The USAF reported that Moncla had crashed into Lake Superior while tracking a Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) C-47 aircraft which was off course.

Not long after his father had been hospitalized, Moncla's family moved to Moreauville, Louisiana,[2] to live with his uncle and great aunt.

After graduation, he enlisted in the United States Army and served during World War II as part of the occupation force of Japan.

After his service, Moncla attended the University of New Orleans, but reenlisted in the military at the start of the Korean War in 1950, this time joining the United States Air Force (USAF) as an officer pilot trainee.

After spending a few months at a desk job in Dallas, Texas, Moncla was sent to Connally Air Force Base in Waco for basic pilot training, where he met and married Bobbie Jean Coleman.

A search and rescue operation by both the USAF and the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) was quickly mounted, but failed to find any trace of the plane or its pilots.

Upon pursuing these leads, it was discovered that statements had been made by former members of Lt. Moncla's organization but were not first hand evidence and were regarded as hearsay."

[7] This assertion was emphatically denied by the pilot of this RCAF flight, Gerald Fosberg, when he was interviewed for the David Cherniack documentary "The Moncla Memories" produced for VisionTV's Enigma series.

[8] According to UFO writer Donald Keyhoe in his 1955 book, The Flying Saucer Conspiracy, he received a telephone call telling him of "a rumor out at Selfridge Field that an F-89 from Kinross [sic] was hit by a flying saucer", but a follow-up call to Public Information Officer Lt. Robert C. White revealed that "the unknown in that case was a Canadian DC-3.