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Speaker 1: Welcome to Unexplained Extra with Me Richard McClain Smith, where
Speaker 1: for the weeks in between episodes we look at stories
Speaker 1: and ideas that, for one reason or other, didn't make
Speaker 1: it into the previous show. In last week's episode, Ash
Speaker 1: on the Floor, we traced the extraordinary tale of Stefan mccarlac, who,
Speaker 1: in late May nineteen sixty seven claimed to observe two
Speaker 1: unidentified flying objects while prospecting in White Shell Provincial Park
Speaker 1: in Manitoba, Canada. Mccrlac's incredible claim, which would become known
Speaker 1: as Canada's best documented UFO case, was investigated by both
Speaker 1: the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Royal Canadian Air Force.
Speaker 1: For many it is the involvement of the Air Force
Speaker 1: that is most intriguing about this particular case. It suggests
Speaker 1: there was a willingness at quite a high level to
Speaker 1: at least entertain the notion that mcarlac might well have
Speaker 1: seen an unusual aircraft of which the Air Force had
Speaker 1: no record. We might assume this was due in part
Speaker 1: to the heightened tensions of the Cold War and the
Speaker 1: paranoia of the Canadian and their allied governments over the
Speaker 1: technological capabilities of the Soviet Union. But then again, perhaps
Speaker 1: given the peculiar events that occurred one night over Lake
Speaker 1: Superior back in nineteen fifty three, there was good reason
Speaker 1: for the Royal Canadian Air Force to keep an open
Speaker 1: mind when it came to tales of mysterious unknown aircraft.
Speaker 1: It was early in the evening of November twenty third
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty three when US Air Force pilot First
Speaker 1: Lieutenant Felix la and radar operator Second Lieutenant Robert Wilson
Speaker 1: received the command to scramble their F ninety eight Scorpion
Speaker 1: fighter jet to intercept an unidentified flying object. The object
Speaker 1: was picked up by US Air Defense Command radar operators
Speaker 1: located in Sue Saint Marie, Michigan, having crossed over at
Speaker 1: speed from Canadian to US airspace about one hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty miles to the northwest over Lake Superior. With the
Speaker 1: object flying close to a commercial gateway completely unannounced, it
Speaker 1: was deemed an immediate and obvious threat. Twenty seven year
Speaker 1: old First Lieutenant Felix Monkler had served during World War
Speaker 1: Two and later joined the United States Air Force as
Speaker 1: an officer pilot trainee. By November of nineteen fifty three,
Speaker 1: he'd clocked a total of eight hundred and eleven flying
Speaker 1: hours over his career, including one hundred and twenty one
Speaker 1: hours in an air aircraft similar to the F ninety
Speaker 1: eight Scorpion that he was flying that night. As such,
Speaker 1: there was no reason to suspect anything would go wrong
Speaker 1: on what was seemingly a routine investigative mission. However, once
Speaker 1: in pursuit of the object, moncla and Wilson had great
Speaker 1: difficulty in tracking it with their onboard radar due to
Speaker 1: the frequency with which it kept changing course. In the end,
Speaker 1: it fell to the US Air Defense Command radar team
Speaker 1: to help direct the pair toward the object from the ground,
Speaker 1: and before long monclass Scorpion was gradually homing in on it.
Speaker 1: Over the course of thirty minutes, the radar operators watched
Speaker 1: as the green blip of the Scorpion drew nearer to
Speaker 1: the blip of the UFO, steadily descending from twenty five
Speaker 1: thousand feet to around eight thousand feet, where the object
Speaker 1: was situated with the blips almost upon each other. The operation,
Speaker 1: as then watched, transfixed as the two of them drew
Speaker 1: closer and closer together, until the Scorpion finally caught up
Speaker 1: with it. In Upper Michigan, seventy miles off keywan Or Point.
Speaker 1: With the ground control team waiting to hear details from
Speaker 1: Lieutenant Moncla, they could only watch on as the two
Speaker 1: blips continued on their trajectories toward each other until they
Speaker 1: completely merged into one. By the next sweep of the radar,
Speaker 1: where they expected to see the two blips separate again
Speaker 1: as if Monclass Scorpion had flown over or under the object,
Speaker 1: the scorpion completely vanished from the screen or the while
Speaker 1: the green blip of the mysterious, still unidentified object continued
Speaker 1: casually along its way until a short time later it
Speaker 1: too completely disappeared from the screen. As furious efforts were
Speaker 1: made to establish communication with Lieutenant Monkler, it was obvious
Speaker 1: to all those present that the only reasonable explanation for
Speaker 1: the Scorpion's disappearance was that the plane had crashed somewhere
Speaker 1: in Lake Superior. Numerous search and rescue teams from both
Speaker 1: the US Air Force and Royal Canadian Air Force, who
Speaker 1: had by then been informed at the mystery aircraft, were
Speaker 1: immediately dispatched to recover the missing plane and, if possible,
Speaker 1: its two crew, Although it was unlikely there was still
Speaker 1: some hope that the men had successfully bailed out of
Speaker 1: their aircraft or had been able to complete an emergency
Speaker 1: landing on water, but even if that were the case,
Speaker 1: neither could be expected to last long in the freezing
Speaker 1: winter temperature of the lake. The search continued throughout the
Speaker 1: night as efforts were kept up to try and make
Speaker 1: contact with the missing scorpion. However, with it being night
Speaker 1: time and with visibility low due to an intensifying snowstorm,
Speaker 1: the search was eventually called off until the morning, and
