Speaker 1: Hello, it's Richard mccleinsmith here with a quick update before
Speaker 1: we dive into today's episode. Unexplained is very excited to
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Speaker 1: joining forces with some of the eeriest voices in the
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Speaker 1: fan coat and lock in your cabin. We'd love to
Speaker 1: see you on board. It was late one evening in
Speaker 1: November nineteen fifty three, and a storm was brewing in
Speaker 1: the skies of a northern Michigan, USA. Brutal winds whistled
Speaker 1: across the chilly surfaces of the Great Lakes. But inside
Speaker 1: the Kinross Air Force Base, just a few miles from
Speaker 1: the Canadian border, all was quiet. With the long Thanksgiving
Speaker 1: weekend just a couple of days away, the base was
Speaker 1: emptier than usual, with some officers already on leave for
Speaker 1: the week. The sound of the radar ping caught everybody
Speaker 1: off guard. In the ground control suite, Second Lieutenant Douglas
Speaker 1: Stuart leaned forward in his chair, squinting hard at the
Speaker 1: unexpected intruder, an unidentified object in US air space about
Speaker 1: one hundred and sixty miles to the northwest of the base.
Speaker 1: It was heading east, but right then Douglas was more
Speaker 1: concerned about its origin than its destination. It seemed to
Speaker 1: be coming from a restricted air space over the Sioux Locks,
Speaker 1: consisting of two canals and four parallel locks. The two
Speaker 1: locks are a vital part of America's global trade infrastructure.
Speaker 1: They allow cargo ships to travel from the Great Lakes
Speaker 1: region all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. Any threat
Speaker 1: in their vicinity was taken extremely seriously. The ground control
Speaker 1: staff double checked their records, but they already knew what
Speaker 1: they would find. No unscheduled aircraft had permission to fly
Speaker 1: in this area, nor had any new requests come in.
Speaker 1: Whatever this object in the sky was, it was not
Speaker 1: playing by the rules. Since nineteen forty seven and the
Speaker 1: events in Roswell, New Mexico, speculation and conspiracy theories about
Speaker 1: UFOs had gripped the United States. But the people employed
Speaker 1: at Kinross Air Force Base were not prone to such fantasizing.
Speaker 1: Their job was to approach every situation from a rational
Speaker 1: and scientific perspective. This often meant applying the principle of
Speaker 1: Ockham's razor, all else being equal, the simplest explanation is
Speaker 1: likely to be the correct one, and so it was
Speaker 1: with that in mind that Douglas Stewart and his colleagues
Speaker 1: came up with a working theory for what was going on.
Speaker 1: The base was less than thirty miles from the northern border,
Speaker 1: and there was a Canadian Air Force base not far
Speaker 1: away on the other side. Clearly, the object was a
Speaker 1: Royal Canadian Air Force transport plane that had clumsily diverged
Speaker 1: from its route. Its intended flight path was probably within Canada,
Speaker 1: from the base near Winnipeg to another in Ontario, but
Speaker 1: thanks to the high winds and poor visibility, it had
Speaker 1: veered off course just enough to veer into US airspace.
Speaker 1: In other words, this was all probably a false alarm.
Speaker 1: You're listening to unexplained and I'm Richard McLean Smith. Radar
Speaker 1: can tell you a lot about an aircraft its position
Speaker 1: in the sky, its speed of travel, and its vicinity
Speaker 1: to other aircraft. But it can't provide much of a
Speaker 1: visual and it definitely can't differentiate friend from foe. For
Speaker 1: that back in the nineteen fifties, only human eyes will do.
