The BOAC Stratocruiser sighting
On 29 June 1954 the crew of a BOAC airliner bound for London reported a large object and several small ones alongside them for eighteen minutes.
On 29 June 1954 Captain James Howard was piloting a BOAC Boeing Stratocruiser out of New York, with a fuel stop planned at Goose Bay. Over eastern Canada, north of Seven Islands, he and his crew reported one big object and about six smaller ones, in view for eighteen minutes. James McDonald, the researcher whose 1968 talk recounts the case, puts the sighting near sunset, while Wikipedia's list gives times after midnight GMT.
In the account printed by NICAP, Howard described the small objects as spread in a row, three in front of the big one and three behind, or two and four, always at one level. The large one slowly changed shape, like a swarm of bees. They looked grey, hard-edged and opaque, with no lights or flames. McDonald says they were about five to six miles off, behind the port wing, and manoeuvring in an unconventional way. After landing in London Howard said they were evidently something other than any aircraft known to him. The description is the crew's own account.
"29 June 1954 — A BOAC pilot in a Boeing 377 Stratocruiser sees seven UFOs when travelling back from New York to London over the North Atlantic; in G-ALSC[citation needed] Boeing 377-10-28 (sold to Transocean Air Lines in January 1959) RMA Centaurus; the aircraft left New York Idlewild Airport at 17:03 on Flight 510-196 heading for refuelling at CFB Goose Bay, where the pilot saw seven UFOs four hours later near Newfoundland for eighteen minutes at 19,000 ft from 01:05 GMT to 01:23 GMT; Captain James Howard, aged 33 from Bristol, was a former RAF Bomber Command Squadron Leader on his 265th"
- BOAC Case: UFOs Follow British Airliner Over Labrador (Timothy Good account, NICAP), NICAP
- James E. McDonald, CASI Astronautics Symposium, Montreal, 12 March 1968, ufology.patrickgross.org (McDonald paper)