Phil Klass

Philip Julian Klass (1919-2005) was an American aviation journalist and prominent UFO skeptic. As senior editor at Aviation Week & Space Technology, he applied rigorous analysis to UFO claims, earning the nickname 'Sherlock Holmes of UFOlogy.' Initially proposing ball lightning or plasma from power lines as explanations after reading John G. Fuller's Incident at Exeter (1966), he later advocated prosaic causes like misidentifications of stars, meteors, aircraft, balloons, and hoaxes in books such as UFOs Identified (1968) and UFOs Explained (1974). Klass debunked the Socorro landing as a hoax and in 1987 dismissed Majestic 12 documents as fraudulent, countering government cover-up narratives. His work polarized ufologists, drawing death threats and disinfo accusations, but advanced skeptical inquiry into UAP phenomena.