Viral Facebook post:An image shows a “UFO photographed on June 21, 2014 by the pilot from the cockpit of an F-16 military plane flying near Lackland Air Force Base of the United States located in San Antonio, Texas.”
PolitiFact's ruling: False
Here's why: A viral Facebook post falsely claims to show an image of a U.S. military fighter pilot looking out the cockpit window at a UFO — all in broad daylight.
"UFO photographed on June 21, 2014 by the pilot from the cockpit of an F-16 military plane flying near Lackland Air Force Base of the United States located in San Antonio, Texas," said a June 28 Facebook post. An identical post from a different account went viral in March.
The posts were flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed.
There’s no evidence the image shows an authentic photo of an Air Force pilot flying beside a real UFO, as the Facebook caption claims. PolitiFact found no reports in Google or the Nexis news database about any such sighting near San Antonio.
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Rather, the image is just one iteration of a years-old meme, edited in each instance with different art to depict various objects flying in the sky outside the pilot’s cockpit window.
Reverse image searches turned up several other variations of the meme, including versions from as early as 2008 that depict the same pilot looking out the window at a giant cat riding...
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