Pilot disappeared mid-flight without a trace while trying to catch a UFO

Here is the unexplained mystery of how two pilots vanished while trying to intercept an unidentified object in 1953.

When confronted with a mysterious object flying overhead, it's unlikely that most people's reactions would be to jump in an aircraft and follow it. However, as US Air Force Pilots, this is exactly what Felix Moncla and Robert Wilson were tasked to do.

During a a stormy evening on 23 November, 1953, the two men were stationed at Kinross Base (now known as Kincheloe Air Force Base) in Wisconsin when a report came in of an unidentified flying object (UFO, now known as UAP) over Lake Superior, near the commercial Soo Locks region at the US-Canadian border.

Moncla and Wilson were swiftly dispatched to perform an air defence intercept. However the pair would never return from the mission.

Soo Locks, Lake Superior (Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

The pair were assisted to the unidentified object by ground radars, who watched as the two blips on the screen collided with each other and all communications and tracking with Moncla and Wilson's aircraft ceased.

The unidentified aircraft would then veer off the radar as well.

What happened to Felix Moncla and Robert Wilson?

A joint search and rescue operation from the American and Canadian Air Force, alongside support from the US Coast Guard would follow. The men or their plane would never be recovered.

A later report from the United States Air Force (USAF) would later conclude that Moncla and Wilson had been sent to intercept a Canadian jet which had veered off course.

It was then claimed the pair had been successful in their mission, but had crashed into the lake upon return after Moncla had suffered from an episode of vertigo.

Felix Moncla in 1953 (Gordheath/ Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 3.0)

The Canadian Air Force would later state that no flights had taken place in that region on that particular night.

There would be further confusion around the reports when Donald Keyhoe would claim that Moncla's widow had been given conflicting reports about the aircraft's fate, which further fuelled speculation.

History would also report that Aerospace Technical Intelligence Centre would state that 'there is no record in the Air Force files of sighting at Kinross AFB on 23 November 1953… There is no case in the files which even closely parallels these circumstances', when asked about the case.

Despite unverified reports in 1968 which claimed that fragments from the jet had been recovered, the case remains unsolved until this day.

What are the theories about the disappearance?

The most likely scenario is that Moncla and Wilson's aircraft had crashed into the lake, with the wreckage sinking to the bottom of the world's largest freshwater lake. This idea is backed up by research from the Open Skies Project, which states that a radar scope at the time would not be able to pick up if an aircraft noise diving into the lake.

However this does not account for the other blip on the radar, with mysterious nature of the case has since catching the attention of conspiracy theorists and UFO enthusiasts, who believe extraterrestrials had abducted the pair.

Donald Keyhoe, a prominent UFO researcher, would later call the incident 'one of the strangest cases on record' in his 1955 book The Flying Saucer Conspiracy.