Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency information report, dated October 1955, gives a traveler's account of a sighting made from a slow train on 4 October 1955. The source says the party watched a triangular object about the size of a jet fighter, with a light at each point and lit by a searchlight, launched from an airfield about two miles away. It made several fast spirals and then climbed steeply to high altitude. The source says a steward pulled down the blinds while they watched. Place names are redacted.
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# SEE BOTTOM OF NATIONAL SPECIAL CONTROL # INFORMATION REPORT - REPARLED AND DISSEMINATED BY CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY Sighting of Unconventional Aircraft 00-B-90229 4 Oct 55 4 Oct 55 1. At 1630, 4 Oct 55. I boarded a train for in the company of one of whom shared a Vagon-Lit compartment with me; the other two occupied the adjoining compartment. The train ran very slowly, making every stop; I would estimate its overall speed at 20 mph. Exactly two hours and forty minutes out of one of our group in the compartment next door entered my compartment and said, "Did you are that out there? I just saw a flying saucer." I and my compartment companion were about to laugh it off when the man from next door pointed out of the window again, and then we all saw the following sight. 2. On the lefthand side of the train, between the train was a large air field. The evening was dark but clear. A huge search on the field itself, on a triangular object on the ground which would say was probably not more than two miles distant from the railroad. Collector's comment: Source first estimated that the air field was about five miles away but, on further reflection, changed the distance to the object to two miles. The size of the object was comparable to that of a jet fighter, with a squat shape and in the form of an equilateral triangle. There were three lights on the object, one on each point of the triangle, presumably two wing lights and a tail light. As we watched, it was ejected from its launching site, making not less than three and not more than seven fast spirals in the air, after which it climbed extremely fast at about a 45 degree angle. We watched it climb and saw it reach a high altitude; the search followed it all the way. 3. I wish to emphasize that this was no ordinary take-off but a launching procedure more like a missile ejection. Our companion from next door reported that this was the second launching in rapid succession. 4. I believe that the train at the time of the sighting was between 50 and 65 miles south of While the four of us were still watching the object ascending, the steward came in and pulled down the blinds. When I began to protest the steward pointed toward the rear of the car and shook his head,
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. 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. 3 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.