July 18, 2025 • 30 mins
In 1953, two U.S. Air Force personnel vanished without a trace while intercepting a mysterious radar target over Lake Superior.
Decades later, the skies remain silent, and the truth behind First Lieutenant Felix Moncla Jnr and Second Lieutenant Robert Wilson's final flight is as cloudy as ever.
Written by Emma Dibdin and produced by Richard MacLean Smith
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, it's Richard mccleinsmith here with a quick update before
we dive into today's episode. Unexplained is very excited to
be a part of Crime Wave at Sea this November,
joining forces with some of the eeriest voices in the
world of true crime and the paranormal four nights in
the Caribbean, with amazing podcasts like Last Podcast on the Left,
(00:20):
Scared to Death and many more live shows, meet and greets,
creepy Stories under the Stars and you can be there too,
but don't wait. Rooms are nearly sold out. Head to
Crimewave Atsea dot com forward slash Unexplained to grab your
fan coat and lock in your cabin. We'd love to
see you on board. It was late one evening in
(00:53):
November nineteen fifty three, and a storm was brewing in
the skies of a northern Michigan, USA. Brutal winds whistled
across the chilly surfaces of the Great Lakes. But inside
the Kinross Air Force Base, just a few miles from
the Canadian border, all was quiet. With the long Thanksgiving
(01:14):
weekend just a couple of days away, the base was
emptier than usual, with some officers already on leave for
the week. The sound of the radar ping caught everybody
off guard. In the ground control suite, Second Lieutenant Douglas
Stuart leaned forward in his chair, squinting hard at the
unexpected intruder, an unidentified object in US air space about
(01:39):
one hundred and sixty miles to the northwest of the base.
It was heading east, but right then Douglas was more
concerned about its origin than its destination. It seemed to
be coming from a restricted air space over the Sioux Locks,
consisting of two canals and four parallel locks. The two
(02:00):
locks are a vital part of America's global trade infrastructure.
They allow cargo ships to travel from the Great Lakes
region all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. Any threat
in their vicinity was taken extremely seriously. The ground control
staff double checked their records, but they already knew what
they would find. No unscheduled aircraft had permission to fly
(02:24):
in this area, nor had any new requests come in.
Whatever this object in the sky was, it was not
playing by the rules. Since nineteen forty seven and the
events in Roswell, New Mexico, speculation and conspiracy theories about
UFOs had gripped the United States. But the people employed
(02:44):
at Kinross Air Force Base were not prone to such fantasizing.
Their job was to approach every situation from a rational
and scientific perspective. This often meant applying the principle of
Ockham's razor, all else being equal, the simplest explanation is
likely to be the correct one, and so it was
(03:05):
with that in mind that Douglas Stewart and his colleagues
came up with a working theory for what was going on.
The base was less than thirty miles from the northern border,
and there was a Canadian Air Force base not far
away on the other side. Clearly, the object was a
Royal Canadian Air Force transport plane that had clumsily diverged
(03:26):
from its route. Its intended flight path was probably within Canada,
from the base near Winnipeg to another in Ontario, but
thanks to the high winds and poor visibility, it had
veered off course just enough to veer into US airspace.
In other words, this was all probably a false alarm.
(03:49):
You're listening to unexplained and I'm Richard McLean Smith. Radar
can tell you a lot about an aircraft its position
in the sky, its speed of travel, and its vicinity
to other aircraft. But it can't provide much of a
(04:11):
visual and it definitely can't differentiate friend from foe. For
that back in the nineteen fifties, only human eyes will do.
Many air force bases have one or two Alert five aircraft,
that is, fighter jets that are on standby, ready to
be airborne within five minutes if they are needed. On
(04:33):
that night of November twenty third, nineteen fifty three, kin
Ross had two. The unidentified object was first spotted at
six seventeen p m and by six twenty p m
a fighter jet was ready to take off. Despite the
likelihood that the situation was a false alarm, it was
(04:53):
still a daunting mission. Conditions were terrible, with scattered snow
storms and a thick layer of cloud impacting visibility. The
US Air Force needed a steady hand, somebody who could
fly using only their instruments and keeper calm head no
matter what this thing turned out to be. Twenty seven
(05:14):
year old First Lieutenant Felix Montcla Junior was the man
for the job. Although still relatively early in his career,
Moncla was an experienced pilot who was no stranger to conflict.
He'd served in the military during World War II, then
re enlisted in the Air Force when the American Korean
(05:35):
War began in nineteen fifty. He'd clocked more than eight
hundred flying hours. At six twenty two, Moncla climbed into
the cockpit of an F eighty nine C fighter jet.
Behind him was his navigator, Second Lieutenant Robert Wilson, who
was in charge of radar observation, while montlor piloted the jet.
(05:59):
Designed by famed aircraft industrialist Jack Northrop, the F eighty
nine C was one of the best and fastest aircrafts
the Air Force had at its disposal. Its nickname the Scorpion,
referred to its distinctive lifted tail, but also to its
deadly capabilities. It was specifically designed to chase and intercept
(06:22):
hostile enemy aircraft. For the purposes of this mission, the
Scorpion was given the equally dramatic call sign Avenger. Red.
