U.S. Air Force Analysis of Flying Objects in the United States, 1-100

Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.

On 13 Oct 47 at 5:30 - 5:45 A.M., Mr. C. D. Rates in the company of Judge Heaney were proceeding north on the highway to Minnesota some 14 miles north of Dunpin. It was not yet down. Sky to northwest clear with stars visible. First noticed a blue light to the northwest at an elevation of 25°. It was moving eastward with the owed of a meteor. First thought to be aircraft light but as it moved across sky it grew larger and kept getting closer to the earth - apparently traveling from NW to the SE, when first observed it seemed the color and size of a first-magnitude star. At a point slightly west of due north at about a 10° elevation it exploded, throwing a brilliant reddish tinged cone of fire forward and downward. No noise was heard. The cone appeared to be composed of fine specks of incandescent material with some larger pieces - much like an explosion of a sky rocket. But at no time was any tail seen simply a bright ball growing larger and then the explosion. The ball seemed to grow in size - an analogyous comparison - the spread in diameter between a golf ball to a football. It appeared as a ball of blue fire until the explosion.

WOZZ: Mr. Rates account tallies 4th that of Judge Reaney with the exception that the judge apparently did not notice the blue tinge until the time of the explosion.