Pilot Felix Moncla and Lieutenant Robert Wilson disappear while in pursuit of a mysterious craft over Lake Superior.
Lake Superior in central North America is the largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area and the third-largest by volume, holding 10% of the world's surface fresh water. The northern and westernmost of the Great Lakes of North America, it straddles the CanadaUnited States border with the province of Ontario to the north, and the states of Minnesota to the northwest and Wisconsin and Michigan to the south. It drains into Lake Huron via St. Marys River, then through the lower Great Lakes to the St. Lawrence River and the Atlantic Ocean.
First Lieutenant Felix Eugene Moncla Jr. (October 21, 1926 – presumed dead November 23, 1953) was a United States Air Force (USAF) pilot who disappeared while performing an air defense intercept over Lake Superior in 1953. Moncla's disappearance is sometimes known as the Kinross Incident, after Kinross Air Force Base, where Moncla was on temporary assignment when he disappeared.
The USAF reported that Moncla had crashed and that the object of the intercept was a Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) aircraft. According to the report, the pilot of the Canadian aircraft was later contacted and stated that he did not see the intercepting plane and did not know that he was the subject of an interception. However, on several occasions, the RCAF denied that any of their aircraft was involved in any incident on that day, in correspondence with members of the public asking for further details of the intercept.