Glenn Ford stars as an Air Force colonel by the name of "Pete Moore" who has just sent a four-man crew on a flight to test some electrical equipment. As Flight 412 nears its destination they are informed by a nearby Marine Corps air base that there are three strange blips on their radar screen and Flight 412 is requested to confirm it. After confirming it the Marine Corps sends two Phantom jets to intercept these unidentified flying objects only to have them mysteriously disappear. At this point the Marine Corps air base turns control of Flight 412 over to NORAD which then diverts it to another heading and orders them to maintain radio silence until they land at an undisclosed location. Now, rather than reveal any more of the film and risk ruining it for those who haven't seen it I will just say that this was an interesting movie for the most part. Although it begins in a semi-documentary style which opens and closes with a narrative it doesn't really reveal anything out of the ordinary. In essence, it's slightly entertaining but not that informative or factual. All things considered I rate it as average.

You don't really expect too much in the way of sensitivity or poetry from a television movie. You expect flat lighting, lurid color, and a message that a rhesus monkey could understand.You get all that here. And, as a kind of lagniappe, you get clumsy editing, a confused screenplay, stiff and amateurish acting, and direction that plumbs the abyssal depths of skill. It's really too bad, because the subject is such an important one.And Air Force crew is testing a radar site, flying from their base to a Marine Corps Air Station, when both the on-board radar officer and the Marine Corps base notice three unaccounted-for blips on their screens. Neither Norad nor anyone else has any traffic in the area, so two Marine jets are scrambled and ordered to intercept. The Air Force crew, including pilot David Soul, watch the Phantoms climb into a cloud and disappear. At the time time, the radar anomalies disappear.Glenn Ford is the Air Force colonel in charge of the test but, back at headquarters, he learns that the incident and his airplane have been taken in hand by the Security Intelligence Division or some other secret ops organization.Browned off at his airplane having been confiscated and at being put out of the loop, Ford pushes his investigation and finds that the aircraft is now at a deserted old field and his men are being held prisoner during a "debriefing" by the SID. Ford gets his men released but his career is at an end. The case gets buried.It's really frustrating. The film does not show us events clearly as they happen. It's not until the movie is half over that we learn the Air Force crew had visual contact with the Marine Phantoms. And it's not until still LATER that we discover the strange blips made a right-angle turn and accelerated at once from 500 miles per hour to 5,000 miles per hour. That's bad writing.The pace set by the story is glacial. The SID men all look sinister. There's no question about it. They scowl and smirk and wear Ray-Ban shades. And when one of them shouts at the imprisoned aircraft crew, there is a long pause, with no cut, before a crew member shouts a reply. And that pause is long. Eons come and go. Dynasties rise and fall, while the two men stare at each other and everyone waits for the next shout. That's direction at an amateur level, prompting acting that one would expect from a community college stage somewhere in rural New Jersey. The dialog is repetitious and sometimes without point. Glenn Ford is the most convincing character.I wish I could recommend it because I'm compelled to believe that there really is an attempt by the US government to keep this entire UFO business under wraps. I can only guess at the motives. (1) Preventing a public panic. (2) What military officer wants to admit that there are "things" flying around that we know nothing about and can't defend ourselves against, should they turn out to be hostile. (3) There's nothing to investigate because there is no physical evidence -- none of them ever dropped a faulty landing gear or a toilet Popsicle, so that the disbelievers hold the witnesses in the same contempt, and for the same reason, that engineers feel superior to physicists. (4) Denial, or, in technical terms, "whistling in the dark." Too bad.

"A flight wing of the Air Force has been experiencing difficulties with some of its aircraft so as a test they send aloft a jet with a four man crew. Once airborne, the jet picks up three mysterious objects on radar and when two interceptors are sent to investigate, they mysteriously disappear," according to the DVD sleeve's synopsis.While Air Force Col. Glenn Ford (as Pete Moore) and his men try to investigate events surrounding the UFO sighting, US government officials move to cover-up the incident. Mustached David Soul (as Roy Bishop) heads a cast of familiar and likable TV actors, in a TV movie. One is not as familiar as the rest: "Dark Shadows" star James Storm is partially obscured by a dark cap; he is manning the "Digger Control" that diverts Mr. Soul's plane.

Long before flying saucer buffs were accusing the government of hiding the facts behind the Roswell UFO crash, this movie explored the possibility that military sightings were handled in a covert and serious way.Presented in a straightforward, semi-documentary style, The Disappearance of Flight 412 is directed with economy and tight pacing. This is an absorbing and convincing TV movie [a rarity] that could be classified as science fiction or straight drama.If you can find it playing somewhere on cable, don't miss it.