UAP Case Archive

Shapes / Cigars

Cigars

Before 1947, a cigar was what a flying machine looked like, because that was the shape of real airships. The cigar cases run from Victorian airship panics to some of the most argued-over aircrew sightings on record.

    Near Montgomery, Alabama, 1948: a wingless body with a row of lit windows and flame trailing behind. Drawing for reference only.
    Each cigar is one case, colored by status. The years before 1940 are compressed. Select one to open it below.

    Start with Chiles-Whitted.

    Two airline pilots, a cockpit view at close range, and an official answer that its own author called far-fetched. It is the cigar case every other one is measured against.

    At about 2:45 in the morning on July 24, 1948, Eastern Air Lines Captain Clarence Chiles and First Officer John Whitted were flying a DC-3 from Houston to Atlanta at 5,000 feet. Near Montgomery, Alabama, a wingless object rushed past them.

    Whitted's statement said it was cigar-shaped and about 100 feet long. Both pilots described a row of what looked like lit windows, a blue glow beneath it and flame trailing from the rear. A passenger, Clarence McKelvie, also saw the light.

    The case shook the Air Force's Project Sign, whose staff were then weighing whether such objects could be from another world. Astronomer J. Allen Hynek offered a very bright meteor as an answer while admitting it was far-fetched. Project Blue Book adopted the fireball explanation. Chiles and Whitted stood by their account for decades.

    The case for and against a fireball

    • OfficialA bright fireball, the explanation Project Blue Book adopted.
    • FitsA fireball breaking up can look like a lit body with a row of windows, trailing fire.
    • AgainstHynek, who proposed the meteor, called it far-fetched himself.
    • OpenBoth pilots stood by their description of a wingless, cigar-shaped craft for decades.

    What the record shows.

    Seventeen cases from 1896 to 1978. These patterns run through them.

    The oldest craft shape in the record.

    The 1896 and 1897 American airship wave, the 1909 British scareship panic and the 1946 Scandinavian ghost rockets all describe what people expected a secret aircraft or rocket to look like.

    Motherships are a cigar idea.

    At Oloron and Gaillac in 1952, Desert Center the same year and Vernon in 1954, a large cigar releases or escorts smaller discs. Three of the four are French, within two years.

    A cigar can be a disc seen edge-on.

    A 1954 witness in the Vosges said it looked "like a cigar, or if you will, a disc seen in perspective." At Falcon Lake, two cigars became discs as they came closer.

    Aircrew make the strongest cases.

    Eastern Air Lines' Chiles and Whitted in 1948. Captain Lawrence Coyne's Army Reserve helicopter crew in 1973, with witnesses on the ground. Frederick Valentich in 1978, whose last radio call is the only record.

    Meteors are the usual answer, and fit some better than others.

    A fireball breaking up looks like a lit fuselage. That fits the 1954 Vosges cigar well. It fits the Coyne case badly: the crew had the object in view for at least five minutes.

    In orbit, the cylinders were usually the crew's own hardware.

    Apollo 11's "L-shaped" object was most likely a panel shed from the Saturn V, in Buzz Aldrin's own view. McDivitt's Gemini 4 "beer can" is still argued over.

    Often told wrong.

    Several cigar stories have drifted a long way from the record. Here is what the sources show.

    The story you may have heardWhat the record shows
    An airship carried off a Kansas calf in 1897.
    The newspaper's former editor said in 1943 that he and Hamilton made the story up, and it was written for a Liars' Club tall-tale contest.
    A constable saw a mystery airship over Peterborough in 1909.
    His own police force told the local paper that a large kite had been flying over the area for days.
    Angel hair fell from a cigar over Oloron in 1952.
    Within weeks, a local doctor attributed the threads to a migration of spiders riding gossamer, lit by the sun.
    Chiles-Whitted happened in April 1948.
    The Blue Book file and newspapers put it on July 24, 1948.
    Frederick Valentich reported a cigar.
    His words on the radio were "a long shape." He never said cigar.
    The Nimitz object was a cigar.
    Commander Fravor called it a white Tic Tac, an oblong with rounded ends. It is on the Tic Tacs page.

    All cigar cases.

    Listed oldest first. Each card says what kind of evidence the case rests on. Use the wave filter to read the airship and scareship panics on their own.

      One object, three shapes.

      The cigar is the shape most changed by the angle you see it from. Tilt a disc away from you and it becomes an oval. Turn it edge-on and it becomes a cigar.

      Witnesses have said so themselves. In the Vosges in 1954, one described an object "like a cigar, or if you will, a disc seen in perspective." At Falcon Lake in 1967, Stefan Michalak watched two cigars turn into discs as they came down toward him.

      So a witness's shape word tells you about the view as much as the object. When the angle is known, it belongs in the description.

      seen from belowtiltededge-on Disc, oval, cigar: the same object from three angles.

      Left off this page.

      These are sometimes called cigars, but the witnesses described something else.

      • BOAC Centaurus, 1954A shape-changing object with six smaller globes, on the Motherships page.
      • Pascagoula, Socorro and LevellandEggs and ovals, on that page.
      • Kecksburg, 1965An acorn, on the Cones and bells page.
      • Falcon Lake, 1967It began as two cigars but landed as a disc, so it is on the Discs page.
      • Aurora, Texas, 1897A crash story with no shape described, widely regarded as a newspaper hoax.
      • Nimitz, 2004A Tic Tac, on that page.