THINK ABOUTIT UFO|UAP SIGHTINGS REPORT

1950: The TWA Flight 117 Pursuit — Goshen, Indiana

On the night of April 27, 1950, two veteran TWA captains flying a DC-3 toward Chicago watched a glowing red disc climb up from behind their aircraft, slow to match their speed a half-mile off the wing, and then — each time Captain Robert Adickes banked toward it — slide away to hold the same distance, before finally rocketing off at twice the airliner’s speed and vanishing toward South Bend. With a cockpit crew, a stewardess, and at least eleven passengers — including two Boeing engineers — all watching the same object for six or seven minutes, the case became one of the best-corroborated airline sightings of the early 1950s wave and a cornerstone of Donald Keyhoe’s and Dr. James McDonald’s later investigations.

Date: April 27, 1950

Sighting Time: 8:25 p.m.

Day/Night: Night

Location: Near Goshen, Indiana, en route from an eastern origin point to Chicago, in the vicinity of South Bend and Elkhart

Urban or Rural: Airborne, over rural/small-city terrain

No. of Entity(‘s): Not applicable

Entity Type: Not applicable

Entity Description: Not applicable

Hynek Classification: NL (Nocturnal Light) — a glowing aerial light with apparent controlled, responsive flight behavior, observed at a standoff distance rather than at close range on the ground

Duration: Approximately six to seven minutes

No. of Object(s): 1

Description of the Object(s): A smooth, featureless disc or spherical object glowing an even, bright orange-red, as if it were heated metal; brighter on top with its lower half in shadow. It left no vapor trail and showed no flame or visible exhaust.

Shape of Object(s): Round, disc-like, appearing to fly “on edge” — roughly 10 to 20 percent as thick as it was wide, giving it the look of “a huge red wheel rolling down a road”

Size of Object(s): Estimated at 20 to 50 feet in diameter — witnesses could not fix the figure precisely given the lack of a size reference at that distance and altitude

Color of Object(s): Bright, even orange-red, likened to heated stainless steel or a glowing metal blob

Distance to Object(s): Closed to roughly half a mile at closest approach while pacing the aircraft

Height & Speed: Paced the DC-3 at approximately 175 mph at slightly below 2,000 feet before accelerating to an estimated 400 mph — roughly double the airliner’s speed — while descending to about 1,500 feet during its departure

Number of Witnesses: At least 14 — Captain Robert Adickes, First Officer Robert F. Manning, stewardess Gloria Hinshaw, and a minimum of 11 passengers, including Boeing engineers C. H. Jenkins and D. C. Bourland and executives E. J. Fitzgerald and S. N. Miller

Special Features/Characteristics: The object appeared to respond to the aircraft’s movements, veering away each time Adickes banked toward it and maintaining a constant standoff distance — behavior Adickes himself described as though it were “controlled by repulse radar.” Air Traffic Control had no record of any aircraft in the vicinity when contacted during the sighting.

Case Status: Unexplained

Source: Keyhoe, Donald E., 1953; McDonald, James E., 1968 (interview notes); True Magazine, August 1950; Flying Magazine, July 1950; Project 1947; NICAP

Summary/Description: At 8:25 p.m. on April 27, 1950, TWA Flight 117, a DC-3 cruising westward at 2,000 feet toward Chicago, was approaching Goshen, Indiana when First Officer Robert Manning noticed a strange orange-red light climbing up from behind and to the right of the aircraft. Captain Robert Adickes turned to look and saw a smooth, glowing disc, brighter on top with its underside in shadow, moving to draw level with the airliner. Adickes had the window cranked open to rule out a reflection; the object remained clearly visible, matching their speed at roughly half a mile off the wing and appearing, in Adickes’s words, “like a huge red wheel rolling down a road.” He radioed Air Traffic Control, which had no record of any aircraft in the area, then banked the DC-3 toward the object twice in an attempt to close the distance — both times it slid away, holding the same separation. Adickes sent stewardess Gloria Hinshaw back to alert the passengers, and at least eleven of them, including two Boeing engineers, watched the object alongside the crew. After several minutes of pacing the aircraft, the object suddenly accelerated to an estimated 400 mph, descended slightly, and streaked off to the north toward the South Bend airport area before fading from sight. The full encounter lasted six to seven minutes. Both pilots were characterized by TWA colleagues as quiet, careful, and conservative men, and the airline did not dispute their account.

Related Cases: Kenneth Arnold’s 1947 Mount Rainier sighting (the case that coined “flying saucer,” and against which pilot credibility in later sightings was often measured) | The Chiles-Whitted UFO Encounter, 1948 (another widely cited airline-crew sighting of a glowing aerial object) | 1950: April 15th-30th archive entries for the broader wave this case belongs to

Detailed Report

Few cases from the early wave carry the combination of trained observers, sustained duration, and multiple independent corroborating witnesses that the Adickes-Manning sighting does. Both pilots were career commercial aviators — Adickes with roughly a decade of TWA service and prior military flying experience, Manning a former military pilot with over 6,000 flight hours and six years at TWA — men whose professional judgment about aircraft, lights, and normal aerial phenomena would have been well practiced by 1950. Neither man rushed to call the object a “flying saucer”: contemporary accounts describe Adickes as reluctant to use that language, preferring more neutral terms like “object” or “guided missile,” and as explicitly noting he saw nothing inconsistent with physics or known aerodynamic principles — he simply could not identify what type of craft or phenomenon it was.

