
throws out most of the sighting details provided by the six crewmen, it will
be quite unreasonable to call this unknown an aircraft, a balloon, a meteor,
a plasmoid, an hallucination, or any of the other frequently-invoked mis-
identi fieds.