Spooky Skies
Just in time for Halloween, a collection of aviation mysteries.
- By Rebecca Maksel
- Air & Space magazine, October 2012
Jim McDivitt (right) and Ed White with a model of their Gemini capsule. Photo: NASM
The Reluctant UFO Expert
You spend years training to become an astronaut and what happens? You become labeled “a world-renowned UFO expert.” Here’s how it came to pass: During the 1965 Gemini IV mission, astronaut James McDivitt glanced out the window of the spacecraft, and saw something white, shaped like a beer can with a pencil sticking out of it. He was able to quickly take two pictures before the spacecraft rotated away from the object.
McDivitt had no idea of the object’s scale; “it could’ve been the size of the Empire State Building for all I knew,” he said in a 1999 oral history conducted by Doug Ward. But he theorized it was probably a piece of ice that had fallen off the spacecraft, or perhaps a piece of detached Mylar.
No objects showed up in the printed photographs (McDivitt hadn’t had time to focus the camera). But when the EVA film was developed, the technician “picked out one that looked like a bunch of spacecraft…. They were disc-shaped things with a tail. I think there were three or four of them in an echelon formation.”
But when McDivitt looked at the photograph, he realized it wasn’t a spacecraft at all. “[It] was a reflection of the bolts in the windows,” he recalls. “The windows were made up of about three or four or five panes of glass, so that if one got broken we still had some pressure integrity. And these little things, when the Sun shined on them right, they’d multiply the images off the different panes. And I’m quite sure that that’s what this thing was. But anyway, I became a world-renowned expert in UFOs. Unfortunately.”
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Comments (6)
Great story! I knew that some spiders use a strand of their silk to travel on the wind but I had no idea that they could travel to such heights.
Posted by Jim Johnson on October 26,2012 | 07:17 PM
I would bet that there are more true stories out there about aviation unit mascots. Would this be an idea for a future article?
Posted by Jim Johnson on October 26,2012 | 07:49 PM
Interesting stories! I hope that veryone has a great and safe weekend!
Posted by Mike on October 26,2012 | 08:55 PM
Catching the “spirit” of your Halloween article, as newly certified Private Pilots, eager to go...anywhere, my friend Tony and I signed out a 172 at Texas A&M Flying Club for a day trip all the way non-stop from College Station to Waco. Met up with friends from Baylor U and had enjoyable time socializing, dinner, etc. Departing an airport you are unfamiliar with after 10PM was less expectant of any challenges in that pre 9-11 world of 1987, so we flashlighted ourselves along a pitch dark ramp to our little bird for pre flight. Night flight for low timers, single engined and cross country could be thrill-inspiring enough, but when you are accustomed to crickets, distant truck-on-the-highway noise and sometimes a killdeer’s lonely cry that nocturnal airfield symphony can turn from tranquil to terror when suddenly you hear: ROAR! No, not like jet exhaust or big round engine roar. Big cat from Africa eats pilots on late night ramp, ROAR! It caught me off guard, still holding my plastic fuel sample cup. “Tony, did you just hear a…” As I turned, Tony was not to be found. I spied him in the airplane, taking cover behind the tall instrument panel. “Let’s get in the air, now!” was all he said. A succession of more ROAR followed, and each with crescendos of enthusiasm. Within moments, we were start…taxi…intentions declared…take off. We climbed into night sky, giving thanks for altitude, distance, Lycoming, not being appetizers. Later we learned that prior to the Cameron Park Zoo downtown, the Central Texas Zoological Park had exotic beasts housed off out in the middle of nowhere, near Waco Regional. It brought new meaning to Fight or Flight, for us!
Posted by Maj Hyral B (Buddy) Walker Jr, USAF on October 27,2012 | 10:05 AM
I am surprised they omitted the Ghost of Flight 401! A famous aviation ghost story of the haunting of aircraft with part salvaged from the crash of flight 401 in the Florida Everglades. Maybe next year!
Posted by Bill Greenleaf on October 31,2012 | 05:17 PM
Flight 19; there was a theory that a large quantity of gas escaped up from the ocean floor and when it mixed with the air displaced the oxygen, causing the aircrews to lose conscious and the recips to shut down. What with the shallow shale gas discoveries nowadays, that sounds plausible.
Posted by Bob Olson USAF Ret. on November 15,2012 | 05:50 PM