On 23 November 1953, an F-89C Scorpion piloted by Lieutenant Felix Moncla vanished over Lake Superior while intercepting an unidentified radar return. The aircraft was never found, and the cause was never settled.
Kinross matters because it is a documented military disappearance during a UFO intercept — a case whose unresolved cause has made it a lasting early-military mystery, without turning the disappearance itself into proof of a craft.
An F-89C Scorpion was scrambled from Kinross AFB to intercept an unidentified radar return over Lake Superior, piloted by First Lieutenant Felix Moncla.
Documented
The scramble and intercept are documented.
The aircraft and crew disappeared from radar and were never recovered. The disappearance is documented; the cause is not established.
Documented
The disappearance is documented.
The Air Force attributed the loss to an accident. A competing reading links the disappearance to the intercept. The cause remains unresolved.
Debated
The nature of the radar target and the cause of the loss are disputed.
The aircraft’s disappearance during a UFO intercept is striking, but it does not by itself establish an extraordinary cause. The loss remains unexplained.
Unverified
Any claim that the aircraft was taken by a craft is unverified.
These sources do different jobs: the USAF investigation is the official record, and Keyhoe and Wikipedia are secondary treatments. None establishes the cause of the disappearance.
The compiled reference account.
The accident-attribution record.
A later secondary account.