Cause 2: Off-Course Canadian DC-3 Airliner
If the cause of the alert was not the C47, perhaps it was another aircraft in the air that night. There is no mention of any other aircraft in the USAF Accident Report, but there is mention of a DC-3 Airliner in other sources.
The primary historical source for the DC-3 explanation is Donald Keyhoe's book. Before delving further into this possibility, it should be pointed out that the Douglas Dakota C-47 was a military version of the Douglas DC-3 which was widely used by commercial airlines as a passenger carrier in the 1950s. Keeping this in mind, it is important to note that the confusion is less over C47 versus DC-3 than RCAF transport versus airliner.
Keyhoe's primary source for information on the Kinross case was 1st Lt. Robert C. White, a 34 year old bomber pilot who was at that time serving as a Public Information Officer at the Air Force Press Desk at the Pentagon. His first conversation with Lt. White was a phone call he placed to him the morning after the F-89 disappeared. White confirmed the F-89 was missing and provided Keyhoe the names of the crew. When Keyhoe asked why the F-89 was "out there", White provided the following explanation:
"Intercept mission – checking on an unknown."
That day Keyhoe flew from Washington, DC to Des Moines, Iowa. Before flying to Des Moines, he called Frank Edwards, a radio commentator who often spoke out about UFO cases in his broadcasts. Keyhoe told Edwards the rumors he had heard about the F89 colliding with a flying saucer. At that time, Edwards was already following up on another story involving another F-89 from the same squadron which had crashed the previous day in Madison, Wisconsin. Because Keyhoe was late arriving in Des Moines, he missed Frank Edwards' radio broadcast, the night of November 24th.
After Keyhoe returned to Washington from Des Moines, Keyhoe met with Arthur Caperton, a senior crash investigator for the Civil Aeronautics Board. Later at the Press Club, Caperton and Keyhoe met an airline pilot who indicated to Keyhoe that he had not heard about the F-89 disaster, but went on to say:
"But that must be what Frank Edwards was talking about the other night. He said two Canadian pilots denied being over the Soo Locks or seeing an F-89. I missed the first part. It was Greek to me."
Keyhoe had not read or heard any official explanation from the Air Force other than the indication that the F-89 was investigating an unknown. Wanting to find out more about the Canadian involvement, Keyhoe called Lt. White at the Pentagon. Keyhoe relates he was given the following explanation from Lt. White:
"The unknown in that case was a Canadian DC-3. It was over the locks by mistake."
Keyhoe's account makes no mention that he was aware that there was an RCAF C-47 over the lake when the F-89 disappeared from radar.
In my research of the Kinross F-89 disappearance, I was able to track down some members of the 433rd Fighter Interceptor Squadron. One of them, Dave Eby, a pilot responded to my email enquiry about the incident, explaining what he remembered about the incident:
"Your request for info about Moncla and Wilson was forwarded to me.
I was at Kinross the night they didn't return. The 433rd had 4 a/c and 8 crews were pulling alert while the sqdn. based there was at Yuma for gunnery training.
As I recall, they were scrambled about 6 P.M., just after sunset. The "unknown" was a regularly scheduled airliner. The flight plan didn't get to the G.C.I. site. The target was near the center of the lake."
Note that in Dave's recollection of the incident, the unknown was a "regularly scheduled airliner". This certainly cannot be the same as RCAF transport VC-912 which flew for the 412 squadron as the RCAF is not an airline, and its flights were not "regularly scheduled".
Dave goes on to explain that "the flight plan didn't get to the G.C.I. site". I take this to mean that the alert was called because even though the flight was regularly scheduled, the GCI operators didn't have the flight plan in front of them for that particular flight.
In Dave's account, the DC-3 is "near the center of the lake", but according to Lt. White at the Pentagon, the DC-3 was "over the locks by mistake". The two statements might lead you to believe that the alert was called because the DC-3 was initially spotted in restricted air space over the locks, and because the flight plan for the DC-3 had not reached the GCI site, the alert was called and the F-89 pursued the DC-3 out over the lake.
This particular explanation seems to be contradicted by the "two pilots" who were apparently interviewed by Frank Edwards after the incident. According to the pilot who met Keyhoe and Caperton, the two pilots denied that they had been over Soo Locks.
My attempts to reconcile the differing stories were again complicated by information I received from another source connected with the incident. In the fall of 2002, I took a trip to Mansura and Moreauville, Louisiana, the towns where Lt. Moncla was born and went to school. While there, I met relatives and friends of Lt. Moncla. The night before I left town, I was given the name of a local man who had served in the Air Force and knew Lt. Moncla. I was unable to contact the man as I had to leave the next morning to return to Vancouver. When I got home, I called the man on telephone.
Unfortunately, when I called him, I didn't realize exactly who the man was and how he fitted into the whole Kinross event. It was only months later, that I realized the man I had called, Forrest Parham, was actually a member of the accident investigation board which produced the report for the US Air Force.
During the course of our conversation, Forrest told me that the unidentified was "an airliner" which had drifted south over the lake (Lake Superior). He also indicated that there was no flight plan or that the flight plan had not reached GCI.
Had I known that I was talking to a member of the investigation board, I would have had a lot more questions for Forrest. At the time, I just thought that his account just seemed to be a confusing mix of information I had already heard from other sources, who had maybe only heard partial explanations for the incident.
Unfortunately, I was not able to talk to Forrest Parham again, as he died a few months later. It does seem to me a strange coincidence that Forrest had known Lt. Moncla and ended up living in his hometown of Moreauville. It is further coincidence that he was distantly related to Lt. Moncla through his marriage to a member of the Coco family as one of Gene's cousins was also married to a member of the Coco family.
There are several possible explanations for the role of the Canadian DC-3 Airliner as it recurs in these accounts of the event. My theory is that there was a Canadian DC-3 Airliner flying into Sault Ste. Marie at the time of the incident.