Speaker 1: Many air force bases have one or two Alert five aircraft,
Speaker 1: that is, fighter jets that are on standby, ready to
Speaker 1: be airborne within five minutes if they are needed. On
Speaker 1: that night of November twenty third, nineteen fifty three, kin
Speaker 1: Ross had two. The unidentified object was first spotted at
Speaker 1: six seventeen p m and by six twenty p m
Speaker 1: a fighter jet was ready to take off. Despite the
Speaker 1: likelihood that the situation was a false alarm, it was
Speaker 1: still a daunting mission. Conditions were terrible, with scattered snow
Speaker 1: storms and a thick layer of cloud impacting visibility. The
Speaker 1: US Air Force needed a steady hand, somebody who could
Speaker 1: fly using only their instruments and keeper calm head no
Speaker 1: matter what this thing turned out to be. Twenty seven
Speaker 1: year old First Lieutenant Felix Montcla Junior was the man
Speaker 1: for the job. Although still relatively early in his career,
Speaker 1: Moncla was an experienced pilot who was no stranger to conflict.
Speaker 1: He'd served in the military during World War II, then
Speaker 1: re enlisted in the Air Force when the American Korean
Speaker 1: War began in nineteen fifty. He'd clocked more than eight
Speaker 1: hundred flying hours. At six twenty two, Moncla climbed into
Speaker 1: the cockpit of an F eighty nine C fighter jet.
Speaker 1: Behind him was his navigator, Second Lieutenant Robert Wilson, who
Speaker 1: was in charge of radar observation, while montlor piloted the jet.
Speaker 1: Designed by famed aircraft industrialist Jack Northrop, the F eighty
Speaker 1: nine C was one of the best and fastest aircrafts
Speaker 1: the Air Force had at its disposal. Its nickname the Scorpion,
Speaker 1: referred to its distinctive lifted tail, but also to its
Speaker 1: deadly capabilities. It was specifically designed to chase and intercept
Speaker 1: hostile enemy aircraft. For the purposes of this mission, the
Speaker 1: Scorpion was given the equally dramatic call sign Avenger. Red.
Speaker 1: Monkler and Wilson ran through their usual pre flight checks,
Speaker 1: making sure that the Scorpion systems were all functioning correctly,
Speaker 1: and then First Lieutenant Moncla taxied the plane over to
Speaker 1: its assigned runway at the base as thick flakes of
Speaker 1: snow drifted down onto the cockpit window. Clare and Wilson
Speaker 1: rattled about inside the cockpit as the jet eased upwards
Speaker 1: through a thick blanket of low hanging cloud. Moments later
Speaker 1: and they'd burst through and leveled off under the soft
Speaker 1: blue light of a bright, waning gibbus. Beneath them was
Speaker 1: only cloud, while above twinkled all the stars of the
Speaker 1: known universe. Moncla flicked on the radio and reported his
Speaker 1: position back to base, but every time he tried, the
Speaker 1: signal kept cutting out due to the tumultuous weather below
Speaker 1: behind him. Second Lieutenant Wilson was also struggling to track
Speaker 1: their position on radar. He stared at the green blip
Speaker 1: of the unidentified object on the screen with frustration. Just
Speaker 1: as he seemed to have its trajectory locked in, the
Speaker 1: mysterious aircraft suddenly changed direction. It was as though it
Speaker 1: knew it was being chased, but whatever it was, it
Speaker 1: was no match for the scorpion. After a few more
Speaker 1: minutes of flying, Montless radio settled down, and with Wilson
Speaker 1: finally getting a handle on the object's location, he deftly
Speaker 1: began to direct Moncla to the necessary position, with Avenger
Speaker 1: red zipping through the sky at five hundred miles per hour.
Speaker 1: Twenty minutes later they'd caught up with it. It was
Speaker 1: six fifty p m when they began closing in. At
Speaker 1: Wilson's instruction, Moncla angled the nose of the scorpion downwards
Speaker 1: toward the heavy cloud below and prepared to intercept the
Speaker 1: unidentified object at around seven thousand feet. Back at ground control,
Speaker 1: at six fifty two p m, Second Lieutenant Douglas Stuart
Speaker 1: radioed Moncla to confirm they were ten miles out from
Speaker 1: their target, which was roughly towards eleven o'clock from their position.
Speaker 1: A burst of static came back, followed by Montler's voice
Speaker 1: copy that he said a moment later. Stuart told Montcla
Speaker 1: to be aware that the target would be coming up
Speaker 1: on his left side but moving across to his right.
