What happened
In December 1909, Worcester businessman Wallace Tillinghast claimed he had built a heavier-than-air machine and had secretly flown it from Worcester to New York and back in a single night. Almost at once, night-time sightings of a mystery airship with a powerful searchlight and red tail lamps broke out across New England. On 23 December the light appeared over Willimantic, Connecticut, during the Christmas shopping rush, hovered, swept its beam north, west and east, and lingered for about fifteen minutes; Mayor Daniel Dunn said there was no doubt it was an airship. The same night it was reported over Boston and Marlboro. Sightings ran through the last week of December, including a reported daylight pass, and spread to other states. Many people simply called it 'Tillinghast's airship'. On New Year's Eve the mayor of Winsted, Connecticut, staged a fire balloon and printed leaflets signed 'Tillinghast' to fool his town. The wave faded in January 1910, and Tillinghast never produced his machine.
The original account
Shortly after 7:30 o'clock last night when the Christmas shopping trade was crowding the streets of the city there suddenly came from the east a large searchlight. As it approached the city it grew larger and larger and attracted much attention. When over the southeastern part of the city it came to a standstill and then performed a number of evolutions... In a few minutes the light, which looked as big as a bucket, came forward a little and there could be seen the outline of something trailing behind.
'Aeroplane Makes Circuit', Evening Star (Washington, D.C.), 24 December 1909, p. 5, Willimantic dispatch (public domain; OCR corrected)
The official explanation
Historians Stephen Whalen and Robert Bartholomew, writing in The New England Quarterly in 2002, described the episode as a mass delusion triggered by Tillinghast's unsupported claim. Tillinghast never demonstrated a machine; no aircraft of 1909 could have flown the routes, payloads and night-time feats attributed to his. Contemporary reports themselves noted witnesses mistaking Venus, and at least one celebrated sighting, at Winsted, Connecticut, on 31 December 1909, was a fire balloon released by the town's mayor and friends, who were thrown into a snowbank when the trick was exposed.
The anomalous case
Not every report fits Venus or a prank. The Willimantic sighting was watched by a crowded downtown and the mayor, and described as a light that approached from the east, stopped, swept its beam in different directions, moved forward to reveal a dark trailing outline, climbed, descended and then left toward Boston after about fifteen minutes. A local man said he saw two occupants as it passed over Baltic. Planets do not hover, sweep beams or change direction, and a hot-air balloon on a winter night cannot hold station or retrace its course. Tillinghast himself never explained what, if anything, he had flown. Similar phantom airship waves struck Britain, New Zealand and Australia the same year, which some researchers see as evidence of a real phenomenon rather than purely local suggestion.
The strongest argument that this was something genuinely unknown or classified, with each claim attributed to the person who made it.
Documents
- Evening Star (Washington, D.C.), 24 December 1909, p. 5 ('Aeroplane Makes Circuit') newspaper, loc.gov
- New Haven Union, 26 December 1909, p. 1 newspaper, loc.gov
- New-York Tribune, 1 January 1910, p. 2 ('Aviator in Flight', the Winsted fire balloon) newspaper, loc.gov
Sources
- Evening Star (Washington, D.C.), 24 December 1909, p. 5 Library of Congress, Chronicling America
- New-York Tribune, 1 January 1910, p. 2 Library of Congress, Chronicling America
- Mystery airship Wikipedia
Witness reports elsewhere
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