Patrick D. McCaslin Interview, 11 November 2000
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| the ground or anything, so it just stayed there for a few minutes, few seconds. We're just flying along, same heading." | ||
| JK | They asked him some other questions. They wanted to know if it stopped dead or decelerated. And he said it stopped dead. Now he said: [reading]
[BR:] "—It scared him to death. I mean they were getting ready to eject." | |
| PM | Yeah, I don't remember any of that, but I was downstairs so I don't know what the pilots were talking about. | |
| JK | Right, but he's remembering that you or the Radar Nav were concerned about this thing to the point of fear. | |
| PM | My memory is what I gave you, I remember alerting them, you know, it was off the right wing. I remember it moving in very rapidly, at that point, I probably did say something like: "Hey, this thing moved in really fast." But by the time I saw it at a mile off the wing it was already stopped. My memory is not that we were in imminent collision, although, certainly the capability was there if this thing could maneuver like that. | |
| JK | Right, and also the size that it apparently was. | |
| PM | Yeah well, I didn't see it—they saw it visually, all I saw was the radar return, but the radar return was one that would have been at least as big as a KC-135, which was the largest return I'd ever seen. | |
| JK | Cagle, the guy that had the interview the next day—he was in the left seat, normally? | |
| PM | Would have been in the left seat normally, right. | |
| JK | OK, now this other guy James Partin, they guy whose name you don't recall. He is listed as an Instructor Pilot. | |
| PM | Could be. | |
| JK | So there was three pilot rated guys somewhere up front there. | |
| PM | It's possible they were checking him out as an IP, giving him some kind of an upgrade check. That could have been what was going on, I just don't remember. He could have been a pilot upgrading to IP or an IP getting a periodic evaluation, or something like that. | |
| JK | Oh, OK. Well, there's a memory from Runyan, that when it became clear what they were looking for that Cagle did something unusual. |
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