The Chiles-Whitted Encounter: Two Airline Pilots and the Rocket That Wasn’t There

A Douglas DC-3 (Icelandair TF-NPK) on the tarmac at Reykjavik Airport in 2017 — the same aircraft type Captain Clarence Chiles and First Officer John Whitted were flying in 1948

About 4 min readAt 2:45 a.m. on 24 July 1948, two veteran airline pilots watched a glowing, wingless craft the size of a bomber flash past their DC-3 over Alabama. The Air Force first called it unidentified — then spent eleven years calling it a meteor.