Chiles-Whitted: The Stimulus for the Estimate.

Greetings. Chiles-Whitted. 

The Chiles-Whitted UFO sighting occurred on July 24, 1948 at approximately 2:45am in the skies in the vicinity of Montgomery, Alabama. Clarence S. Chiles and John B. Whitted, both commercial pilots, claimed to have observed a "glowing object" pass by their aircraft before it appeared to pull up into a cloud and travel out of visual sight. 

According Edward J. Ruppelt, the former head of Project Blue Book, the Chiles-Whitted sighting was one of the three classic UFO incidents in 1948 that convinced the personnel of Project Sign, the predecessor of Projects Grudge and Blue Book, that the UFO problem was a reality, along with the Mantell UFO incident and the Gorman dogfight. Subsequent studies by Air Force and civilian UFO researchers have revealed that Chiles and Whitted likely witnessed a large meteor, possibly a bolide, with Project Blue Book in 1959 formally declaring that a meteor was the explanation of the incident.

In the early morning hours of July 24th of 1948, pilot Clarence Chiles and his co-pilot John Whitted were flying an Eastern Air Lines Douglas DC-3 passenger plane near Montgomery, Alabama, maintaining an altitude of about 5,000 feet. The night sky was clear with "the Moon, four days past full, shining through scattered clouds." At about 2:45am, Chiles "saw a dull red glow above and ahead of the aircraft." He told Whitted, "Look, here comes a new Army jet job." The unidentified object closed on their DC-3 in a matter of seconds, and both men later said they saw the object fly past the right side of their plane at high speed before it pulled "up with a tremendous burst of flame out of its rear and zoomed up into the clouds." They observed the object for a total of only ten to fifteen seconds. Both pilots testified 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." Both pilots claimed the object was about 100 feet (30.48 m) in overall length and about 25-30 feet (7.62-9.14 m) in diameter, torpedo or cigar-shaped, "similar to a B-29 fuselage," with flames coming out of its tail end. Only one of the plane's passengers, a C.L. McKelvie, witnessed anything out of the ordinary. Mr. McKelvie reported seeing a "bright streak of light" that flashed by his window.

In late September or early October of that same year, following their investigation of the aforementioned Chiles-Whitted sighting, personnel at Project Sign drafted an intelligence report, or rather an estimate of the situation.

The Estimate of the Situation was, according to Edward J. Ruppelt, a "rather thick document with a black cover, printed on legal sized paper. Stamped across the front were the words 'Top Secret'." After reviewing reports from scientists, pilots, and other credible observers, the estimate concluded that the best available information suggested an extraterrestrial origin for UFOs. Although the author remains unknown, many believe it to be Project Sign's chief officer at the time, Captain Robert R. Sneider. Over time, the report made its way through numerous channels until eventually reaching the highest levels of the Pentagon, where it generated a great deal of debate. 

Following the debate, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Hoyt S. Vandenberg rejected the estimate on the grounds that its author(s) had not proven their case. Some months later, it was declassified and all copies were ordered to be burned, though, Ruppelt noted, "a few copies, one of which I saw, were kept as mementos of the golden days of the UFOs." This turn of events caused proponents of interplanetary visitation to lose official favor and to be reassigned, while officers who considered UFOs to be misinterpreted mundane phenomena rose to power in Project Grudge, the replacement for Project Sign. 

No copies of this near-legendary document have surfaced since, though its existence has been confirmed by Dewey J. Fournet, who as an Air Force major in the Pentagon, served as liaison with the official UFO project headquarters at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. Nonetheless, for years the Air Force denied that there ever had been such an estimate of the situation. In the mid-1990's, when a coalition of the major Amercian UFO groups purchased Ruppelt's papers, a draft copy of his important work "The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects" (1956) became available. As it so happened, it turned out that in his original version he had revealed what the estimate contained. Unfortunately, that description did not make it into the published edition.

For additional historical information about the Estimate of the Situation, I strongly recommend Project 1947, available at https://www.project1947.com/

Thank you for your time and consideration.