Myrtle Creek, Oregon: Flight instructor chases glistening aluminum-like sphere

At 6:15 p.m. pilot Ray Virgil "Red" Hatfield was instructing student Noble Ellison in a takeoff at the Tri-City Airport, Myrtle Creek, Oregon, when he noticed an object at about 5,000–8,000 feet that glistened and appeared to be of "aluminum sheeting." He took over the controls at about 400 feet and flew east to keep it in view; it climbed and traveled east at a speed he estimated at 1,000 mph, with a darker object to its right, and left no vapor trail or noise. After 10 minutes Hatfield landed and took off again, and at almost the same position both pilot and student saw the object as before. Hatfield estimated the sphere at about 30 feet in diameter, the student at 50 feet. The Roseburg News-Review and the Oregon Daily Journal reported the case, and FBI Portland covered it in a teletype of August 11 and a memo of August 23, 1947, released in PURSUE Release 1. The account follows the entry in George M. Eberhart's chronology UFOs and Intelligence (CUFOS) and the sources cited there; it is not an independent determination by From Beyond Space.