It’s a stormy November evening in 1953, and somewhere in North America’s Great Lakes region, an unexpected object has just appeared on a U.S. Air Force radar screen. So, officials dispatch two airmen to take a closer look – and hopefully get to the bottom of this eerie mystery. But as the pair approach the anomaly aboard their aircraft, something truly unbelievable happens. And even decades on, the truth of the matter is murky.
First Lieutenant Felix Moncla was one of the men who took to the skies to investigate the unidentified flying object. And he wasn’t exactly wet behind the ears, either. Moncla was stationed at Truax Air Force Base in Madison, Wisconsin, and by November 1953 he’d clocked more than 800 hours of flying time.
So, Moncla’s superiors may have been confident that he’d succeed in his mission. Onboard a craft known as the F-89 Scorpion, the airman and Second Lieutenant Robert Wilson set off in pursuit of the unknown object. And before long, they began to close in, thousands of feet above the dark waters of the lake. But what happened next continues to defy explanation. Yes, it sparked a mystery that endures to this day.
Simply put, Moncla, Wilson and their aircraft disappeared without a trace. It was a tragedy that their superiors struggled to explain. And over the years, the military has given wildly different accounts of what happened that fateful night. Is it the work of a government conspiracy, covering up the truth about a terrifying alien encounter? Or is the truth something a little more ordinary?
Well, let’s first judge the facts. The story began on the evening of November 23, 1953, at an Air Defense Command facility on the border between Canada and the U.S. The conditions weren’t exactly great for a mission, either. According to some reports, snow was falling, while other sources state that the weather was stormy. But whatever the truth, something unexpected occurred in the region just after 6 p.m.
At around that time, an operator detected something unusual on the radar. Traveling through restricted airspace, an unknown entity appeared to be nearing the commercial hub of Soo Locks on the southeastern shore of Lake Superior. And most bafflingly of all, there were no American or Canadian craft cleared to be in the area at the time. Was this a UFO?
Officials were puzzled, anyway, and so they scrambled an F-89 Scorpion jet that was temporarily stationed at Kinross Air Force Base – around 20 miles from Soo Locks. Normally, this plane was based some 400 miles away at Truax Air Force Base, although ultimately it would never make the journey back down south.
Anyway, when the aircraft was relocated, Moncla and Wilson made the journey to Michigan. And the first lieutenant – a man with over 120 hours’ experience flying planes just like this one – was in the pilot’s seat. Initially on track to be a doctor, the 27-year-old had abandoned a career in medicine to join the military three years previously.
On the evening of November 23, however, Moncla set off in search of the mysterious object. And with Wilson manning the radar equipment, the two were soon in hot pursuit. But the second lieutenant still struggled to keep track of the unknown craft, which appeared to dart swiftly from place to place.
Thankfully, a radar operator on the ground was on hand to assist Moncla and Wilson as they gave chase. The operator watched the screen as one blip followed the other in a high-altitude game of cat and mouse, slowly descending from 25,000 feet to just 7,000 feet. Then, finally, it looked as though the F-89 was gaining ground.
At a point some 70 miles off the Keweenaw Peninsula on the southern shore of the lake, Moncla and Wilson’s jet caught up with the unknown object. By that time, the airmen had tracked the unidentified craft for some 160 miles. But just as the mystery was about to be solved, something happened that no one could have predicted.
According to witness reports, the two blips on the radar somehow locked together as one. Local Madison paper The Capital Times later tried to make sense of this bizarre occurrence, publishing an article that explained, “The Truax jet was followed on the radar screen at Kinross until its image merged with that of the plane it was checking.”
After that, Moncla and Wilson’s jet seemed to disappear into thin air. Later, an official report would note that the F-89’s radar signal had simply vanished. And if that wasn’t strange enough, the blip representing the unknown craft veered off course before also dropping out of sight. But, while the situation was baffling, there was an obvious next step. The U.S. military therefore launched a search-and-rescue operation to track down the missing airmen.
Naturally, there was an extensive search of the area by both boat and plane. But, rather incredibly, no sign of Moncla, Wilson or their F-89 was ever found. Both men, along with their jet, seemed to have completely disappeared off the face of the Earth. So, what exactly happened to the experienced pilot and his second-in-command?
