Group /Category 11
Sightings From Aircraft


Case Directory
Brigham/T-6 Case: UFO Makes Pass At F-84
Misawa, Japan
March 29, 1952

Richard Hall:
Throughout UFO history; small discs have been reported from time to time that may be remote-controlled devices. The estimates of size range from about eight inches to a few feet in diameter. An officially confirmed sighting by an Air Force pilot on March 29,1952, in the vicinity of Misawa, Japan, is one example. Lt. David C. Brigham, flying a T-6 as target plane for an intercept exercise by two F-84 jet fighters, saw a small, shiny disc about eight inches in diameter make a pass at one of the F-84s. 

It flew a pursuit curve and closed rapidly. Just as it would have flown into Brigham's fuselage it decelerated to his airspeed, almost instantaneously In doing so, it flipped up on its edge at an approximate 90-degree hank. It fluttered within two feet of his fuselage for perhaps two or three seconds. Then it pulled away around his starboard wing, appearing to flip once as it hit the slipstream behind his wing-tip fuel tank. Then it passed him, crossed in front, and pulled up abruptly appearing to accelerate, and shot out of sight in a steep, almost vertical climb. An unusual flight characteristic was a slow, fluttering motion. It rocked back and forth in 40-degree banks, at about one-second intervals throughout its course.

Dan Wilson:
I think the pilots in that area of Japan were well aware of the UFO situation there. This was a hot zone for the Russians were moving bombers into China in 1952 (having to do with the Korean War) not far from Japan. It was in December of 1952, that the US Fifth Air Force moved the 49th's 9th Fighter-Bomber Squadron of F-84Gs from Korea to Japan to train its aircrews in the delivery of tactical atomic weapons.