Monkler and Wilson ran through their usual pre flight checks,
making sure that the Scorpion systems were all functioning correctly,
(06:42):
and then First Lieutenant Moncla taxied the plane over to
its assigned runway at the base as thick flakes of
snow drifted down onto the cockpit window. Clare and Wilson
rattled about inside the cockpit as the jet eased upwards
(07:04):
through a thick blanket of low hanging cloud. Moments later
and they'd burst through and leveled off under the soft
blue light of a bright, waning gibbus. Beneath them was
only cloud, while above twinkled all the stars of the
known universe. Moncla flicked on the radio and reported his
(07:27):
position back to base, but every time he tried, the
signal kept cutting out due to the tumultuous weather below
behind him. Second Lieutenant Wilson was also struggling to track
their position on radar. He stared at the green blip
of the unidentified object on the screen with frustration. Just
(07:48):
as he seemed to have its trajectory locked in, the
mysterious aircraft suddenly changed direction. It was as though it
knew it was being chased, but whatever it was, it
was no match for the scorpion. After a few more
minutes of flying, Montless radio settled down, and with Wilson
(08:08):
finally getting a handle on the object's location, he deftly
began to direct Moncla to the necessary position, with Avenger
red zipping through the sky at five hundred miles per hour.
Twenty minutes later they'd caught up with it. It was
six fifty p m when they began closing in. At
(08:29):
Wilson's instruction, Moncla angled the nose of the scorpion downwards
toward the heavy cloud below and prepared to intercept the
unidentified object at around seven thousand feet. Back at ground control,
at six fifty two p m, Second Lieutenant Douglas Stuart
radioed Moncla to confirm they were ten miles out from
(08:52):
their target, which was roughly towards eleven o'clock from their position.
A burst of static came back, followed by Montler's voice
copy that he said a moment later. Stuart told Montcla
to be aware that the target would be coming up
on his left side but moving across to his right.
(09:15):
If he didn't see it on the first try, they
would redirect him to attempt a second pass. But this
time they heard nothing back from the cockpit. Second Lieutenant
(09:35):
Douglas Stewart wasn't too concerned about Monkler's lack of response.
The reception had been a problem all night, and it
was most likely that Moncla simply hadn't received his last message,
and even if they had, they were at a critical
moment in their flight, probably absorbed in other tasks. So
Stuart and his colleagues turned their attention to the radar
(09:57):
screens and watched in silent as the two green blips
moved closer and closer to each other. It was six
fifty five PM when the Scorpion's radar icon converged with
the unidentified object. For that brief moment, they became a
single blip, flashing together in unison on the screen. Typically,
(10:21):
this indicates that one aircraft has pulled in directly alongside
the other and the two are flying in formation. This
is standard procedure for an air Force intercept. Nonetheless, Stuart
and the rest of the team held their breath as
they continued to stare at the merged dots, waiting for
them to separate. It was strange. It seemed to be
(10:45):
taking longer than it should, until finally one of the
blips began to move again, but the other had completely
disappeared from the radar screen. Stewart and his team scrambled
to get a hold on the situation. They hurriedly radioed
the cockpit, but again they had trouble reaching the pilot.
(11:06):
For whatever reason, it looked as though First Lieutenant Monkla
had been forced to shoot the unidentified object out of
the sky. They radioed the cockpit again, but still there
was no answer. Then they noticed something. It wasn't the
unidentified object that had vanished. It was the scorpion. Stewart
(11:33):
watched on with amusement as the unidentified object continued along
its original east to west flight path as though nothing
had happened, and then after a few more seconds that
blip disappeared from the screen to It had to be
(11:55):
some kind of malfunction, a fault either in the plains, mechanics,
or something on the ground. Stuart grabbed the nearest headset
and made an urgent radio transmission to Avenge of Red,
Trying to keep his voice calm and steady. He ordered
Montla and Wilson to respond and confirmed their location, but
(12:16):
there was nothing but static. As he tried again and again,
an uneasy silence settled over the ground control room. As
the minutes ticked past, the knot of dread in his
stomach began to tighten as the unthinkable truth sank in.
A US Air Force Fighter jet had just dropped off
(12:37):
the face of the earth, possibly downed. After several frantic
moments of unanswered calls to the cockpit, Second Lieutenant Stuart
requested reinforcements. Although the base had a second fighter jet
ready to be scrambled at short notice, it was currently
out on a patrol flight. Stuart radioed its pilot, firstly
(13:00):
Lieutenant William Mingenback. Keeping his words as simple and dispassionate
as he could, he tried to explain what had happened.
Then he directed mingen Back to fly towards Avenger Red's
last known location. Stuart and his colleagues still held out
hope that there could be a rational explanation for it all.
