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## OBJECT REPORT
On 24 April 1949, at 3 miles north of Arrey, New Mexico, $ (107^{\circ} 19\frac{1}{2}'W 32^{\circ} 52\frac{1}{2}'N) $ 4 Navy enlisted men from White Sands Proving Ground (Chief Akers, Davidson, Fitzsimons and Moorman) and I saw a rapidly moving object while making a pibal wind run. We had released a 350 gram balloon at about 1020 MST and were following it with a standard ML-47 (David White) Theodolite. After the 1030 reading, Davidson took over the theodolite, and Akers and I looked up to find the balloon with naked eye. We thought we had the balloon when we saw a whitish spherical object right along the direction the theodolite $ (45^{\circ} $ elevation and $ 210^{\circ} $ azimuth) was pointing. The object was drifting east rapidly $ (5^{\circ} / \mathrm{sec.} $ as estimated by stopwatch and width of fingers) but we had thought to encounter similar winds on the balloon. When the difference in angle between the theodolite and supposed balloon became apparent, I took over the theodolite and found the true balloon still there, whereupon I abandoned it and picked up the object after it came out of the sun. (The computed bearing of sun was $ 127^{\circ} $ azimuth and elevation $ 60^{\circ} $ ) The object was moving too fast to crank the theodolite around, therefore one of the men pointed the theodolite and I looked.
The object was an ellipsoid about $ 2^{\frac{1}{2}} $ : I slenderness ratio, length about $ 0. 0 2^{0} $ subtended angle, and white in color, except for a light yellow of one side as though it were in shadow. I could not get a hard focus on the object due to the speed at which the angles changed. Theref I saw no good detail at all.
The Azimuth angle continued to decrease as the object continued on a north heading, growing smaller in size. At around $ 2 0^{\circ}-2 5^{\circ} $ Azimuth, the Azimuth held constant and the elevation angle began increasing from the 25 $ ^{\circ} $ minimum to about $ 2 5 0^{\circ} $ . The object then apparently disappeared due to distance after a total time of observation of about 60 seconds.
The object was not a balloon and was some distance away. Assuming escape velocity, a track was figured which put the elevation about the station of about 300,000 feet over the observed period. If this is true, the flight would have probably gone over the White Sands Proving Ground, Holioman AirForce Base and Los Alamos.
We made another pibal wind run 15 minutes later. This balloon burs after an 88 minute flight of 93,000 feet only 13 miles due south of us. Therefore this object could not have been a free balloon moving at such angular speed below 90,000 feet.
Information is desired if this was some new or experimental aircraft or for any explanation whatsoever.
NOTE: No clouds in sky, no haze. No noise, very quite in area (no cars, planes or other engines running) No trail, no exhaust visible. No odor.
/ə/ C.B. Moore
C.B. Moore
General Mill Aeronautical Research
2010 E. Hennepin Avenue
Minneapolis, 13, Minnesota
GEnev- 0371 X 385 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. 2 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.