The behavioral details are what elevate this case above a simple misidentified light. The object did not merely appear and vanish; it executed a specific, repeatable evasive pattern, sliding away by a consistent margin each time the aircraft turned toward it, then breaking off with a burst of speed that Adickes estimated at roughly double the airliner’s own pace. That kind of responsive, distance-preserving behavior is difficult to explain as a fixed ground light, a star, a balloon, or a conventional aircraft with a simple flight path — all more commonly invoked explanations for era nocturnal-light cases. The absence of any vapor trail or exhaust flame likewise argues against a conventional jet or rocket-powered craft of the period.

The size of the witness pool is unusual for an airborne case. Beyond the two pilots, stewardess Gloria Hinshaw was deliberately brought forward to view the object, and Adickes had her alert the cabin so that, in his own stated reasoning, he would have as many independent witnesses as possible — itself a notable piece of methodological awareness for 1950. At least eleven passengers are named or referenced in various retellings, including two identified Boeing engineers whose professional aeronautical background makes their corroboration particularly valuable; some later, less rigorously sourced accounts add officials from International Harvester as additional witnesses, though that detail is not present in the primary Keyhoe and McDonald material and should be treated as a later, weaker addition.

Dr. James McDonald’s direct interview with Manning nearly two decades after the event is a valuable check on the case’s durability: Manning’s independently recalled account in 1968 differed slightly from Adickes’s original description in some particulars of shape, but agreed completely on the object’s red glow, its high-speed departure, and the fact that it was unlike anything either man had seen before or since. McDonald also noted Manning’s observation that declining airline UFO reports in later years likely reflected pilot reluctance to report such sightings — a professional liability concern rather than a declining phenomenon.

RESEARCHER’S NOTES

The TWA Flight 117 Pursuit — Indiana 1950 and the Weight of Multiple Witnesses

• Classification issues: NL is the appropriate designation given the object was observed at a standoff distance from an aircraft rather than at close range on the ground, though its apparent responsive maneuvering sets it apart from a typical passive nocturnal light. It should not be classified as a close encounter case, since no landing, occupant, or ground-level proximity is involved.
• Source chain assessment: This is an unusually well-sourced case for 1950, with contemporaneous magazine coverage (True and Flying, both published within months of the sighting), Keyhoe’s later book treatment, and — most valuably — McDonald’s direct 1968 interview with Manning, which independently confirmed the core details nearly two decades on. Some later popular retellings introduce unsupported embellishments, such as inflated cruising altitude figures (18,000-20,000 feet in at least one modern secondary source) that conflict with every primary account’s consistent 2,000-foot figure; those later additions should be disregarded in favor of the original reporting.
• Pattern context: The case belongs to a small but significant category of airline-pilot UFO sightings from this era, alongside the 1948 Chiles-Whitted encounter, that helped establish the credibility problem at the heart of early ufology: trained aviation professionals reporting objects that outperformed contemporary aircraft, with no comfortable conventional explanation on offer.
• Physical evidence and evidentiary weight: There is no photographic or radar evidence — Air Traffic Control had no corresponding return — but the evidentiary weight rests instead on witness quality and quantity: two experienced, professionally vetted pilots, a stewardess, and multiple named passengers with relevant technical backgrounds, all describing a consistent core account independently and over time. This is among the stronger multi-witness cases in the archive by that measure, even without physical traces.
• Geographic and historical context: The sighting occurred less than three years after the 1947 Kenneth Arnold sighting that launched the modern UFO era, during a period when airline pilots were increasingly aware of “flying saucer” reports from colleagues — a cultural backdrop that likely shaped both witnesses’ initial hesitation to use that label and their determination to gather corroborating witnesses before the object departed.

The TWA Flight 117 case remains, nearly seventy-five years on, one of the best-witnessed unexplained sightings of the early Cold War UFO wave — not because of any physical trace it left behind, but because of who was watching and for how long. Two career pilots, a stewardess, and a cabin of passengers including trained engineers all independently described the same glowing, distance-holding object over the same six or seven minutes, and neither Adickes nor Manning ever wavered from that account in the decades that followed. It is catalogued here as Unexplained: a case whose strength lies entirely in the caliber and consistency of its human witnesses.

“It appeared to be controlled by repulse radar — as I’d turn toward it, it would veer away, keeping the same distance.”

— Captain Robert Adickes, TWA Flight 117, April 27, 1950