November 14, 1956 — nr. Jackson, Al
10:10 p.m. Captain William Joseph Hull and his copilot Peter H. Macintosh are flying Capital Airlines Flight 77 from New York City to Mobile, Alabama. While approximately above Jackson, Alabama, they see something like a brilliant meteor flash by the aircraft. The object stops, hovers, and engages in a range of acrobatics (crazy gyrations, lazy 8’s, square chandeliers) for several minutes before shooting out over the Gulf of Mexico at “fantastic speed.” and diminishing to a pinpoint. [Eberhart] Capt. Hull had previously written a skeptical article about Flying Saucers I have included. He had communicated with Capt. Nash from the famous Nash-Fortenberry case over this article. Keyhoe wrote a a follow-up to Hull’s article in the next issue of Air Line Pilot magazine in Oct. 1953. His sighting happened 3 years later, and would be followed with a second sighting the next year. Sadly he died shortly after in an airline crash.
Sources:
Brad Sparks, Blue Books Unknowns Catalogue, Case 1214, p. 240;
“Captain Airlines’ Pilots See Acrobatic Night Light”, CSI Bulletin, July 1957, pp. 9-10;
“UFO Encounter Convinces Airline Captain, Former Skeptic”, NICAP UFO Investigator, no. 2 (August-September 1957): 21;
“Deadline,” APRO Bulletin, November 1957, p. 6; [Hulls second sighting in October 1957]
“Capt. William J. Hull,” NICAP UFO Investigator, no. 4 (June 1958): 2;
Final Report of the Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects. Bantam Books: New York, NY, 1968, pp. 127-129;
Loren E. Gross, The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse: UFOs, a History: November - December 1956, The Author, 1994, p. 19;
Dominique F. Weinstein, ‘Unidentified Aerial Phenomena - Eighty Years of Pilot Sightings: A Catalog of Military, Airliner, and Private Pilots sightings from 1916 to 2000’, NARCAP TR-04, 2001, p. 32;
Michael Swords and Robert Powell, UFOs and Government, pp. 230-231;
Robert Powell, UFOs: A Scientist Explains What We Know (And Don’t Know), 2024, p. 66;
Old Hull Articles:
Joe Hull, “Men in Motion: Obituary of the Flying Saucers,” AIR LINE PILOT, Vol. 22, September 1953, pp. 13-14;
Donald Keyhoe, “Flying Saucers — Fact or Fancy?,” AIR LINE PILOT, Vol. 22, October 1953, pp. 9-10;
NICAP, “Capital Airlines Pilots Sees Acrobatic UFO”;
Sign Historical Group, “Captain Joe Hull’s UFO Sighting”;
[Communications between Captain Nash (who died in a later airline crash whose anniversary was a week ago) and Hull (who also died in an airline crash, over Michigan)]
Transcription of Hull and Keyhoe article in ALP Magazine @ Project1947:
Above Top Secret, “UFO Skeptic Pilot Witnesses UFO Near Aircraft”;