It was 60 years ago Thursday that two well-respected commercial pilots found themselves on a collision course with a torpedo-shaped unidentified flying object. And that extraordinary encounter would influence the Air Force's early investigation of the whole UFO phenomenon.

During the early morning hours of July 24, 1948, pilot Clarence Chiles and co-pilot John Whitted were flying an Eastern Airlines Douglas DC-3 over the city of Montgomery, Ala. Their airliner was cruising at an altitude of about 5,000 feet and the nighttime flight was pretty much uneventful.

But at about 2:45 a.m., Chiles spotted a hazy red cloud, which looked like aircraft exhaust. It was slightly above them and to the front of the DC-3 by about half a mile. Chiles next saw some kind of aircraft and suspected that it was one of the new jet planes being used by the Army. However, the two pilots quickly realized that this object was not a jet plane and it was coming right at them very fast. The strange object barely missed the DC-3 and passed by them on their starboard side at a distance of about 1,000 feet, according to Chiles's report.

As the UFO bore down on them, Chiles took the DC-3 into a tight left turn. As the UFO passed them by, the DC-3 hit some turbulent air. Whitted was able to look back just as the weird object pulled up into a steep climb.

Both men had seen the object for about 10 to 15 seconds but that was enough for them to get a good look at it. Both described it as cigar- or torpedo-shaped and about 100 feet long. It was about three times the diameter of a B-29 bomber used in World War II. The object's surface was entirely smooth with no wings. The rear section of the UFO gave off a bright red-orange exhaust that got redder when it rose in altitude. Chiles and Whitted reported hearing no sound at all as the UFO passed by their plane, according to a Web site.

Both pilots also stated that the UFO had two rows of rectangular windows. Chiles later wrote that the two rows indicated an upper and lower deck inside the UFO. A very bright light seemed to be glowing from inside the windows. And underneath the object, a blue glow could be seen.

Because it was early morning, most of the plane's passengers were asleep. But one of them, Clarence L. McKelvie, would later testify that he too saw something similar to what Chiles and Whitted saw. He stated he saw a very bright light from his window seat in the DC-3. He told investigators that the light seemed to move parallel to the plane, but at a higher altitude.

Right after the close encounter, Chiles radioed Eastern Airlines flight controllers and asked them if any known experimental aircraft were being flown in the region at that time. There were none, according to a Web site.

The flight landed at Birmingham, Alabama shortly before 4 a.m. The pilots went to a hotel for some rest but it wasn't long before their sighting attracted media interest. Within a few hours, they were interviewed by both a radio station and a newspaper reporter.

This sighting would be significant because it was reported by two experienced and respected pilots with Eastern Airlines. Both men had been decorated for their service in World War II.

At first, investigators suggested the object was a meteor but both Chiles and Whitted rejected this. They asserted that it was a "manmade thing."

Not long afterwards, another witness stepped forward. Walter Massey, a ground-crew chief at nearby Robins Air Force Base in Georgia, claimed to have seen something very similar about an hour before Chiles' and Whitted's encounter. Like the two pilots, he said it was a torpedo-shaped object that looked to be two or three times larger than a B-29 and had "a long stream of fire coming out the tail end."

And of course, officials with the Pentagon floated the ever-popular weather balloon theory. Just a year before, the military tried to explain what happened at Roswell, New Mexico with that same old tired weather balloon theory. But the explanation was quickly withdrawn with the Chiles-Whitted encounter. An Air Force spokesman admitted their sighting was credible, according to a Web site.

So based on this and other sightings, Air Force investigators began to take more seriously the idea that UFOs might come from other worlds.