Case No 69 · UFO Afrinews No 8, Sept. 1993
The 'Worm' in the Sky
1963 ยท Witwatersrand, under the Bloemfontein to Rand Airport flight path, Rand Airport; object seen far out over the Sasolburg area, South Africa
What was reported
Jack Jones, whose earlier ball-of-flame sighting appeared in issue 7, was in his Witwatersrand garden on the Saturday lunchtime after his 3 March 1963 birthday with new binoculars, waiting for the first South African Airways Boeing to make its slow flypast from Bloemfontein to Rand Airport. He heard a noise unlike any aircraft he knew. Behind the low-flying Boeing, far out over the Sasolburg area, he spotted a cigar-shaped object of enormous size compared with the airliner, tobacco yellow-brown, with a large hole at its rear pouring thick black smoke and discoloured around the opening; both ends drooped slightly. It tracked west to east. His wife and a visitor would not look, but workers at his garage business and a gathering crowd watched until it slowly turned, climbed away and left a smoke trail that hung for ages.
What Hind made of it
Hind confirmed the date through the ex-manager of South African Airways in Zimbabwe, who joined SAA in August 1963 when the Boeings were still new.
In their words
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I can tell what sort of aircraft are flying but that noise was not made by any aircraft I knew.
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It surely didn't come from this Earth,
Cross references
- UFO Afrinews No 7 Case 49
- Boeing delivery flight Bloemfontein to Rand Airport