(13:22):
Patchy radio reception wasn't unusual, and it was highly possible
that the bad weather had simply damaged some element of
the aircraft, leading to a total loss of radar and
radio contact with the ground. If another aircraft could get
physically close enough to the lost jet, they might be
able to get through to it. After thirty minutes of flying,
(13:45):
the Lieutenant Mingenback's jet approached the last known location of
Avenger Red. A crackling sound squawked out at the radio.
Through the chaos of white noise, he heard a short transmission.
The words were impossible to make out. It was like
snatches of a conversation somebody for ever in the middle
(14:07):
of a sentence, but the voice was unmistakable to Mingenbach
and his navigator. It was Felix Montler Junior. Then a
few seconds later the transmission cut out. Utterly convinced of
what they'd heard, Mingenbach frantically tried to re establish contact
with a Venger Red, but after five more failed attempts,
(14:31):
they gave up. A disappointed Lieutenant Mingenbach contacted ground control
to give them the update. They agreed to move to
Plan B, conducting a visual search of the area to
look for any signs of the lost aircraft. This was
(14:54):
easier said than done given the weather conditions. Asign from
the scattered snow storms, the cloud was unusually thick and
low in the sky, meaning the only way to conduct
a visual search was to fly at a low altitude, which,
in turn but the jet at high risk of icing up.
So a third plane was sent up to assist, one
(15:15):
that was better equipped to fly in low icy conditions
For close to an hour, the two jets circled the area,
searching for any visual signs of Avenger Red, while making
periodic attempts to reach the aircraft via radio. But by
eight thirty p m. The whole thing was beginning to
feel like a doomed mission. Even based on the most
(15:38):
conservative calculations, Monkler's jet would be out of fuel by now,
and as the snow grew heavier and the conditions more treacherous,
the search crews were stood down. For the rest of
the night. US Air Force staff and their Canadian counterparts
worked tirelessly to locate the missing plane. Crews on the
(16:01):
ground searched for debris, while numerous aircraft continued to patrol
from above as much as weather permitted, but by the
morning they'd found nothing. There was no debris, no signs
of a crash, and no trace of either the plane
nor its two occupants. Air Force officers are trained to
(16:24):
be ready for anything, but nobody was prepared for this scenario.
There was no protocol for a disappearing plane, and certainly
no rule book on how to explain it to the public.
The search continued for the best part of a week,
but was called off on November twenty eighth. Then two
days later, a glimmer of hope was offered by a
(16:46):
group of railway workers stationed about a hundred miles north
of the Kinross Air Force Base. They claimed to have
heard what sounded like a strange, loud crash on land
on the night in question. The search resumed for a
short time, only for rescuers to come up empty handed
once more. An initial report was filed on the night
(17:10):
of November twenty third, offering a brief and barebones version
of events. That report was summarized in an official news release,
which stated that the missing jet was followed by radar
until it merged with an object and then vanished. The
Chicago Tribune published a front page story under the headline
(17:33):
jet to aboard vanishes over Lake Superior. Within hours, the
story was making news nationwide. It's possible that the US
(17:54):
Air Force had simply underestimated the growing fascination with UFOs.
Either way. Seemingly stunned by the fevered attention surrounding the
disappearance of one of their planes, they quickly tried to backtrack.
They attracted their initial news statement and instead released a
new one, offering a more complete and pointedly more rational
(18:17):
version of events. First Lieutenant Felix Montler Junior and Second
Lieutenant Robert Wilson had been assigned to intercept an unidentified aircraft.
The mission had been a success, and the aircraft had
been intercepted and identified as a Royal Canadian air Force plane.
(18:37):
Radar contact had been lost shortly after the jet turned
round to head back to base, and soon after that
the plane had presumably crashed into Lake Superior. As to
why a capable pilot would have lost control of his aircraft,
the statement suggested that Montla had likely been overcome by
(18:58):
sudden vertigo, a rare but dangerous condition where a pilot
become spatially disorientated, potentially resulting in fatal mistakes. The plane
disappearing from radar was blamed on unusual atmospheric conditions in
the area, and the lack of wreckage was no surprise.
(19:18):
Lake Superior is the second largest lake in the world
in terms of surface area, with an average depth of
thirteen hundred feet. An object that landed inside it could
quite easily disappear and remain unfound to this day. On
the face of it, it all seemed plausible enough, but
the holes in the narrative were obvious to anyone who
(19:41):
was paying attention, and it didn't help that the authorities
couldn't seem to agree with each other about what had happened.
For a start, Canadian officials publicly refuted the US Air
Force's account. According to them, all of their aircraft were
accounted for and there had been no flights in the
(20:02):
area in question. On the night of November twenty third,
one Canadian Air Force plane had been flying near the border,
but they denied that it had ever crossed over into
US airspace. Whatever the unidentified object had been, it did
not come from Canada, at least according to the Canadians,
(20:23):
which left the tricky unanswered question where had it come from.
It didn't take long for conspiracy theories to take hold.
