Kinross UFO Incident — Key Persons Directory

Kinross UFO Incident — Key Persons Directory

The Crew

First Lieutenant Felix Eugene Moncla Jr. (1926–1953)

Pilot, F-89C Scorpion "Avenger Red." Born October 21, 1926, Mansura, Louisiana. Pre-medical student before joining the Air Force. 811 total flight hours; 121 hours in F-89. Married with two young children at time of disappearance. Temporarily assigned to Kinross from Truax AFB. Declared dead November 23, 1953. Honored by a memorial plaque in Mansura describing him as having disappeared while intercepting a UFO.

Second Lieutenant Robert L. Wilson

Radar operator, F-89C Scorpion "Avenger Red." Rear-seat crew member; responsible for the aircraft's onboard radar. Experienced difficulty tracking the unidentified target; ground control took over intercept direction as a result. Declared missing November 23, 1953. Less publicly documented than Moncla.

Ground Personnel

Second Lieutenant Douglas Stuart

GCI controller at Calumet Air Force Station; provided the initial official account of the intercept; identified the target as RCAF VC-912. His account became the basis for the C-47 attribution in the official explanation.

Lieutenant William Mingenbach

Pilot of the secondary alert aircraft at Kinross; launched as "Avenger Black" approximately an hour after Avenger Red. Redirected to the last known radar position of Avenger Red after the merger event; found nothing.

Colonel Shoup

Air Force officer; provided the initial official public explanation for the disappearance on November 24, 1953; stated the F-89 had intercepted an off-course RCAF C-47 and crashed while avoiding a collision.

RCAF Personnel

Gerald Fosberg

Identified in documentary research as the pilot of RCAF aircraft VC-912, which the USAF named as the unidentified target. In a filmed interview for David Cherniack's documentary "The Moncla Memories," Fosberg flatly denied that his aircraft had deviated from its flight plan or been the subject of an interception.

Researchers

Donald Keyhoe (1897–1988)

Retired Major, USMC; founding director of NICAP (1956–1969); the most prominent investigator of the Kinross case in the 1950s. Obtained and reported the alleged leaked document containing the "just swallowed our F-89" quote; documented conflicting notifications to Moncla's widow; characterized the case as one of the strongest in the UFO evidence record.

Francis Ridge

UFO researcher; NICAP representative; received the initial email from Preston Miller in 2006 claiming the Great Lakes Dive Company had found the F-89 wreckage; forwarded the claim to the UFO research community.

James Carrion

Director, Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) at time of the 2006 claim; conducted the investigation that demonstrated the Great Lakes Dive Company did not exist and Adam Jimenez's claims were a hoax.

David Cherniack

Filmmaker; produced the documentary The Moncla Memories***; conducted filmed interviews with Gerald Fosberg and others with specific knowledge of the incident; contributed to the most detailed publicly available investigative treatment of the case's documentary record.

"Adam Jimenez"

Pseudonym or unverified identity; spokesman for the fictional Great Lakes Dive Company; perpetrator of the 2006 Lake Superior discovery hoax; identity never publicly established; ceased communications after the hoax was exposed.