Theo: Alright, so what do the aviation investigators think actually happened in that cockpit?
Ada: They point to spatial disorientation. Over black open water with no horizon, a lightly trained pilot loses all sense of up and down. The inner ear lies to you.1
Theo: And those four bright lights, the metallic shine, the green glow?
Ada: Look at the western sky that night. Venus, Mars, Mercury, and the bright star Antares all sat low and brilliant on the horizon. Fixate on those, bank slightly, and they seem to swing and hover above you.1
Theo: So the saucer orbiting him was a handful of planets, misread by a disoriented brain that already believed in saucers.
Ada: That's the chilling fit. And the reflections of his own lights off the canopy could read as a metallic craft. Once disoriented, pilots enter what's called a graveyard spiral.1
Theo: Graveyard spiral. The name alone tells you the ending.
Ada: You bank without realizing, the nose drops, the plane tightens into a descending turn, and you pull back thinking you're level, which only tightens the spiral. The engine coughing fits an aircraft in an abnormal attitude, fuel sloshing away from the pickup.1
Theo: And that final seventeen seconds of scraping?
Ada: Accounts differ. Some say airframe stress, metal groaning under load as the plane overspeeds. Others say it was mechanical feedback from the microphone itself. Either way, moments later he was in the sea. And five years later, the ocean returned a single clue.1