Captain William Schaffner, who was oddly born on September 11th was an Air Force pilot who was involved in a strange accident that cost him his life in 1970. Many ufologists believe the incident was caused by contact with a UFO. There's not a ton of information on this subject, due to secrecy, but I'm going to to do the best I can to separate fact from fiction.
It was September 8, 1970, and Captain Schaffner was serving in Lincolnshire, England, as an American exchange pilot. An unknown object was spotted that day on radar. They tried to use radio to get the anomaly to identify itself, but got no answer. He was on duty at the time, so he flew out to follow the object armed with two air-to-air missiles. He radioed in that he had come in contact with a very bright light, and that his controls no longer worked. He was never heard from again.
Three weeks later his plane was found and recovered by divers. The plane was in very good condition as if it had been ditched. They concluded that Captain Schaffner tried to eject but the mechanism had failed. This is where things get mysterious. His body was never found, he had just vanished and the canopy was still closed, so how did he get out of the cockpit?
Ufologist jumped all over this, theorizing that he came into contact with an Alien craft that saw him as a threat. So they zapped him down with their alien technology, and made him disappear. I really want to believe in Aliens, but it's going to take more than that.
I think it's likely that something happened, maybe he was struck by lightning. Then he ditched the aircraft into the water manually escaping the cockpit. The ocean then took him and he was never found. I think that explanation is plausible, but the government never gave an explanation. They "locked it up" and got all quiet and secretive about it. Getting information on this was very hard for me, so who knows. Maybe it was... Aliens.