Speaker 1: If he didn't see it on the first try, they
Speaker 1: would redirect him to attempt a second pass. But this
Speaker 1: time they heard nothing back from the cockpit. Second Lieutenant
Speaker 1: Douglas Stewart wasn't too concerned about Monkler's lack of response.
Speaker 1: The reception had been a problem all night, and it
Speaker 1: was most likely that Moncla simply hadn't received his last message,
Speaker 1: and even if they had, they were at a critical
Speaker 1: moment in their flight, probably absorbed in other tasks. So
Speaker 1: Stuart and his colleagues turned their attention to the radar
Speaker 1: screens and watched in silent as the two green blips
Speaker 1: moved closer and closer to each other. It was six
Speaker 1: fifty five PM when the Scorpion's radar icon converged with
Speaker 1: the unidentified object. For that brief moment, they became a
Speaker 1: single blip, flashing together in unison on the screen. Typically,
Speaker 1: this indicates that one aircraft has pulled in directly alongside
Speaker 1: the other and the two are flying in formation. This
Speaker 1: is standard procedure for an air Force intercept. Nonetheless, Stuart
Speaker 1: and the rest of the team held their breath as
Speaker 1: they continued to stare at the merged dots, waiting for
Speaker 1: them to separate. It was strange. It seemed to be
Speaker 1: taking longer than it should, until finally one of the
Speaker 1: blips began to move again, but the other had completely
Speaker 1: disappeared from the radar screen. Stewart and his team scrambled
Speaker 1: to get a hold on the situation. They hurriedly radioed
Speaker 1: the cockpit, but again they had trouble reaching the pilot.
Speaker 1: For whatever reason, it looked as though First Lieutenant Monkla
Speaker 1: had been forced to shoot the unidentified object out of
Speaker 1: the sky. They radioed the cockpit again, but still there
Speaker 1: was no answer. Then they noticed something. It wasn't the
Speaker 1: unidentified object that had vanished. It was the scorpion. Stewart
Speaker 1: watched on with amusement as the unidentified object continued along
Speaker 1: its original east to west flight path as though nothing
Speaker 1: had happened, and then after a few more seconds that
Speaker 1: blip disappeared from the screen to It had to be
Speaker 1: some kind of malfunction, a fault either in the plains, mechanics,
Speaker 1: or something on the ground. Stuart grabbed the nearest headset
Speaker 1: and made an urgent radio transmission to Avenge of Red,
Speaker 1: Trying to keep his voice calm and steady. He ordered
Speaker 1: Montla and Wilson to respond and confirmed their location, but
Speaker 1: there was nothing but static. As he tried again and again,
Speaker 1: an uneasy silence settled over the ground control room. As
Speaker 1: the minutes ticked past, the knot of dread in his
Speaker 1: stomach began to tighten as the unthinkable truth sank in.
Speaker 1: A US Air Force Fighter jet had just dropped off
Speaker 1: the face of the earth, possibly downed. After several frantic
Speaker 1: moments of unanswered calls to the cockpit, Second Lieutenant Stuart
Speaker 1: requested reinforcements. Although the base had a second fighter jet
Speaker 1: ready to be scrambled at short notice, it was currently
Speaker 1: out on a patrol flight. Stuart radioed its pilot, firstly
Speaker 1: Lieutenant William Mingenback. Keeping his words as simple and dispassionate
Speaker 1: as he could, he tried to explain what had happened.
Speaker 1: Then he directed mingen Back to fly towards Avenger Red's
Speaker 1: last known location. Stuart and his colleagues still held out
Speaker 1: hope that there could be a rational explanation for it all.
Speaker 1: Patchy radio reception wasn't unusual, and it was highly possible
Speaker 1: that the bad weather had simply damaged some element of
Speaker 1: the aircraft, leading to a total loss of radar and
Speaker 1: radio contact with the ground. If another aircraft could get
Speaker 1: physically close enough to the lost jet, they might be
Speaker 1: able to get through to it. After thirty minutes of flying,
Speaker 1: the Lieutenant Mingenback's jet approached the last known location of
Speaker 1: Avenger Red. A crackling sound squawked out at the radio.
