Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency file holds routing slips and a memo titled Report of Unidentified Flying Object, written by an agency employee. The employee saw a red flare-like object at night on 6 December 1956 while watching test 3018, the launch of a Viking rocket that was the first on the Vanguard program. The object flew north at an estimated 750 to 1000 miles per hour and then turned east. Comments added on 4 January 1957 say the Air Force ruled out aircraft and weather balloons, and camera plates showed nothing.
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1. During the observation of test 3018 at 01047. 6 December 1956. a red flare was sighted high in the eastern sky. This flare was a spot of reddish light with short tail of the same color protruding from each side of the spot to the south. 2. The flare appeared to be at 15,000 to 20,000 feet. Its track, at first sighting (Lunat, plus about one minute), was estimated to be some 10 - 15 miles out to sea from the writer's position three miles north of DIST Yain Cato, and its course was due north. Speed was estimated to be 750-1000 miles per hour. 3. The missile altitude at about T plus 95 seconds appeared to be the same as the altitude of the flare. 4. The flare made a wide turn to the east immediately after the missile "praised" to (missile track appeared to be some 3 to 4 miles toward shore from the track of the flare), completing the turn about E to 10 seconds before burn-out of the missile. 5. Upon completion of the turn, the flare picked up a heading of 90 - 100 degrees and maintained this heading until out of light of the writer at 7 plus 330 seconds. 6. Is far as could be determined, the flare truck did not vary in speed or altitude during the noisy lighting. 7. On making the turn to the east, the two trails disappeared. Whether this was due to change in attitude with relation to the observer, or due to increased distance from the observer, or due to a change in "power settings" (s.c.) is uncollected. 0. weather conditions were ceiling and visibility unliited. 2. Attention is called to a similar sighting described to the writer by Mr. Agus Ibrahim. Mr. Ibrahim saw a flare with a similar flight path the sight of the ill-fitted Jupiter launch.
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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. 5 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.