Welcome to bite-sized UFOs, a show where we break down lesser-known UFO cases in 20 minutes or less.

And now here's your host, Graham Rendell.

Details of the case that we are about to examine here only came to light following a chance encounter between two people on a train travelling across Russia in 1951.

One man was a lecturer from Voronesh University.

The other, a test pilot with a Soviet Air Force.

The pilot was called Akardi Ivanovich Apraxen and the lecturer

Y.I. Furman. The pilot told the lecturer about a strange incident, one that he experienced

whilst at the controls of a Soviet Air Force fighter on the 16th of June 1948. An account of the conversation between the two men finally reached

Felix Siegel. Ziegle started studying at the USSR Academy of Science in 1945. Three years later he

received his degree in astronomy and started lecturing on the subject at various institutions in the

Moscow area. Ziegle was the first to suggest that the Tunguska blast of 1908 was caused by an alien

spacecraft blowing up in the Earth's atmosphere. The following is Ziegle's account of the

conversation between the lecturer and the pilot.

Apraxin was flying at 15,000 feet when he caught sight of an incomprehensible type of flying object,

which he described as resembling a cucumber, with trailing light beams.

The thing crossed the sky, ignoring Soviet ground station radio warnings to declare its intentions.

Apraxin was ordered to attack the intruder. After closing to within a few miles, the light beams

emanating from the rear portion of the cucumber flashed over his plane. At the same time his plane was

bathed with the light, all electrical

circuits in A Praxan's jet went dead, disabling his craft. While the Russian pilot glided to a landing,

the UFO was seen arcing upward into a cloud, but things weren't over for A praxin. He was questioned

extensively by experts from the Soviet Air Force

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