The Black Wingless Craft over Bethel

The evening sky behind Bethel was brilliant, and the thing against it was black. Captain Jack Peck and his co-pilot Vince Daly of Al Jones Flying Service were in the air north-west of the town at sunset on 4 August 1947 when they saw it. In mass it looked as large as a C-54 or larger. They could not tell which way it was heading, so they pulled up to about 1,200 feet to avoid a collision. The object crossed their path at right angles somewhere between 500 and 1,000 feet. They swung in behind it and followed at 170 miles an hour. Within four minutes it was out of sight.

Both men described it as smooth-surfaced and streamlined. From behind it resembled a C-54 with no motors and no wings. They saw no means of propulsion at all.

What is on the record

The account is Incident 58 in the Army Air Forces incident check-lists, a set of summaries the Department of War released in 2026. The check-list puts the observation point at 60°57'N 161°48'W, about 18 kilometres north-north-west of Bethel. It estimates the object's speed at 520 mph, "three times that of C-54". It also records a word on the pilot from the airline official in charge, who said Peck was not the "imaginative type".

No conclusion is entered. The check-list files the sighting among the unidentified flying object incidents and names no explanation. Hatch's database lists it as Project Blue Book case 58. NICAP's catalogue carries it as a smooth black object "larger than a DC-3", and Eberhart's chronology for CUFOS names both pilots. That DC-3 belongs to the later write-ups. The record names no type for the pilots' own aircraft and uses the C-54 only as a measure of size.

Why it sits where it does

L4 · OFFICIAL RECORD — a released government record names who saw it. Both witnesses are named on the check-list, Peck and Daly. Nothing first-hand sits beside the check-list in the archive; the catalogues repeat the file and add no account of their own. The grade rests on the paperwork, not on what the paperwork describes. What the two pilots chased into the dusk is not resolved here.