1948 CRASHED SAUCER

Sat, 07 Dec 1996 09:20:33 -0800
Source: Jan Aldrich

Several people have me asked about this story from the OAK RIDGER (TN) 
newspaper for 18 September 1950 mention in my Reference List:

RIDGE NEWCOMER TELLS OF GAME OF TAG WITH 'SAUCER'

By Helen Knox

   Dave T. Keating has been close enough to spit on a flying saucer.

   Providing, of course, he could spit 80 yards.

   At any rate the NEPA employe (sic) got a good look at the speeding 
gimick, but he almost tore the entrails out of his P-51 doing it.

   It was about two years ago.

   Keating, who recently moved to Oak Ridge, was the National Guard in 
Arkon, O. when he had his game of air tag with the saucer.  He was flying 
with the 166th Fighter Squadron stationed at Lockburn.

   "To start with," Keating said today in retelling the story, "Some of 
the fellows had chased a saucer about one week before this happened.  One 
of their planes exploded."

    He continued:  "You remember that story.  Well mine was never 
published because I never knew how it ended."

    Keatings' yarn starts bang in the middle of a clover leaf, which in 
aeronautics means a fancy acrobactic flip.

    "I was coming out of the dip about 18,000 feet up when I noticed 
something that looked like a silver dollar zoom past my plane under me," 
 Keating explains that he was upside down and was looking up when he saw 
the saucer.

    "I came out of my loop as fast as I could and shot out after the 
thing."

    Altitude of the saucer must have been 10,000 feet, Keating estimates, 
so being 8000 feet higher the pilot was able to keep speed with the 
saucer by reducing his own altitude.

    "I was level with him long enough to get within about 80 yards of 
him.  Thast was as close as I wanted to be."

    "I would say the saucer was about 40 feet in diameter and about six 
feet thick.  It had no jet exhausts, no prop, no markings."

    Keating said he noticed a thick vertical stablaizer rudder on the 
end.  And coming out of the middle was something resembling a smooth man 
hole cover which was oliptical (sic) in ist cross section.

     The saucer looked as though it were constructed of aluminum and it 
didn't look like any pictures that have been published of saucer models 
toyed with by the Navy.

     He recounted that he got his P-51 up to 320 miles an hour to tag the 
saucer, but soon dropped behind.

     "I did notice that the saucer was slowly loosing altitude and 
believed that if I tailed him far enough he might land or crash."

     So flying due south of Akron, Keating held his course long after 
he'd been left behind by the strange object.

     "About 10 miles south of the Ohio river," Keating continued.  I 
spotted a litter on a hillside and a path that had obviously been ripped 
up by a crashing plane or as it mya have been a crashing saucer."

     Being short on gas he turned back to Lockburn, where his story was 
spoofed by his buddies, and where his commanding officers (sic) put him 
to task for the ruined engine in the P-51.

     "I finally got the major there to believe me or at least go with me 
to the crash scene.  Before we left we found there had been no plane 
crashes reported in the area."

     The crash was still there, Keating reports, and a crash truck from 
Wright field in Dayton was sent out to pick up the rubble.  "I was then 
interviewed by the colonel for about 40 minutes."

     "He didn't tell me to keep the thing quiet, as a matter of fact he 
didn't give me any instructions."

     But it was the last Keating every heard of the incident.

     If the parts were other than that of an airplane Keating never found 
out.  If the investigation led by the airforce upturned anything 
startling nobody ever knew.

     Shortly afterward twenty-five year old Keating went to MIT.  Last 
week he came to Oak Ridge, where he's now living in Cambridge hall.

     "The story sounds so fantastic I almost hate to tell it," Keating 
smiled.

     "But me, well yes, I'd say I believe saucers are real."

Finis

Several of crashed saucer and abduction stories have come to my 
attention during my research.  However, investigations of such claims are 
not the goals of my current research project.  I refer these stories to 
the CFM Coalition.  Don Berliner had served in the 166th Fighter Squadron 
some time after Keating.  He wrote to a number of David Keatings after 
conducting a nation wide address search without any results.  I have 
requested the 166th FIS unit history from Maxwell AFB.  However, being a 
National Guard unit, it history is porbably combined with other units in 
a higher headquarters history.  At this date Keating could quite possible 
be dead. The next person who might be be of help was the author of the 
newspaper story Helen Knox.


All rights reserved to WUFOC and NÄRKONTAKT. If you reprint or quote any part of the content, you must give credit to: WUFOC, the free UFO-alternative on the Internet, http://www.wufoc.com