During the nineteen fifties, roughly a quarter of the American
(20:43):
population believed in what's known as the extraterrestrial hypothesis, the
idea that many unidentified flying objects are in fact alien
spacecraft from other planets. So once word got out that
two U US Air Force pilots and their jet had
vanished mysteriously without a trace at the very moment they'd
(21:07):
crossed paths with the UFO, many people jumped to what
they saw as the obvious conclusion it was an alien abduction.
At the time, there were a number of civilian groups
conducting research into UFOs. The largest and most well resourced
was the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, or NICAP.
(21:32):
In the years following the incident at Kinross Air Force Base,
they repeatedly tried to obtain more information about what exactly
had happened. Then, one day, some investigators from NICAP made
the unsettling discovery that the event was completely missing from
official Air Force records. There was no mention at all
(21:55):
of an intercept mission from the night of November twenty third,
nineteen fifty three. Despite their best efforts to uncover the truth,
the case went cold for more than a decade. It
was in late October nineteen sixty eight when two prospectors
were digging about near an area known as Cousin's Cove,
(22:17):
roughly seventy miles north of Kinross along the coast of
Lake Superior. Wandering around the bush near the shoreline, the
pair spotted some unusual metallic debris. On closer inspection, it
was quite clearly the remnants of an aircraft. After a
careful inspection from the Ontario Provincial Police, the type of
(22:41):
metal was found to be far heavier than would be
used in a commercial aircraft, suggesting it was very likely
to have been a military plane. Although this discovery reignited
interest in the case among UFO believers, it didn't garner
much wider attention. Report on the discovery itself are sketchy,
(23:02):
and there is no record of whether the debris was
ever proven to be from an F eighty nine, never
mind the one that went missing from kin Ross fifteen
years before. And so once again, the strange case of
First Lieutenant Felix Monkler's missing Scorpion jet went quiet once again.
(23:24):
That was until two thousand and six, when UFO researcher
Francis Ridge received a strange email. It was late August
in two thousand and six that Francis Ridge was contacted
by a man named Preston Miller. The email included an
(23:48):
excerpt from an Associated Press story suggesting that the missing
F eighty nine had been discovered by an underwater search
team while taking scans at the bottom of Lake Superior.
There was a link too. When Ridge clicked it, it
opened up a website for the Great Lakes Dive Company.
(24:09):
It contained two startling images taken with side scan sonar.
Both showed images of what looked to be a completely
intact aircraft with the telltale tip tank and upswept tail
reminiscent of the F eighty nine Scorpion. Francis Ridge immediately
posted the email on the website UFO Updates, and before
(24:33):
long the apparent discovery was flooding UFO forums and message
boards all over the world. When a number of reporters
attempted to contact the Great Lakes Dive Company, they were
directed to a man called Adam Jimenez, who declared himself
the group's spokesperson. Jimenez confirmed the images were real with
(24:54):
a number of outlets, and even appeared on famed late
night talk show Coast to Coast talking to much revered
UFO researcher Linda Moulton Howe. What Jimenez then revealed was
that something else had also been found at the bottom
of the lake close to the F eighty nine, a strange, metallic,
(25:17):
tear dropped shaped object of unidentifiable origin. Jimenez suggested this
could well be the object that downed Felix Montler's plane.
A short time later, apparent sonar images of this object
were also posted on the Great Lakes Dive Company website.
(25:40):
As the UFO community became increasingly excited by the news,
efforts were made to verify the Great Lakes Dive Company's credentials. However,
no further evidence beyond the website could be found for
their existence. The so called Adam Jimenez proved equally difficult
to pin down, with only the email address and a
(26:02):
phone number provided on the website proving that he existed.
Two three weeks after Francis Ridge received his mysterious email,
the Great Lakes Dive Company website was taken offline and
the mysterious Adam Jimenez stopped replying to inquiries. It was
(26:24):
sadly just a hoax. To this day, no trace of
Felix Monkler or Robert Wilson has ever been found. No
convincing explanation has ever emerged to fill in all of
the bizarre gaps in the official narrative. No official version
of events seems to account for the aircraft banishing at
(26:47):
the precise moment it intersected with the UFO, Nor do
they explain the mysterious five seconds snatch of Felix's voice
supposedly heard more than an hour after the supposed crash
by the crew of the second Scorpion sent to find them.
To quote Donald Keyho, a Marine Corps aviator turned UFO researcher,
(27:10):
the Kinross incident, as it became known, remains one of
the strangest cases on record anywhere in the world. This
episode was written by Emma Dibden and produced by Richard
(27:30):
McLain Smith. Thank you as ever for listening Unexplained as
an Avy Club Productions podcast created by Richard McLain Smith.
All other elements of the podcast, including the music, are
also produced by me Richard McLain Smith. Unexplained. The book
and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide. You can
(27:51):
purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones and other bookstores.
Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever you get
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any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on
the show. Perhaps you have an explanation or a story
of your own you'd like to share. You can find
out more at Unexplained Podcast dot com and reaches online
(28:14):
through X and Blue Sky at Unexplained Pod and Facebook
at Facebook dot com. Forward Slash Unexplained Podcast m DU
Hello, it's Richard mccleinsmith here with a quick update before
we dive into today's episode. Unexplained is very excited to
be a part of Crime Wave at Sea this November,
joining forces with some of the eeriest voices in the
world of true crime and the paranormal four nights in
the Caribbean, with amazing podcasts like Last Podcast on the Left,
(00:20):
Scared to Death and many more live shows, meet and greets,
creepy Stories under the Stars and you can be there too,
but don't wait. Rooms are nearly sold out. Head to
Crimewave Atsea dot com forward slash Unexplained to grab your
fan coat and lock in your cabin. We'd love to
see you on board. It was late one evening in
(00:53):
November nineteen fifty three, and a storm was brewing in
the skies of a northern Michigan, USA. Brutal winds whistled
across the chilly surfaces of the Great Lakes. But inside
the Kinross Air Force Base, just a few miles from
the Canadian border, all was quiet. With the long Thanksgiving
(01:14):
weekend just a couple of days away, the base was
emptier than usual, with some officers already on leave for
the week. The sound of the radar ping caught everybody
off guard. In the ground control suite, Second Lieutenant Douglas
Stuart leaned forward in his chair, squinting hard at the
unexpected intruder, an unidentified object in US air space about
(01:39):
one hundred and sixty miles to the northwest of the base.
It was heading east, but right then Douglas was more
concerned about its origin than its destination. It seemed to
be coming from a restricted air space over the Sioux Locks,
consisting of two canals and four parallel locks. The two
(02:00):
locks are a vital part of America's global trade infrastructure.
They allow cargo ships to travel from the Great Lakes
region all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. Any threat
in their vicinity was taken extremely seriously. The ground control
staff double checked their records, but they already knew what
they would find. No unscheduled aircraft had permission to fly
(02:24):
in this area, nor had any new requests come in.
Whatever this object in the sky was, it was not
playing by the rules. Since nineteen forty seven and the
events in Roswell, New Mexico, speculation and conspiracy theories about
UFOs had gripped the United States. But the people employed
(02:44):
at Kinross Air Force Base were not prone to such fantasizing.
Their job was to approach every situation from a rational
and scientific perspective. This often meant applying the principle of
Ockham's razor, all else being equal, the simplest explanation is
likely to be the correct one, and so it was
(03:05):
with that in mind that Douglas Stewart and his colleagues
came up with a working theory for what was going on.
The base was less than thirty miles from the northern border,
and there was a Canadian Air Force base not far
away on the other side. Clearly, the object was a
Royal Canadian Air Force transport plane that had clumsily diverged
(03:26):
from its route. Its intended flight path was probably within Canada,
from the base near Winnipeg to another in Ontario, but
thanks to the high winds and poor visibility, it had
veered off course just enough to veer into US airspace.
In other words, this was all probably a false alarm.
(03:49):
You're listening to unexplained and I'm Richard McLean Smith. Radar
can tell you a lot about an aircraft its position
in the sky, its speed of travel, and its vicinity
to other aircraft. But it can't provide much of a
(04:11):
visual and it definitely can't differentiate friend from foe. For
that back in the nineteen fifties, only human eyes will do.
Many air force bases have one or two Alert five aircraft,
that is, fighter jets that are on standby, ready to
be airborne within five minutes if they are needed. On
(04:33):
that night of November twenty third, nineteen fifty three, kin
Ross had two. The unidentified object was first spotted at
six seventeen p m and by six twenty p m
a fighter jet was ready to take off. Despite the
likelihood that the situation was a false alarm, it was
(04:53):
still a daunting mission. Conditions were terrible, with scattered snow
storms and a thick layer of cloud impacting visibility. The
US Air Force needed a steady hand, somebody who could
fly using only their instruments and keeper calm head no
matter what this thing turned out to be. Twenty seven
(05:14):
year old First Lieutenant Felix Montcla Junior was the man
for the job. Although still relatively early in his career,
Moncla was an experienced pilot who was no stranger to conflict.
He'd served in the military during World War II, then
re enlisted in the Air Force when the American Korean
(05:35):
War began in nineteen fifty. He'd clocked more than eight
hundred flying hours. At six twenty two, Moncla climbed into
the cockpit of an F eighty nine C fighter jet.
Behind him was his navigator, Second Lieutenant Robert Wilson, who
was in charge of radar observation, while montlor piloted the jet.
(05:59):
Designed by famed aircraft industrialist Jack Northrop, the F eighty
nine C was one of the best and fastest aircrafts
the Air Force had at its disposal. Its nickname the Scorpion,
referred to its distinctive lifted tail, but also to its
deadly capabilities. It was specifically designed to chase and intercept
(06:22):
hostile enemy aircraft. For the purposes of this mission, the
Scorpion was given the equally dramatic call sign Avenger. Red.
