Has anyone else heard of or read this story..?
In 1975, a story surfaced from a gentleman named Clarence Dargie, claiming intimate knowledge of a strange experience near Otis Air Force Base, Massachusetts in 1953. A radio station, KTRH in Houston, Texas, interviewed Dargie, getting these details:
“I was stationed at an Air Force Base on Cape Cod (Massachusetts) in 1953, about June of 1953. We had one special F-94C type aircraft. It was a two-seat, fighter-interceptor with a pilot in the front and a radar operator in the rear cockpit, both being covered by one canopy. This aircraft was spotted out in an alert area, so whenever we had a UFO contact, that aircraft would be immediately launched, with standby crews 24 hours a day. There was some sort of classified electronic gear aboard. Even I don’t know what it was, because any reference to the gear (in the resulting investigation) would appear as ‘the secret so-and-so.’
This particular night we had a UFO contact. This was just about at dark. The craft took off. The pilot’s name was Suggs, Captain Suggs. The radar observer was a Lieutenant Robert Markhoff. According to Captain Suggs’ sworn statement (incidentally, Suggs survived), they took off on the East-West runway, heading directly West toward Buzzard’s Bay, which is some 12 miles away. The pilot said he pulled it off the runway – this was full after-burner – and began his climb-out. At 1500 feet, he had cleared the runway and was over the base rifle range. The aircraft went completely, utterly dead! Unlike an automobile, which has only one central power source, if your battery fails in an automobile, then you have nothing……your engine quits, the lights go out, the radio, and all these other things. But an aircraft has a redundancy built into it, in that the different systems each have their own power source; and the possibility of all these power sources failing at the same time is astronomical. The odds are – – I don’t think you can even calculate them.
However, at 1500 feet – he finds himself in this situation. His aircraft is completely dead. His engine has flamed out, navigation lights, instruments, radar. It took him a couple of seconds to realize what had happened. Immediately he cut the nose down to keep the aircraft from stalling, because there was no possibility of accomplishing an air start. A hard bail-out? The bail-out sequence in this aircraft is that when the commander gives the order to bail-out, the radar observer operates the handle, which blows the canopy off of the aircraft; then the radar observer himself ejects. The pilot then, on hearing this second explosion, is clear to eject. That’s to keep them both from going out at the same time and colliding as they leave the aircraft. However, Captain Suggs said he did not have the time to wait for the second explosion, because now the aircraft is in about a 75 degree down angle toward the ground at 185 knots.
At about 600 feet, he went out of the aircraft and was about two to three seconds from impact. He ejected from the aircraft. His chute opened and acted like an air brake… it slowed him down, and in one swing he was on the ground. To make a long story short, the aircraft itself… somewhere between the time when he separated from the aircraft and the next two or three seconds….that aircraft literally vanished! It has never been found to this day.”
By: Fouga23 - 31st March 2025 at 11:54
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ktr101/Sandbox
Interesting story!
By: Arabella-Cox - 31st March 2025 at 11:54
The (ever-reliable!) Wikipedia has an entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ktr101/Sandbox
And one here too:
http://www.ufodna.com/uf01/uf2/012036.htm
The truth is out there! 🙂
By: kev35 - 31st March 2025 at 11:54
So what happened to Markhoff? Did he disappear with the aircraft?
Regards,
kev35
By: Slipstream - 31st March 2025 at 11:52
Curious, OTIS has runways 05/23 and 14/32 but no 09/27 thus no ‘east-west’ runway.
Anyway, there’s an awful lot of ponds there, if no one heard a bang they may have heard a splash 😀
By: Arabella-Cox - 31st March 2025 at 11:51
Very interesting story indeed. Never heard about it before. Can’t really see any reason for not takeing Sergent Dargies word for it. Did he ever make a buck out of this story, btw?
The sudden and total loss of power onboard the aircraft sounds like the result of an rather powerful EMP to me?
Must do some Googeling!
By: Mondariz - 31st March 2025 at 11:50
Very interesting story indeed. Never heard about it before. Can’t really see any reason for not takeing Sergent Dargies word for it. Did he ever make a buck out of this story, btw?
The sudden and total loss of power onboard the aircraft sounds like the result of an rather powerful EMP to me?
Must do some Googeling!
How is it, that you find Dargies so credible?
UFO story linking to UFO websites. Where is the Dargie interview and perhaps even more important: who is Dargie?
Please lets not go into the whole UFO thing, here is the actual story:
51-13511 … 51-13603
Lockheed F-94C-1-LO Starfire
c/n 880-8295/8387
13526 modified to JF-94C
13559 (c/n 880-8343, 27th FIS) crashed Jul 2, 1954 after both crewmembers
ejected after a fire warning light had illuminated. Aircraft crashed
at Walesville Intersection, NY, killing 4 people on the ground.