Speaker 1: Through the chaos of white noise, he heard a short transmission.
Speaker 1: The words were impossible to make out. It was like
Speaker 1: snatches of a conversation somebody for ever in the middle
Speaker 1: of a sentence, but the voice was unmistakable to Mingenbach
Speaker 1: and his navigator. It was Felix Montler Junior. Then a
Speaker 1: few seconds later the transmission cut out. Utterly convinced of
Speaker 1: what they'd heard, Mingenbach frantically tried to re establish contact
Speaker 1: with a Venger Red, but after five more failed attempts,
Speaker 1: they gave up. A disappointed Lieutenant Mingenbach contacted ground control
Speaker 1: to give them the update. They agreed to move to
Speaker 1: Plan B, conducting a visual search of the area to
Speaker 1: look for any signs of the lost aircraft. This was
Speaker 1: easier said than done given the weather conditions. Asign from
Speaker 1: the scattered snow storms, the cloud was unusually thick and
Speaker 1: low in the sky, meaning the only way to conduct
Speaker 1: a visual search was to fly at a low altitude, which,
Speaker 1: in turn but the jet at high risk of icing up.
Speaker 1: So a third plane was sent up to assist, one
Speaker 1: that was better equipped to fly in low icy conditions
Speaker 1: For close to an hour, the two jets circled the area,
Speaker 1: searching for any visual signs of Avenger Red, while making
Speaker 1: periodic attempts to reach the aircraft via radio. But by
Speaker 1: eight thirty p m. The whole thing was beginning to
Speaker 1: feel like a doomed mission. Even based on the most
Speaker 1: conservative calculations, Monkler's jet would be out of fuel by now,
Speaker 1: and as the snow grew heavier and the conditions more treacherous,
Speaker 1: the search crews were stood down. For the rest of
Speaker 1: the night. US Air Force staff and their Canadian counterparts
Speaker 1: worked tirelessly to locate the missing plane. Crews on the
Speaker 1: ground searched for debris, while numerous aircraft continued to patrol
Speaker 1: from above as much as weather permitted, but by the
Speaker 1: morning they'd found nothing. There was no debris, no signs
Speaker 1: of a crash, and no trace of either the plane
Speaker 1: nor its two occupants. Air Force officers are trained to
Speaker 1: be ready for anything, but nobody was prepared for this scenario.
Speaker 1: There was no protocol for a disappearing plane, and certainly
Speaker 1: no rule book on how to explain it to the public.
Speaker 1: The search continued for the best part of a week,
Speaker 1: but was called off on November twenty eighth. Then two
Speaker 1: days later, a glimmer of hope was offered by a
Speaker 1: group of railway workers stationed about a hundred miles north
Speaker 1: of the Kinross Air Force Base. They claimed to have
Speaker 1: heard what sounded like a strange, loud crash on land
Speaker 1: on the night in question. The search resumed for a
Speaker 1: short time, only for rescuers to come up empty handed
Speaker 1: once more. An initial report was filed on the night
Speaker 1: of November twenty third, offering a brief and barebones version
Speaker 1: of events. That report was summarized in an official news release,
Speaker 1: which stated that the missing jet was followed by radar
Speaker 1: until it merged with an object and then vanished. The
Speaker 1: Chicago Tribune published a front page story under the headline
Speaker 1: jet to aboard vanishes over Lake Superior. Within hours, the
Speaker 1: story was making news nationwide. It's possible that the US
Speaker 1: Air Force had simply underestimated the growing fascination with UFOs.
Speaker 1: Either way. Seemingly stunned by the fevered attention surrounding the
Speaker 1: disappearance of one of their planes, they quickly tried to backtrack.
Speaker 1: They attracted their initial news statement and instead released a
Speaker 1: new one, offering a more complete and pointedly more rational
Speaker 1: version of events. First Lieutenant Felix Montler Junior and Second
Speaker 1: Lieutenant Robert Wilson had been assigned to intercept an unidentified aircraft.
