Documents / Document

1948 07 9670642 20Mi SofMontgomery Ala 144 (Project Blue Book case file)

Internet Archive · 2015-12-05 · 161 pages · text by GLM-OCR

This Project Blue Book case file, digitized by the Internet Archive, covers Incident 144: two Eastern Airlines pilots reported that a wingless, cigar-shaped object with a flaming exhaust passed their DC-3 about 20 miles southwest of Montgomery, Alabama, on 24 July 1948. The file includes an OSI interview with a Robins Air Force Base employee who saw a similar object, negative aircraft traffic reports from many bases, and later correspondence. A December 1948 intelligence report found fairly consistent descriptions across four related sightings.

Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.

that a very sizable temperature inversion was present, and this was ample to magnify some of the radar and optical effects. The radar, especially, could have been deflected back to the ground and the moving object might have been some secondary reflection from the plane itself. Is there any additional information about the man who claimed to have checked the UFO against the triangle of stars, and deciding that it moved with reference to those stars? Sounds that it might have been autokinesis, unless this motion was really very sizable.

One further question that we have. A study of the case indicates that the UFO was merely a meteor. Apparently this was a considered solution in the early days. We wonder why it was abandoned.

Thank you for the additional sightings, all of which are useful and lend freshness to the book. Also, I think you were going to send me one from the south, where airline pilots reported not only seeing a saucer but certain roughness of the air which, according to your own observation, was due to forest fire or oil well fire, or something of the sort.

Again, with our many thanks and best wishes, I am

Cordially yours,

DHM:gq

P.S. I'm scheduled to be in Washington on July 26. If time permits, I may run over to the Pentagon and talk with you some at that time.

A 20 m the 21st.

CC: Maj. Friend Col. Evans

Cases discussed

About this file

Document, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 161 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.