Monkler and Wilson ran through their usual pre flight checks,
making sure that the Scorpion systems were all functioning correctly,
(06:42):
and then First Lieutenant Moncla taxied the plane over to
its assigned runway at the base as thick flakes of
snow drifted down onto the cockpit window. Clare and Wilson
rattled about inside the cockpit as the jet eased upwards
(07:04):
through a thick blanket of low hanging cloud. Moments later
and they'd burst through and leveled off under the soft
blue light of a bright, waning gibbus. Beneath them was
only cloud, while above twinkled all the stars of the
known universe. Moncla flicked on the radio and reported his
(07:27):
position back to base, but every time he tried, the
signal kept cutting out due to the tumultuous weather below
behind him. Second Lieutenant Wilson was also struggling to track
their position on radar. He stared at the green blip
of the unidentified object on the screen with frustration. Just
(07:48):
as he seemed to have its trajectory locked in, the
mysterious aircraft suddenly changed direction. It was as though it
knew it was being chased, but whatever it was, it
was no match for the scorpion. After a few more
minutes of flying, Montless radio settled down, and with Wilson
(08:08):
finally getting a handle on the object's location, he deftly
began to direct Moncla to the necessary position, with Avenger
red zipping through the sky at five hundred miles per hour.
Twenty minutes later they'd caught up with it. It was
six fifty p m when they began closing in. At
(08:29):
Wilson's instruction, Moncla angled the nose of the scorpion downwards
toward the heavy cloud below and prepared to intercept the
unidentified object at around seven thousand feet. Back at ground control,
at six fifty two p m, Second Lieutenant Douglas Stuart
radioed Moncla to confirm they were ten miles out from
(08:52):
their target, which was roughly towards eleven o'clock from their position.
A burst of static came back, followed by Montler's voice
copy that he said a moment later. Stuart told Montcla
to be aware that the target would be coming up
on his left side but moving across to his right.
(09:15):
If he didn't see it on the first try, they
would redirect him to attempt a second pass. But this
time they heard nothing back from the cockpit. Second Lieutenant
(09:35):
Douglas Stewart wasn't too concerned about Monkler's lack of response.
The reception had been a problem all night, and it
was most likely that Moncla simply hadn't received his last message,
and even if they had, they were at a critical
moment in their flight, probably absorbed in other tasks. So
Stuart and his colleagues turned their attention to the radar
(09:57):
screens and watched in silent as the two green blips
moved closer and closer to each other. It was six
fifty five PM when the Scorpion's radar icon converged with
the unidentified object. For that brief moment, they became a
single blip, flashing together in unison on the screen. Typically,
(10:21):
this indicates that one aircraft has pulled in directly alongside
the other and the two are flying in formation. This
is standard procedure for an air Force intercept. Nonetheless, Stuart
and the rest of the team held their breath as
they continued to stare at the merged dots, waiting for
them to separate. It was strange. It seemed to be
(10:45):
taking longer than it should, until finally one of the
blips began to move again, but the other had completely
disappeared from the radar screen. Stewart and his team scrambled
to get a hold on the situation. They hurriedly radioed
the cockpit, but again they had trouble reaching the pilot.
(11:06):
For whatever reason, it looked as though First Lieutenant Monkla
had been forced to shoot the unidentified object out of
the sky. They radioed the cockpit again, but still there
was no answer. Then they noticed something. It wasn't the
unidentified object that had vanished. It was the scorpion. Stewart
(11:33):
watched on with amusement as the unidentified object continued along
its original east to west flight path as though nothing
had happened, and then after a few more seconds that
blip disappeared from the screen to It had to be
(11:55):
some kind of malfunction, a fault either in the plains, mechanics,
or something on the ground. Stuart grabbed the nearest headset
and made an urgent radio transmission to Avenge of Red,
Trying to keep his voice calm and steady. He ordered
Montla and Wilson to respond and confirmed their location, but
(12:16):
there was nothing but static. As he tried again and again,
an uneasy silence settled over the ground control room. As
the minutes ticked past, the knot of dread in his
stomach began to tighten as the unthinkable truth sank in.
A US Air Force Fighter jet had just dropped off
(12:37):
the face of the earth, possibly downed. After several frantic
moments of unanswered calls to the cockpit, Second Lieutenant Stuart
requested reinforcements. Although the base had a second fighter jet
ready to be scrambled at short notice, it was currently
out on a patrol flight. Stuart radioed its pilot, firstly
(13:00):
Lieutenant William Mingenback. Keeping his words as simple and dispassionate
as he could, he tried to explain what had happened.
Then he directed mingen Back to fly towards Avenger Red's
last known location. Stuart and his colleagues still held out
hope that there could be a rational explanation for it all.
(13:22):
Patchy radio reception wasn't unusual, and it was highly possible
that the bad weather had simply damaged some element of
the aircraft, leading to a total loss of radar and
radio contact with the ground. If another aircraft could get
physically close enough to the lost jet, they might be
able to get through to it. After thirty minutes of flying,
(13:45):
the Lieutenant Mingenback's jet approached the last known location of
Avenger Red. A crackling sound squawked out at the radio.