This incident is often listed in UFO lore as being brought down
while chasing a UFO. Supposedly, when the pilot tried to close
in on the target, a sudden, unbearable heat filled the cockpit,
forcing the crew to bail out. The F-94 was on a routine training
mission when GCI requested the plane intercept an unknown
aircraft. The pilot identified it as a C-47 and was then requented
to check out a second unidentified aircraft (later described
as an unidentified weather balloon). When the pilot started
a descent, he noted an increase in cockpit temperature and noted
the fire warning light, the engine was shut down and both
crewmembers ejected successfully.
13560 at Minnesota ANG Museum, Minneapolis, MN.
13570 on display outside Ironworld Discovery Center, Chisholm, MN.
13575 with New England Air Museum
By: Wyvernfan - 31st March 2025 at 11:49
Your saying July 54, but Dargie recounts June 53… Different incidents? :confused:
By: Wyvernfan - 31st March 2025 at 11:47
OK thanks for the extra info Mondariz… when i initially read Clarence Dargie’s report i just thought it an intriguing story.
By: Mondariz - 31st March 2025 at 11:47
I forgot to mention, that Arledge W. Suggs was “Killed, Bail Out due to Engine Failure” in a F-94C accident 27 october 1953. So we have another incident involved in the story. However, the real Suggs was unfortunatly killed.
By: Mondariz - 31st March 2025 at 11:47
Your saying July 54, but Dargie recounts June 53… Different incidents? :confused:
IMHO not two different incidents, an actual incident (july 1954) and a fantasy incident (summer 1953). I have been unable to find any referance to the 1953 story outside UFO websites, despite that aircraft geeks (like us) keep good track of USAF/ANG aircraft. The 1953 story rests entirely on the Dargie interview in 1975 – nearly 20 years after the purpoted incident.
Otis AFB had two F-94C accidents in june 1953 (serial 50-1062 on the 24/6 and 50-1040 on the 28/6) then there was no F-94C accidents untill september. The one lost 24 june can be seen in the newspaper cutting below. The second aircraft 50-1040 suffered an engine fire with pilot Raymond Waski at the controls. However, the aircraft landed and Waski survived – 50-1040 was involved in a landing accident in october 1953, so clearly it did not dissapear. Its noteworthy that Dargie in his interview states, that the public was informed about the crash (in the full interview).
However, in august 1952 an unidentified aircraft type “dissapeared” in the sense “crashed into the sea”(see cut from Cape Cod Standard Times below). Debris was found and a witness saw the crash (Cape Cod Standard Times 12/8 1952 which i can’t find). It was most likely the F-94B serial 51-5442. Certainly it was not a Captain Suggs.
So a plane goes “missing” in 1952 and 20 years later, someone cooks up a UFO story about 1953. Always the same!
By: Flying-A - 31st March 2025 at 11:47
F-94s pop up in a number of UFO reports from the early fifties, not surprising since it was the primary USAF all-weather interceptor of the time. The link below is to a home movie shot in 1950 in Great Falls, Montana. Some say that the two UFOs in it are sunlight reflecting off a pair of F-94s that were flying out of Great Falls AFB at the time. (The base was renamed Malmstrom AFB a few years later.) Others maintain that the images too strong and long lasting to be reflections. Decide for yourself!
By: Bager1968 - 31st March 2025 at 11:47
Or a 20-year-old spotty memory mixed with UFO “wanna-be-itis”.
By: Wyvernfan - 31st March 2025 at 11:47
Yes, they are always intriguing, that’s why they persist – nobody wants a boring UFO story and if you only get half the story, it easily becomes intriguing.
However, they are always a mishmash of different events and quite often easily dismissed.
Naturally people are free to believe in alien crafts, but they don’t do themselves any favours, by circulating these easily discredited stories.
I didn’t say i believed it, nor was i circulating the story to gain browny points.. i just asked if others had read or heard the story before. Can’t really see a problem with that.!
By: Mondariz - 31st March 2025 at 11:47
OK thanks for the extra info Mondariz… when i initially read Clarence Dargie’s report i just thought it an intriguing story.
Yes, they are always intriguing, that’s why they persist – nobody wants a boring UFO story and if you only get half the story, it easily becomes intriguing.
However, they are always a mishmash of different events and quite often easily dismissed.
Naturally people are free to believe in alien crafts, but they don’t do themselves any favours, by circulating these easily discredited stories.
By: Mondariz - 31st March 2025 at 11:46
I didn’t say i believed it, nor was i circulating the story to gain browny points.. i just asked if others had read or heard the story before. Can’t really see a problem with that.!
Sorry i didn’t mean that as a personal attack, just a general view on UFO stories. You did not make up the story or print it in various UFO books. You just asked if anyone had heard about it.
By circulating I’m was talking about various UFO tv programmes and books (both produced by people who should research), not general forum chat.
By: Wyvernfan - 31st March 2025 at 11:45
No problem ;).
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