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22For that was the evening when he heard the capture of a jet plane by a flying saucer.... and made a tape-recording to prove it! Today, the tape is in the possession of the US Air Defense Command. Gene Ruegg's repeated requests for its return are courteously refused. He doubts if he will ever see it again. Flying saucer research groups who have studied the incident are convinced that Ruegg's story is true. And after continual pressure from researchers, an Air Force spokesman admitted that a Phantom jet did go missing from the Southlands base in July 1968 in circumstances which remain a mystery. Today, Gene Ruegg has only a copy of the tape and a typed transcript as proof of the 15 minutes when he listened incredulously to what seemed to be a real-life drama more incredible than anything in space fiction. When I interviewed Gene Ruegg in Cleveland, Ohio, we he had been addressing an extra-terrestrial study conference, he gave a vivid account of the events of that July evening. "I had a call to make to an operator in Montgomery, Alabama, but I was a bit early, so I tuned into the Southlands base. At first it was just routine transmissions betwee n the tower and aircraft on training flights and I was just about to switch over and call up Montgomery when I realized something pretty dramatic was happening. An aircraft coded Delta four-zero had disappeared." For five minutes Ruegg listened fascinated as the operator called vainly to the aircraft with reply. Then, through the crackling static came a voice, "I am being attacked by unidentified objects. I think I ..." The transmission went dead. Ruegg realized he was listening into something highly significant. Feverishly, he connected a tape recorder to his receiver. Seconds after he had finished, the set once again crackled into life. He told me: "It was the voice of the pilot. This time he was near-hysterical and shouting. "They're closing in on me. I am unable to steer a course. Something is happening to the plane... I am being taken along by this thing. I require assistance. I require assistance..." "Then the voice of the controller came in and told him to pull himself together. Seconds later, he said that they had got him on the radar scanner and that they could see objects clustered about the plane. "Someone else came on the radio then and told the pilot that other Phantoms in the area had been alerted and would stand by. "Then I heard a strange, searing noise like scraping metal and the pilot shouted something I couldn't make out. Control tried repeatedly to re-establish contact, but they couldn't."