Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency release, dated 2005-07-13, is a short observer's report of an unidentified flying object seen on 6 December 1956. The writer describes a red flare with short tails, flying 10 to 12 miles out to sea at an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 feet and 750 to 1000 miles per hour. It matched a missile's altitude near T plus 95 seconds, then turned east and kept going until T plus 330 seconds. The report mentions a similar sighting on the night of a failed Jupiter launch.
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Subject: Report of Unidentified Flying Object 1. During the observation 6 December 1956. a red flare was sighted high in the eastern sky. This Flare was a spot of reddish light with short tails 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 was estimated to be some 10-12 miles out to sea from the writer's position 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. 5. Upon completion of the turn, the flare picked up a heading of 9C - 100 degrees and maintained this heading until out of sight of the writer at T plus 330 seconds. 6. As far as could be determined, the flare track did not vary in speed or altitude during the entire sighting. 7. On making the turn to the east, the two tails 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" (sic) is undecided. 8. Weather conditions were: ceiling and visibility unlimited. 9. Attention is called to a similar sighting described to the writer saw a flare with a similar flight path the night of the ill-rated 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. 3 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.