Speaker 1: The mission had been a success, and the aircraft had
Speaker 1: been intercepted and identified as a Royal Canadian air Force plane.
Speaker 1: Radar contact had been lost shortly after the jet turned
Speaker 1: round to head back to base, and soon after that
Speaker 1: the plane had presumably crashed into Lake Superior. As to
Speaker 1: why a capable pilot would have lost control of his aircraft,
Speaker 1: the statement suggested that Montla had likely been overcome by
Speaker 1: sudden vertigo, a rare but dangerous condition where a pilot
Speaker 1: become spatially disorientated, potentially resulting in fatal mistakes. The plane
Speaker 1: disappearing from radar was blamed on unusual atmospheric conditions in
Speaker 1: the area, and the lack of wreckage was no surprise.
Speaker 1: Lake Superior is the second largest lake in the world
Speaker 1: in terms of surface area, with an average depth of
Speaker 1: thirteen hundred feet. An object that landed inside it could
Speaker 1: quite easily disappear and remain unfound to this day. On
Speaker 1: the face of it, it all seemed plausible enough, but
Speaker 1: the holes in the narrative were obvious to anyone who
Speaker 1: was paying attention, and it didn't help that the authorities
Speaker 1: couldn't seem to agree with each other about what had happened.
Speaker 1: For a start, Canadian officials publicly refuted the US Air
Speaker 1: Force's account. According to them, all of their aircraft were
Speaker 1: accounted for and there had been no flights in the
Speaker 1: area in question. On the night of November twenty third,
Speaker 1: one Canadian Air Force plane had been flying near the border,
Speaker 1: but they denied that it had ever crossed over into
Speaker 1: US airspace. Whatever the unidentified object had been, it did
Speaker 1: not come from Canada, at least according to the Canadians,
Speaker 1: which left the tricky unanswered question where had it come from.
Speaker 1: It didn't take long for conspiracy theories to take hold.
Speaker 1: During the nineteen fifties, roughly a quarter of the American
Speaker 1: population believed in what's known as the extraterrestrial hypothesis, the
Speaker 1: idea that many unidentified flying objects are in fact alien
Speaker 1: spacecraft from other planets. So once word got out that
Speaker 1: two U US Air Force pilots and their jet had
Speaker 1: vanished mysteriously without a trace at the very moment they'd
Speaker 1: crossed paths with the UFO, many people jumped to what
Speaker 1: they saw as the obvious conclusion it was an alien abduction.
Speaker 1: At the time, there were a number of civilian groups
Speaker 1: conducting research into UFOs. The largest and most well resourced
Speaker 1: was the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, or NICAP.
Speaker 1: In the years following the incident at Kinross Air Force Base,
Speaker 1: they repeatedly tried to obtain more information about what exactly
Speaker 1: had happened. Then, one day, some investigators from NICAP made
Speaker 1: the unsettling discovery that the event was completely missing from
Speaker 1: official Air Force records. There was no mention at all
Speaker 1: of an intercept mission from the night of November twenty third,
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty three. Despite their best efforts to uncover the truth,
Speaker 1: the case went cold for more than a decade. It
Speaker 1: was in late October nineteen sixty eight when two prospectors
Speaker 1: were digging about near an area known as Cousin's Cove,
Speaker 1: roughly seventy miles north of Kinross along the coast of
Speaker 1: Lake Superior. Wandering around the bush near the shoreline, the
Speaker 1: pair spotted some unusual metallic debris. On closer inspection, it
Speaker 1: was quite clearly the remnants of an aircraft. After a
Speaker 1: careful inspection from the Ontario Provincial Police, the type of
Speaker 1: metal was found to be far heavier than would be
Speaker 1: used in a commercial aircraft, suggesting it was very likely
Speaker 1: to have been a military plane. Although this discovery reignited
Speaker 1: interest in the case among UFO believers, it didn't garner
Speaker 1: much wider attention. Report on the discovery itself are sketchy,
Speaker 1: and there is no record of whether the debris was
Speaker 1: ever proven to be from an F eighty nine, never
Speaker 1: mind the one that went missing from kin Ross fifteen
Speaker 1: years before. And so once again, the strange case of
Speaker 1: First Lieutenant Felix Monkler's missing Scorpion jet went quiet once again.
