Air Force Reports Small ‘Disc’ Makes Pass At Thunder-Jet

F-84 Thunderjet ca. 1952

Tuesday, January 27, 1953

Grand Rapids, Mich.- Grand Rapids Press

United States Airbase, North Japan— AP—The United States Air Force Tuesday night reported a small, metallic, disc-shaped object made a controlled, sweeping pass at an American jet fighter-bomber and was observed at very close range by another pilot.

The report, from Air Force intelligence files, said the sighting was made over northern Japan at 11:20 a.m., March 29, 1952, by Lt. David C. Brigham of Rockford, Ill.

It was a bright, cloudless day, Brigham said he got a very good look at the object from about 30 to 50 feet for about 10 seconds.

Says It’s Small

The pilot described it as “about eight inches in diameter, very thin, round and as shiny as polished chromium: had no apparent projections and left no exhaust trails or vapor trails.”  He said it caught up with an F-84 Thunderjet, hovered a few moments and then shot out of sight. The F-84 pilot, whose name was not revealed, did not see it.

It was the second disclosure in a week by Air Force intelligence of mysterious flying objects over northern Japan near the Russian-Siberia area.

Brigham was flying a prop-driven reconnaissance craft at 6,000 feet when an F-84 drew alongside them, he said, he saw the disc to the right of and just behind the Thunderjet.  He said it appeared to be traveling 30 to 40 miles an hour faster than the F-84, which was going 150-160 miles an hour.

“It closed rapidly and just before it would have flown into his fuselage, it decelerated to his air-speed almost instantaneously,” Brigham said in his report to intelligence officers.  “In doing so it flipped up its edge at approximately a 90-degree bank. Then it fluttered within 20 feet of his fuselage for perhaps two or three seconds, pulled away and around his starboard (right) wing, appearing to flip once as it hit the slipstream behind his wing tip fuel tank.

“Then it passed him, crossed in front of him and pulled up abruptly, appearing to accelerate, and shot out of sight in a steep, almost vertical climb.

An unusual flight characteristic was a slow fluttering motion.  It rocked back and forth at approximately 40-degree banks at approximately one second intervals throughout its course.”

When it pulled away, “It did so more sharply than a plane could have done.  Its maneuvering throughout was always clear and precise.”

                                                                 

Source: Project 1947