On the evening of 4 July 1947, the crew of United Air Lines Flight 105 reported unusual objects shortly after leaving Boise, Idaho. Captain Emil J. Smith and first officer Ralph Stevens were the principal witnesses, with stewardess Marty Morrow called to the cockpit for confirmation. Their account entered newspapers almost immediately and subsequently became an Air Force case. The surviving file allows the early report to be compared with official speculation and a much later interview.
The outcome here is Disputed: the Air Materiel Command suggested ordinary objects or sunset-related illusion, while atmospheric physicist James E. McDonald later argued that the observations were inconsistent with a ready optical explanation. Neither a particular conventional object nor an extraordinary craft is established by the material reviewed. The map marks the reported initial locality near Emmett, not an exact airborne position.
What survives in the original file
The National Archives file unit 28929393 has a misleadingly broad catalogue title referring to Incident 12. Within it, images 0813–0822 are explicitly associated with Incident 10, the airline case. They include Air Force evaluations, filed newspaper clippings and a later illustrated retelling. The distinction matters: a catalogue title does not determine the contents of every page, and a comic-strip reconstruction is not a contemporary photograph.
The strongest early narrative is a United Press account under Smith’s own byline, datelined Seattle, 5 July, preserved in the6July 1947 Sunday News clippings. In it, Stevens initially believed an aircraft was approaching and switched on the landing lights. Smith then noticed four or five objects, one apparently larger and to the right. He described following them northwest for about 45 miles. The Ontario, Oregon radio attendant looked after being contacted but reported seeing nothing. Smith could not determine whether their final disappearance meant they had accelerated away or ceased to be visible.
The fuller continuation records another unsuccessful check through Boise with an eastbound United aircraft. It also qualifies the shapes: from roughly the same altitude, the crew could describe thin objects with smooth undersides and rough-looking tops, rather than a fully resolved three-dimensional design. These are descriptions attributed to the captain, not measurements of physical dimensions.
The second group and the third witness
A separate clipping, hand-marked Detroit News,5July 1947, describes five objects followed by four more. Three of the later group were together, with the fourth farther away. It names Morrow as the stewardess called forward and says that she agreed the objects were present. This provides an early published source for the familiar five-plus-four sequence. It should remain distinguishable from the shorter bylined version, which concentrates on the initial group.
A report that another crew member confirmed seeing the objects is relevant, but is not the same as having that person’s separately recorded testimony available for comparison. The clippings chiefly convey Smith’s account of what the crew did. Counting their publication in multiple newspapers as multiple independent sightings would exaggerate the corroboration. The airliner report is one encounter with several reported witnesses.
Location and clock-time differences
The early Detroit clipping places the sighting near Emmett, Idaho, about eight minutes after departure from Boise. The later route and calls to Oregon do not turn the initial locality into an Oregon incident. The actual position of every object throughout the reported pursuit is not fixed by those references, however. They establish a regional flight context, not a surveyed track.
The sources also preserve clock differences. The bylined account says 8:04 p.m. Pacific time at takeoff, while the Detroit clipping and McDonald’s later summary give 9:04 p.m. The Air Force summary prints 2004 hours. Rather than silently reconcile these into an exact universal timestamp, this page retains the well-supported local calendar date and describes an evening encounter. No incident year is borrowed from the later reports or their release dates.
The Air Force evaluates Incident 10
Image0813 in the original case file summarises two groups, five and four, silhouetted against sunset and followed for around 45 miles. The Air Materiel Command opinion suggested that rapidly changing light could make aircraft, balloons, birds or an illusion plausible. It ended with an explicit finding of insufficient information. This is a list of possibilities, not a documented identification of a particular balloon, flock or aircraft.
The astronomical evaluation on image 0814 found no astronomical explanation. It suggested changing visibility at sunset and possibly other aircraft, but concluded that no logical explanation then seemed available. Image 0815 includes Incident 10 among the report’s remaining unexplained incidents. That page also expresses the project’s broader confidence in psychological and physiological explanations. Both levels of the record matter: a general explanatory view coexists with an unresolved identification in the individual case.
An unexplained entry in an official file is not a certificate of unusual technology. It can reflect the quality and limits of the information available. Conversely, an official suggestion does not become an established cause simply because it appears on government stationery. The language of the evaluations supports neither extreme.
McDonald returns to the witnesses
For Case 1 of his 1968 congressional submission, McDonald located and interviewed Smith. He reported that Smith confirmed the main published account but remained unsure of sizes and distances and would not speculate about origin. McDonald stressed clear conditions, the estimated 10–12 minute duration, multiple crew witnesses and a climb of about 1,000 feet. He argued these circumstances ruled out an optical explanation as an easy answer. That is McDonald’s assessment following a later interview, rather than a finding adopted by Congress.
The later interview is useful for the witness’s continuing position, but took place roughly two decades after the event. It cannot retrospectively supply an independently recorded range to the objects. This is especially important for speed claims: the DC-3’s airspeed, reported movement across the view and uncertainty about distance do not combine into a uniquely measured speed for the objects.
Map, image and present assessment
The map uses an approximate Emmett city-area reference, rounded from the US Census Bureau’s 2025 Idaho Places Gazetteer. It is not the aircraft’s precise position or a visitor destination. There is no public-place designation: this is an airborne historical report, and a map marker grants no access to private land.
The image is the federal evaluation sheet itself. It documents how the case was assessed, without offering a reconstruction of what the crew saw. Newspaper photographs filed alongside it have separate rights and are not reused as though all contents of a federal archive automatically belonged to the government.
The record supports a promptly reported crew encounter, a useful surviving source trail and a real disagreement about possible explanations. It does not resolve identity, size or distance. Retaining the disputed outcome preserves the disagreement while keeping those missing measurements visible. The case’s historical importance comes from what can actually be compared in the records, rather than from a claim that professional experience makes misidentification impossible.