Speaker 1: That was until two thousand and six, when UFO researcher
Speaker 1: Francis Ridge received a strange email. It was late August
Speaker 1: in two thousand and six that Francis Ridge was contacted
Speaker 1: by a man named Preston Miller. The email included an
Speaker 1: excerpt from an Associated Press story suggesting that the missing
Speaker 1: F eighty nine had been discovered by an underwater search
Speaker 1: team while taking scans at the bottom of Lake Superior.
Speaker 1: There was a link too. When Ridge clicked it, it
Speaker 1: opened up a website for the Great Lakes Dive Company.
Speaker 1: It contained two startling images taken with side scan sonar.
Speaker 1: Both showed images of what looked to be a completely
Speaker 1: intact aircraft with the telltale tip tank and upswept tail
Speaker 1: reminiscent of the F eighty nine Scorpion. Francis Ridge immediately
Speaker 1: posted the email on the website UFO Updates, and before
Speaker 1: long the apparent discovery was flooding UFO forums and message
Speaker 1: boards all over the world. When a number of reporters
Speaker 1: attempted to contact the Great Lakes Dive Company, they were
Speaker 1: directed to a man called Adam Jimenez, who declared himself
Speaker 1: the group's spokesperson. Jimenez confirmed the images were real with
Speaker 1: a number of outlets, and even appeared on famed late
Speaker 1: night talk show Coast to Coast talking to much revered
Speaker 1: UFO researcher Linda Moulton Howe. What Jimenez then revealed was
Speaker 1: that something else had also been found at the bottom
Speaker 1: of the lake close to the F eighty nine, a strange, metallic,
Speaker 1: tear dropped shaped object of unidentifiable origin. Jimenez suggested this
Speaker 1: could well be the object that downed Felix Montler's plane.
Speaker 1: A short time later, apparent sonar images of this object
Speaker 1: were also posted on the Great Lakes Dive Company website.
Speaker 1: As the UFO community became increasingly excited by the news,
Speaker 1: efforts were made to verify the Great Lakes Dive Company's credentials. However,
Speaker 1: no further evidence beyond the website could be found for
Speaker 1: their existence. The so called Adam Jimenez proved equally difficult
Speaker 1: to pin down, with only the email address and a
Speaker 1: phone number provided on the website proving that he existed.
Speaker 1: Two three weeks after Francis Ridge received his mysterious email,
Speaker 1: the Great Lakes Dive Company website was taken offline and
Speaker 1: the mysterious Adam Jimenez stopped replying to inquiries. It was
Speaker 1: sadly just a hoax. To this day, no trace of
Speaker 1: Felix Monkler or Robert Wilson has ever been found. No
Speaker 1: convincing explanation has ever emerged to fill in all of
Speaker 1: the bizarre gaps in the official narrative. No official version
Speaker 1: of events seems to account for the aircraft banishing at
Speaker 1: the precise moment it intersected with the UFO, Nor do
Speaker 1: they explain the mysterious five seconds snatch of Felix's voice
Speaker 1: supposedly heard more than an hour after the supposed crash
Speaker 1: by the crew of the second Scorpion sent to find them.
Speaker 1: To quote Donald Keyho, a Marine Corps aviator turned UFO researcher,
Speaker 1: the Kinross incident, as it became known, remains one of
Speaker 1: the strangest cases on record anywhere in the world. This
Speaker 1: episode was written by Emma Dibden and produced by Richard
Speaker 1: McLain Smith. Thank you as ever for listening Unexplained as
Speaker 1: an Avy Club Productions podcast created by Richard McLain Smith.
Speaker 1: All other elements of the podcast, including the music, are
Speaker 1: also produced by me Richard McLain Smith. Unexplained. The book
Speaker 1: and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide. You can
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Speaker 1: Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcast, and feel free to get in touch with
Speaker 1: any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on
Speaker 1: the show. Perhaps you have an explanation or a story
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