Through the chaos of white noise, he heard a short transmission.
The words were impossible to make out. It was like
snatches of a conversation somebody for ever in the middle
(14:07):
of a sentence, but the voice was unmistakable to Mingenbach
and his navigator. It was Felix Montler Junior. Then a
few seconds later the transmission cut out. Utterly convinced of
what they'd heard, Mingenbach frantically tried to re establish contact
with a Venger Red, but after five more failed attempts,
(14:31):
they gave up. A disappointed Lieutenant Mingenbach contacted ground control
to give them the update. They agreed to move to
Plan B, conducting a visual search of the area to
look for any signs of the lost aircraft. This was
(14:54):
easier said than done given the weather conditions. Asign from
the scattered snow storms, the cloud was unusually thick and
low in the sky, meaning the only way to conduct
a visual search was to fly at a low altitude, which,
in turn but the jet at high risk of icing up.
So a third plane was sent up to assist, one
(15:15):
that was better equipped to fly in low icy conditions
For close to an hour, the two jets circled the area,
searching for any visual signs of Avenger Red, while making
periodic attempts to reach the aircraft via radio. But by
eight thirty p m. The whole thing was beginning to
feel like a doomed mission. Even based on the most
(15:38):
conservative calculations, Monkler's jet would be out of fuel by now,
and as the snow grew heavier and the conditions more treacherous,
the search crews were stood down. For the rest of
the night. US Air Force staff and their Canadian counterparts
worked tirelessly to locate the missing plane. Crews on the
(16:01):
ground searched for debris, while numerous aircraft continued to patrol
from above as much as weather permitted, but by the
morning they'd found nothing. There was no debris, no signs
of a crash, and no trace of either the plane
nor its two occupants. Air Force officers are trained to
(16:24):
be ready for anything, but nobody was prepared for this scenario.
There was no protocol for a disappearing plane, and certainly
no rule book on how to explain it to the public.
The search continued for the best part of a week,
but was called off on November twenty eighth. Then two
days later, a glimmer of hope was offered by a
(16:46):
group of railway workers stationed about a hundred miles north
of the Kinross Air Force Base. They claimed to have
heard what sounded like a strange, loud crash on land
on the night in question. The search resumed for a
short time, only for rescuers to come up empty handed
once more. An initial report was filed on the night
(17:10):
of November twenty third, offering a brief and barebones version
of events. That report was summarized in an official news release,
which stated that the missing jet was followed by radar
until it merged with an object and then vanished. The
Chicago Tribune published a front page story under the headline
(17:33):
jet to aboard vanishes over Lake Superior. Within hours, the
story was making news nationwide. It's possible that the US
(17:54):
Air Force had simply underestimated the growing fascination with UFOs.
Either way. Seemingly stunned by the fevered attention surrounding the
disappearance of one of their planes, they quickly tried to backtrack.
They attracted their initial news statement and instead released a
new one, offering a more complete and pointedly more rational
(18:17):
version of events. First Lieutenant Felix Montler Junior and Second
Lieutenant Robert Wilson had been assigned to intercept an unidentified aircraft.
The mission had been a success, and the aircraft had
been intercepted and identified as a Royal Canadian air Force plane.
(18:37):
Radar contact had been lost shortly after the jet turned
round to head back to base, and soon after that
the plane had presumably crashed into Lake Superior. As to
why a capable pilot would have lost control of his aircraft,
the statement suggested that Montla had likely been overcome by
(18:58):
sudden vertigo, a rare but dangerous condition where a pilot
become spatially disorientated, potentially resulting in fatal mistakes. The plane
disappearing from radar was blamed on unusual atmospheric conditions in
the area, and the lack of wreckage was no surprise.
(19:18):
Lake Superior is the second largest lake in the world
in terms of surface area, with an average depth of
thirteen hundred feet. An object that landed inside it could
quite easily disappear and remain unfound to this day. On
the face of it, it all seemed plausible enough, but
the holes in the narrative were obvious to anyone who
(19:41):
was paying attention, and it didn't help that the authorities
couldn't seem to agree with each other about what had happened.
For a start, Canadian officials publicly refuted the US Air
Force's account. According to them, all of their aircraft were
accounted for and there had been no flights in the
(20:02):
area in question. On the night of November twenty third,
one Canadian Air Force plane had been flying near the border,
but they denied that it had ever crossed over into
US airspace. Whatever the unidentified object had been, it did
not come from Canada, at least according to the Canadians,
(20:23):
which left the tricky unanswered question where had it come from.
It didn't take long for conspiracy theories to take hold.
During the nineteen fifties, roughly a quarter of the American
(20:43):
population believed in what's known as the extraterrestrial hypothesis, the
idea that many unidentified flying objects are in fact alien
spacecraft from other planets. So once word got out that
two U US Air Force pilots and their jet had
vanished mysteriously without a trace at the very moment they'd
(21:07):
crossed paths with the UFO, many people jumped to what
they saw as the obvious conclusion it was an alien abduction.
