The orange disc near Gander
The account
A huge orange object supposedly rose from the ocean and came close to a U.S. Navy plane flying from Iceland to Newfoundland.
What investigators found
The official report, which the co-pilot only saw decades later, blamed the aurora borealis; he never accepted that explanation.
The story
On the night of February 10, 1951, a U.S. Navy transport plane was flying from Keflavik, Iceland, to Argentia, Newfoundland. About 150 km from Gander, co-pilot Graham Bethune and the rest of the crew reported a glowing orange object that seemed to come up from the sea and closed in on the aircraft at tremendous speed, in an encounter that lasted only a few minutes.
After landing at Gander, the crew was questioned by intelligence officers. Bethune, who later rose to the rank of commander, stood by his account for the rest of his life. When he finally saw the report in 1990, he learned the episode had been explained as the aurora borealis. The case remains disputed, resting on the testimony of experienced pilots but with no radar data ever released.