[1] Two commercial pilots, Clarence S. Chiles and John B. Whitted, claimed to have observed a "glowing object" pass by their plane before it appeared to pull up into a cloud and travel out of sight.
[4] In the early morning hours of July 24, 1948, Clarence Chiles, chief pilot, and John Whitted, co-pilot, were flying an Eastern Air Lines Douglas DC-3 passenger plane near Montgomery, Alabama, at about 5,000 feet altitude.
[2] Chiles and Whitted stated that the object "looked like a wingless aircraft...it seemed to have two rows of windows through which glowed a very bright light, as brilliant as a magnesium flare.
The personnel found that the two pilots did disagree on some details: Chiles claimed to see a lighted cockpit, long boom on the nose of the object, and the center section was transparent.
[7] USAF Captain Edward Ruppelt wrote that "according to the old-timers at ATIC (Air Technical Intelligence Center), the [Chiles-Whitted] report shook them worse than the Mantell Incident... this was the first time two reliable sources had been really close enough to a UFO to get a good look.
[8] According to Ruppelt, as a result of the Chiles-Whitted incident and earlier sightings in 1947 and 1948, Project Sign's personnel decided to send an "Estimate of the Situation" to Air Force Chief of Staff Hoyt S. Vandenberg.
"[11] Additionally, J. Allen Hynek, an astronomer at Ohio State University and a scientific consultant to Project Sign, concluded that Chiles and Whitted had actually seen a very bright meteor.
[15] Philip Klass, another prominent UFO skeptic, agreed with the meteor explanation, writing that the original Project Sign conclusion that the object was an interplanetary spacecraft was "grossly in error.