The article below was published in the daily newspaper The Idaho Statesman, Boise, Idaho, USA, pages 1 and 2, on July 29, 1947.
See the case file.
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BY DAVE JOHNSON
A United Air Lines crew reported Monday night the sighting of a flying disc-like object, and Charles F. Gibian, the trip's captain, said if the government is conducting secret experiments with such objects, "they ought to be kept off the civil airways."
Capt. Gibian and First Officer Jack Harvey of UAL's westbound trip 105 said they saw a round, flat object in the sky west of Mountain Home, a town 45 miles east of here, as the twin-engined liner was letting down for a landing at Boise's Gowen field.
Both men said they thought the object was an airplane until "in a matter of seconds it disappeared, apparently going away from us."
Gibian said if the object was "40 miles or so distant from the airliner, it was as big as an airplane." He added that if what he and his co-pilot had seen actually was a flying disc, "it was going like hell when it vanished."
The Civil Aeronautics administration's communications station here reported there were no other aircraft in the sky in the vicinity of Mountain Home at the time Gibian and Harvey reported seeing the object.
The two veteran United pilots told their story to the Idaho Statesman from United's operations office at Pendleton, where the line was held open until the plane landed there, its first stop after leaving Boise.
Others See Objects
Gibian said that "other officers on United planes" had seen objects but had refrained from reporting them because they did not know what they were.
He said that only Monday night he had held a radio conversation with another United captain on a trip passing near him, and said that while he could not use the captain's name, he appeared "concerned" over the objects that had been reported seen in flight.
Gibian and Harvey said they were not certain that what they had seen actually was a "flying disc." But, they added, they couldn't deny it.
Gibian said the "only logical explanation" he could think of was that it was a bit of rapidly-forming and disappearing cloud.
Wasn't an Airplane...
"But," he said, "I say that's logical because I don't know what I saw. It wasn't an airplane, and if it was an object, when it vanished it was going like hell."
Gibian and Harvey are the second United crew to report sighting disc-like objects in the night sky over Boise. Capt. E. J. Smith of United's trip 105 - the same trip that Gibian was flying Monday night—reported on July 4 that he and his first officer and stewardess saw two groups of flying objects near Emmett, west of here.
Smith said he saw first a formation of five objects, then a formation of four, and that his co-pilot had blinked the plane's landing lights at them in the belief they were other aircraft flying a collision course.
Harvey saw the object first tonight. He said he thought it was an airplane, and then turned his attention to the instrument panel to reduce power in order to make the let down for Boise. When he looked up again, he said, the object had become smaller, then disappeared.
Has "Substance"
He said the plane was flying into the setting sun, and the object appeared "to have considerable substance."
Harvey said he first saw the object south of course, then it seemed to be moving north or northwest, the direction it was following when it went out of sight.
Gibian said the object appeared to be at 9000 altitude, while the air liner was descending from a cruising altitude of 8000 feet. Both men said they saw the object at 8:34 p. m. (MST.)
They reported the incident to
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(Continued from Page One)
The airways traffic control tower and to United operations here by radio before landing at Boise.
Seems to Weave
Gibian, speaking from Pendleton, said the object appeared to be "weaving" as if it were in choppy air. He said the air at that time was rather bumpy.
Gibian and Harvey said they had never seen any such thing before.
"If it is real," said Gibian, "it must be some sort of military experiment, and if that is the case they ought to arrange to keep the objects off the civil airways."
Gibian said he had talked to Capt. Smith about the objects Smith reported seeing, and said that "Smithy" was "really convinced he has seen some flying object that wasn't an airplane and for which he has no explanation."
Gibian said Harvey had pointed out the object to him as he would "have done if it had been an airplane."
"East or West?"
Then, he said, Harvey asked him, "Is that plane going east or west?"
While they were both looking at it, Gibian said at Pendleton, it disappeared.
Gibian said he "had thought of calling up the stewardess to look at the object" but by the time he reached for the interphone to summon her, the object had disappeared.
He repeated that "logic" would dictate that the object was a piece of cloud, but said, "That's the logic of it because I don't know that such things as discs really exist."