Well, as the U.S. Air Force had to give some form of explanation, an official press release was quickly fired off to the Associated Press. This included details that purportedly explained what had happened in the moments leading up to the disappearance. “[The F-89] was followed by radar until it merged with an object 70 miles off Keweenaw Point in upper Michigan,” the statement read. However, it wasn’t long before those in charge began to backtrack on this story.
In a second statement, released shortly after the first, the U.S. Air Force retracted its initial claims. This time, officials downplayed the mystery, instead claiming that the radar operator had been mistaken. Now, the party line was that Moncla and Wilson had actually completed their mission, successfully intercepting the unidentified object.
According to this second statement, the object was identified by Moncla and Wilson as a C-47 aircraft – also known as a Dakota – that belonged to the Royal Canadian Air Force. Allegedly, this craft had wandered some 30 miles off course, neatly explaining its unexpected appearance in restricted airspace. It was also claimed that the American airmen had only encountered trouble after their run-in with the other plane.
Apparently, Moncla had been stricken by a fit of vertigo while returning to Kinross Air Force Base, and this medical emergency had then caused him to crash the jet into Lake Superior. But it wasn’t long before holes began to appear in this version of events, too. Over in Canada, officials pointed out that none of their planes had been in the vicinity at the time of the incident.
After that, events grew murkier still. According to UFO researcher Donald Keyhoe, who wrote two books about the bizarre story, Moncla’s widow was visited by a couple of different representatives of the U.S. Air Force. One of these individuals is said to have claimed that the pilot had been flying at the incorrect altitude. If this was to be believed, the plane’s proximity to the lake had been the ultimate cause of the fatal crash.
Curiously enough, though, the second representative told Moncla’s widow a completely contradictory story. In this version of events, the F-89 had exploded high in the air above Lake Superior. And in the midst of all this confusion, a rumor began to emerge. Had the airmen perhaps encountered something out of this world?
Now, that theory may sound ridiculous on the surface, but for years Moncla and Wilson’s disappearance remained a mystery. The whereabouts of their ill-fated plane were completely unknown, too. And while reports emerged in 1968 that some wreckage – possibly belonging to a military jet – had been discovered on Lake Superior’s eastern shore, nobody has been able to verify these claims.
So, what really happened to Moncla and Wilson that fateful night? Well, Keyhoe had his own suggestion. In his book The Flying Saucer Conspiracy, the writer speculated about the true cause of the airmen’s disappearance. And as you may have already guessed, Keyhoe surmised that the missing F-89 had been in pursuit of an alien craft.
Keyhoe – himself a former Marine Corps aviator – recalled hearing a rumor at around the time that Moncla and Wilson had disappeared. Apparently, the story was that “an F-89 from Kinross was hit by a flying saucer.” When he investigated further, however, he received a different explanation. As the U.S. Air Force had asserted, a Canadian plane – not an alien craft – had been the catalyst for the incident.
Despite this, some still believed that a UFO had somehow been involved in Moncla and Wilson’s disappearance. Adding fuel to the fire, Keyhoe allegedly obtained a copy of an official Air Force document regarding the case. And this evidence was compelling – reportedly including an interview with a witness who’d watched the incident play out on radar.
The unnamed witness is claimed to have said, “It seems incredible, but the blip apparently just swallowed our F-89.” Yet that wasn’t all. Later, Keyhoe alleged to have discussed the incident with members of Project Blue Book – the official U.S. Air Force team dedicated to researching UFOs. And, apparently, individuals belonging to this special unit explained that the 1953 case was just one of many similar mysterious events.
According to Keyhoe, some of those at Project Blue Book also believed that UFOs were extraterrestrial craft visiting Earth. Be that as it may, the team’s official report on what’s been dubbed the Kinross Incident continued to toe the line. Moncla and Wilson, the document stated, had perished in a crash – and there was no mention of any alien involvement.
But the plot would thicken when researchers from the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) made yet another alarming discovery. Allegedly, the group contacted the Aerospace Technical Intelligence Center – only for the organization to deny that the Kinross Incident had ever happened. According to reports, officials at the center claimed, “There is no record in the Air Force files of any sighting at Kinross AFB on November 23, 1953… There is no case in the files which even closely parallels these circumstances.”
