Documents / FOIA release
This CIA memorandum from the Chief of the Detroit Office, dated 16 December 1960, passes along a sighting report in case the USAF is still interested. A physics doctor describes a large, greenish, incandescent disc-like object seen about 6:54 pm on 14 December 1960, descending to the east toward the Detroit River before burning out. A student driving on Hines Drive saw the same thing. The witness said it was not a flying saucer and may have been part of a missile.
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ES GOVERNMENT ATL: DATE: 16 December 1960 FROM : Chief, Detroit Office SUBJECT: Sighting of Unusual Object 1. If the USAF is still interested in unidentified objects in the sky they may be interested in the following report given to us by 2. "At about 6:54 pm Wednesday, 14 December 1960, I had the radio on and was listening to a program (the second three star report which would fix the exact time). I looked out to the left (about due east) and saw an object that looked like a meteor except that it was extremely large and almost like a disc, not like a point of light. It was a greenish light (just off white), but green and quite visible to me. I may not have picked it up as soon as it appeared but it was visible to me at an angle of an elevation of about 50 to 55 degrees and it came down to within about 20 degrees elevation. Of course it is impossible to estimate distance as I didn't know what I was looking at, my first impression was that it would land in the Detroit River. It was moving at an angle to the vertical of about 10 degrees, running off to the right or the south. It eventually burned out before it got to the ground. The thing which astonished me about it was that it is not the meteorite season and it was much bigger than anything I had ever seen. It was definitely incandescent, and of a very high temperature. 3. "During my class a little later I asked if any of the students had seen this object. Out of 25 in the class, was the only one who saw it. He said he was going east on Hines Drive. He thought it was going to land at the end of Hines Drive. Hines Drive runs east and west. He said he was about two or three miles west of Telegraph and when asked about where it was going to land he said about Telegraph. Telegraph is about three miles west of where I was, so that means he judged that it was closer. This error in his estimate verifies that it must have been a sizeable object because it was east of me and it looked big to me. He said he was driving fairly fast when he saw it, but had exactly the same impression I did. 4. Another student who was not in my class last night, said he saw it. However, I have not had an opportunity to question him. 5. "This was not flying saucer stuff. I say that only in the sense that I have worked all my life with high temperatures. I am a doctor here in dynamics and physics and I know a high temperature when I see it. That's why I would say the object was way up in temperature. I thought it might be related to some part of a missile or something similar. It was going at a high velocity and had to in order to reach the temperature it was at."
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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. 1 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.