Always above the fighter's ceiling
Seven times, between 1956 and 2010, interceptors were sent up and could not reach the object. It held its height above them, even when a pilot flamed out at 55,000 ft or went supersonic. The pilots never met; the cases come from Turkish, Spanish, Yugoslav, Chinese, Brazilian and US files.
- Cases
- 7
- Countries
- 6
- Span
- 1956–2010
- Found by
- Cross-match
The cases
- 1956F-86D pilot outclimbed and circled by a light over GuamOn the night of 31 December 1956 F-86D alert pilot 1st Lt Ted Brunson of the 41st Fighter Interceptor Squadron, at 20,000 to 26,000 ft over Guam, chased a round, blinking white light for about ten minutes.
- 1967Bandırma 1967: F-5s with orders to fireIn November 1967 two armed Turkish F-5s were scrambled from Bandırma with orders to shoot at an object a transport plane had reported.
- 1967Montánchez: two radars, a T-33 and an F-86 scrambleOn 3 June 1967 two Spanish Air Force captains in a T-33 saw a very bright object far above them that changed shape as they moved and caused radio interference.
- 1970Plaški: a MiG-21 can't catch a luminous object at 22,000 mOn 20 August 1970 a Yugoslav two-seat MiG-21 was vectored by radar to a large glowing object at about 22,000 m over Plaški.
- 1988Ankara 1988: F-16s and F-4s against a radar giantOne night in 1988 the radar site above Ankara held a stationary target far larger than an airliner over the president's district.
- 1998Cangzhou: radar alarm and a JJ-6 chaseLate on 19 October 1998 the radars at a Chinese Air Force test centre in Hebei alarmed on an object with no civil traffic about.
- 2010An F-5M's radar paints a Mach 1.5 targetOn 9 July 2010 a Brazilian Air Force F-5M at 25,000 ft picked up a head-on target about 13,000 ft above it, moving south to north at a logged Mach 1.5–1.6.
What if?
If these are one kind of object, it chooses its altitude against the aircraft sent after it, in every decade and under every flag.
What would settle it
Height-finder radar logs for each scramble, to show the object's altitude against the jet's ceiling on the same scale.