Perhaps understandably, this evasiveness did little to quell suspicion surrounding the incident. And before long, amateur UFO hunters began to come up with their own ideas about what had happened to Moncla and Wilson’s jet. For example, maybe the two airmen had been abducted by the very craft that they’d been tracking?
In this theory, the F-89 had been picked up mid-air by the object – an alien craft. Some even went as far as to speculate on the purpose behind such an abduction. Perhaps, they reasoned, the extraterrestrials wished to use Moncla and Wilson to brush up on their English skills?
Then there was the suggestion that the strange vision in the sky had been a UFO protected by some kind of forcefield. When Moncla and Wilson’s F-89 unwittingly flew into the object, then, it would have been like hitting a solid wall. So, maybe the jet really had crashed – but not because of pilot error.
As the years have passed by, however, Moncla and Wilson’s disappearance has remained a mystery. And although the case continues to attract attention, neither official nor amateur investigators have been able to uncover the truth. But, naturally, that hasn’t stopped users on forums such as Reddit from speculating about the strange incident.
In one Reddit post, a user linked the disappearance to the mystery of the Great Lakes Triangle. An anomaly similar to the Bermuda Triangle, this region has allegedly seen a number of boats and planes vanish in strange circumstances over the years. It’s been said that there are high levels of iron ore in the area’s rocks, causing navigation equipment to go disastrously wrong.
Unfortunately, though, there is a flaw in this theory. You see, the Great Lakes Triangle is traditionally located in Lake Michigan – some 250 miles south of where Moncla and Wilson disappeared. And if malfunctioning navigation equipment had indeed caused the crash, what was the other blip that had appeared on the radar at Kinross Air Force Base?
Elsewhere, another commenter offered up a more prosaic explanation for the incident. They put forward the claim that the F-89 was a “tweak and go” model that had involved a lot of trial and error – and fallen prey to a number of fatal accidents. Perhaps, the Redditor reasoned, Moncla and Wilson had been the victims of a more predictable crash.
Well, while this explanation may seem a logical one, it doesn’t account for the origin of the mysterious blip on the radar screen. And although the Reddit user suggested that such signals can be caused by more mundane objects such as a flock of birds, a trained operator should have been able to tell the difference between avian life and an unknown craft.
However, as both UFO enthusiasts and skeptics continued to speculate online, there was another interesting development in the case. In 2006 a Canadian newspaper called the Pembroke Observer published a detailed article about the Kinross Incident, calling it “one of the most enduring mysteries of the Great Lakes.” Then, soon after that, Francis Ridge, a prominent researcher of flying saucers, received a strange email.
Reportedly, the email contained a snippet of text purporting to be from a news story. Allegedly released by the Associated Press, the article announced that Moncla and Wilson’s jet had been found at the bottom of Lake Superior by a team of divers. There was also a link to the website of the group responsible, the Great Lakes Dive Company, within the message.
And as news of the apparent discovery began to spread, a spokesperson for the group named Adam Jimenez gave interviews to reporters. Underwater photographs published on the Great Lakes Dive Company’s website appeared to support its claims, too. Then the story took an elaborate turn. Supposedly, the divers had also discovered wreckage of a UFO alongside the remains of the F-89.
For the UFO enthusiasts who’d been tracking the Kinross Incident, this development must have seemed too good to be true. And, alas, it seems that indeed it was. As researchers continued to dig into the story, it quickly fell apart. Apparently, there was no evidence that the Great Lakes Dive Company had ever existed. Before long, Jimenez disappeared, too, leading most observers to conclude that the discovery had been a hoax.
Since then, there have been no new leads on Moncla and Wilson’s disappearance, and so the world is no closer to knowing what happened above Lake Superior that stormy night. But there could still be a twist in the tale. In 2020 the Pentagon reignited the conversation about UFOs by releasing previously classified footage featuring unknown aerial phenomena. So, could some top-secret files in government archives hold the key to the truth about the Kinross Incident? Only time will tell.