At the time, there were a number of civilian groups
conducting research into UFOs. The largest and most well resourced
was the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, or NICAP.
(21:32):
In the years following the incident at Kinross Air Force Base,
they repeatedly tried to obtain more information about what exactly
had happened. Then, one day, some investigators from NICAP made
the unsettling discovery that the event was completely missing from
official Air Force records. There was no mention at all
(21:55):
of an intercept mission from the night of November twenty third,
nineteen fifty three. Despite their best efforts to uncover the truth,
the case went cold for more than a decade. It
was in late October nineteen sixty eight when two prospectors
were digging about near an area known as Cousin's Cove,
(22:17):
roughly seventy miles north of Kinross along the coast of
Lake Superior. Wandering around the bush near the shoreline, the
pair spotted some unusual metallic debris. On closer inspection, it
was quite clearly the remnants of an aircraft. After a
careful inspection from the Ontario Provincial Police, the type of
(22:41):
metal was found to be far heavier than would be
used in a commercial aircraft, suggesting it was very likely
to have been a military plane. Although this discovery reignited
interest in the case among UFO believers, it didn't garner
much wider attention. Report on the discovery itself are sketchy,
(23:02):
and there is no record of whether the debris was
ever proven to be from an F eighty nine, never
mind the one that went missing from kin Ross fifteen
years before. And so once again, the strange case of
First Lieutenant Felix Monkler's missing Scorpion jet went quiet once again.
(23:24):
That was until two thousand and six, when UFO researcher
Francis Ridge received a strange email. It was late August
in two thousand and six that Francis Ridge was contacted
by a man named Preston Miller. The email included an
(23:48):
excerpt from an Associated Press story suggesting that the missing
F eighty nine had been discovered by an underwater search
team while taking scans at the bottom of Lake Superior.
There was a link too. When Ridge clicked it, it
opened up a website for the Great Lakes Dive Company.
(24:09):
It contained two startling images taken with side scan sonar.
Both showed images of what looked to be a completely
intact aircraft with the telltale tip tank and upswept tail
reminiscent of the F eighty nine Scorpion. Francis Ridge immediately
posted the email on the website UFO Updates, and before
(24:33):
long the apparent discovery was flooding UFO forums and message
boards all over the world. When a number of reporters
attempted to contact the Great Lakes Dive Company, they were
directed to a man called Adam Jimenez, who declared himself
the group's spokesperson. Jimenez confirmed the images were real with
(24:54):
a number of outlets, and even appeared on famed late
night talk show Coast to Coast talking to much revered
UFO researcher Linda Moulton Howe. What Jimenez then revealed was
that something else had also been found at the bottom
of the lake close to the F eighty nine, a strange, metallic,
(25:17):
tear dropped shaped object of unidentifiable origin. Jimenez suggested this
could well be the object that downed Felix Montler's plane.
A short time later, apparent sonar images of this object
were also posted on the Great Lakes Dive Company website.
(25:40):
As the UFO community became increasingly excited by the news,
efforts were made to verify the Great Lakes Dive Company's credentials. However,
no further evidence beyond the website could be found for
their existence. The so called Adam Jimenez proved equally difficult
to pin down, with only the email address and a
(26:02):
phone number provided on the website proving that he existed.
Two three weeks after Francis Ridge received his mysterious email,
the Great Lakes Dive Company website was taken offline and
the mysterious Adam Jimenez stopped replying to inquiries. It was
(26:24):
sadly just a hoax. To this day, no trace of
Felix Monkler or Robert Wilson has ever been found. No
convincing explanation has ever emerged to fill in all of
the bizarre gaps in the official narrative. No official version
of events seems to account for the aircraft banishing at
(26:47):
the precise moment it intersected with the UFO, Nor do
they explain the mysterious five seconds snatch of Felix's voice
supposedly heard more than an hour after the supposed crash
by the crew of the second Scorpion sent to find them.
To quote Donald Keyho, a Marine Corps aviator turned UFO researcher,
(27:10):
the Kinross incident, as it became known, remains one of
the strangest cases on record anywhere in the world. This
episode was written by Emma Dibden and produced by Richard
(27:30):
McLain Smith. Thank you as ever for listening Unexplained as
an Avy Club Productions podcast created by Richard McLain Smith.
All other elements of the podcast, including the music, are
also produced by me Richard McLain Smith. Unexplained. The book
and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide. You can
(27:51):
purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones and other bookstores.
Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever you get
your podcast, and feel free to get in touch with
any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on
the show. Perhaps you have an explanation or a story
of your own you'd like to share. You can find
out more at Unexplained Podcast dot com and reaches online
(28:14):
through X and Blue Sky at Unexplained Pod and Facebook
at Facebook dot com. Forward Slash Unexplained Podcast m DU
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