The Gorman Encounter

October 1, 1948 - It was on this night that an Air Force Lieutenant named George Gorman was flying over the city of Fargo, North Dakota on a routine training flight. As he prepared to come in for a landing, a mysterious object caught his eye.

At first he thought it was the taillight of another plane, but the control tower was not seeing anything on its radar.

Gorman decided to investigate what he believed to be an unauthorized plane. He described what happened next:

It was blinking on and off. As I approached, however, the light suddenly became steady and pulled into a sharp left bank. I thought it was making a pass at the tower. I dived after it and brought my manifold pressure up to sixty inches but I couldn't catch up with the thing. It started gaining altitude and again made a left bank, I put my F-51 into a sharp turn and tried to cut the light off in its turn. By then we were at about 7,000 feet.

Next, the mysterious object turned to head directly at Gorman's plane. In what can only be described as a harrowing game of chicken, the UFO zoomed straight at the F-51, then at the last minute darted upward. The object repeated this trick, then took off at an unbelievably high speed.

Gorman tried to chase it, but his plane stalled out at 14,000 feet. He did manage to get a good, long look at the object. He said it was a clear white orb that was only 6 to 8 inches in diameter and fuzzy around the edges. It was emitting no exhaust.

There was another small plane in the area that validated Gorman's account. The pilot of a Piper Cub and his passenger both saw the F-51 chasing after the UFO. Additionally, two air traffic controllers in the airport tower also witnessed the F-51, the Piper Cub and the UFO as three distinctly different objects, which counters some theories that the planes were confusing each other for UFOs.

The Gorman encounter is one of the most well-documented UFO cases thanks to all the witnesses. As with most of these, it remains unexplained.