Speaker 1: though it continued at first light, it wasn't long before
Speaker 1: it became clear that they would not be finding first
Speaker 1: Lieutenant Moncler and second Lieutenant Wilson scorpion any time soon,
Speaker 1: with it assumed to have either broken up entirely or
Speaker 1: sunk to the bottom of the lake, taking Moncler and
Speaker 1: Wilson with it. Despite one pilot involved in the search
Speaker 1: and rescue mission claiming to have heard a short transmission
Speaker 1: from Monkler around forty minutes after he and Wilson went missing,
Speaker 1: no one else was able to verify the broadcast. The
Speaker 1: following morning, the first official statement regarding the incident was
Speaker 1: published in an early edition of the Chicago Tribune under
Speaker 1: the headline Jet two aboard vanishes over late Superior, with
Speaker 1: the US Air Force stating simply that Lieutenant Monkler's plane
Speaker 1: was followed by radar until it merged with an object
Speaker 1: seventy miles off Keywan Or Point in Upper Michigan. No
Speaker 1: sooner had this statement been made, However, the Air Force
Speaker 1: promptly retracted it, and that was when things started to
Speaker 1: get really strange. With the first statement retracted, a new
Speaker 1: statement was promptly released by the US Air Force. Monkler's
Speaker 1: scorpion hadn't merged with the object at all, they said,
Speaker 1: but had in fact succeeded in its mission to intercept
Speaker 1: the UFO, which had by then been formally identified as
Speaker 1: a Dakota or Royal Canadian Air Force C forty seven aircraft,
Speaker 1: that had innocently veered thirty miles off course, and since
Speaker 1: it was unaware of its position, it had not informed
Speaker 1: the US Air Force. Accordingly, Moncler and Wilson's scorpion had
Speaker 1: then tragically crashed on their return from completing the mission,
Speaker 1: with a suspected pilot error being the most likely cause.
Speaker 1: First Lieutenant Moncler was said to frequently suffer debilitating bouts
Speaker 1: of vertigo, a little unusual for a professional fighter pilot,
Speaker 1: to say the least, and it was this that had
Speaker 1: most likely been the main contributing factor to the presumed crash.
Speaker 1: Only no sooner had this explanation been given, Lieutenant Monkler's
Speaker 1: wife was being given a completely different account of events,
Speaker 1: being told instead that a husband had crashed into the
Speaker 1: lake after a mid air collision. Things only became even
Speaker 1: more murky when the Royal Canadian Air Force weighed in
Speaker 1: with their own assessment, declaring rather alarmingly that they had
Speaker 1: no record of a Dakota plane or any other Canadian
Speaker 1: Air Force plane in the area at the time. That
Speaker 1: the wreckage of the Scorpion was never recovered only added
Speaker 1: to the mystery, and so without a formal conclusion to
Speaker 1: the tragic event, speculation naturally grew as to what exactly
Speaker 1: had happened on that cold November evening, and there were
Speaker 1: no shortage of theories to plug the gap. In nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty five, former American Marine Corps naval aviator turned UFO
Speaker 1: investigator Donald Kehoe included an account of his investigation of
Speaker 1: the crash in his book The Flying saucer conspiracy. In it,
Speaker 1: he made the startling claim that on the night of
Speaker 1: the incident, only hours after it occurred, he received a
Speaker 1: phone call from an anonymous individual claiming they'd heard a
Speaker 1: rumor out of Selfridge Field, a National Guard base in Michigan,
Speaker 1: that an F eighty nine scorpion had just collided with
Speaker 1: a flying sorcer. Others later claimed that the scorpion hadn't
Speaker 1: just collided with the UFO, but had in fact been
Speaker 1: taken on board it and whisked away into space. Years later,
Speaker 1: the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, of which Donald
Speaker 1: Kehoe was a member, attempted to access the official records
Speaker 1: relating to the Lake Superior incident, only to find that
Speaker 1: all mention of it appeared to have been completely removed.
Speaker 1: The US Air Force's own unit for analyzing military intelligence,
Speaker 1: the National Air and Space Intelligence Center, when asked about
Speaker 1: the incident, stated that there is no record in the
Speaker 1: Air Force files of a sighting at Kinross Air Force Base,
Speaker 1: from where the scorpion was dispatched on November twenty third,
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty three. There is no case in the files
Speaker 1: which even closely parallels these circumstances. The bodies of First
Speaker 1: Lieutenant Felix Mongler and Second Lieutenant Robert Wilson, along with
Speaker 1: their F eighty nine scorpion, remain missing. If you enjoy
Speaker 1: Unexplained and would like to help supporters, you can now
Speaker 1: do so via Patreon. To receive access to add free episodes,
Speaker 1: just go to patron dot com Forward Slash Unexplained Pod
Speaker 1: to sign up. Unexplained, the book and audiobook, featuring ten
Speaker 1: stories that have never before been covered on the show,
Speaker 1: is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase through Amazon,
Speaker 1: Barnes and Noble, and Waterstones, among other bookstores. All elements
Speaker 1: of Unexplained, including the show's music, are produced by me
Speaker 1: Richard McClain smith. Please subscribe and rate the show wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to podcasts, and feel free to get in
Speaker 1: touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the story you've
Speaker 1: heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation of
Speaker 1: your own you'd like to share. You can reach us
Speaker 1: online at Unexplained podcast dot com, or Twitter at Unexplained
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