Documents / Report
This U.S. Air Force file of unidentified flying object check lists covers incidents 101 to 172 from 1948. Most of the pages concern the February 18, 1948 explosion over Norcatur, Kansas: witness statements, B-29 crew sightings, and letters from Norman Markham suggesting a spacecraft travelling to and from the moon. An excerpt from Dr. Lincoln LaPaz calls the event a genuine meteorite fall. Other entries record sightings at Smyrna, Tennessee, Los Angeles, the Pacific, the Netherlands, Ohio, Turkey and near Moscow.
From the source: Release of 2026-06-12 Includes a "Check-List - Unidentified Flying Objects" that contains details about the incident. Many summaries also include witness lists or statements and other narrative reports or descriptions.
a ,a . Excerpt of letter dated April 11, 1948 from Dr. Lincoln LaPu, Director, Institute of Meteoritics, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, to the Deputy Executive Director, Committee on Geophysical Science~, Research and Development Board: Thank you for the surprising documents sent roe under date of March 3(). As you remark, certain aspects of Markham's letters a re fantastic (for example: (1) the fir~ball procession of 1913 , February 9, waa genuinely meteoric, although a rare type of chain fall; (2) no astronomer could take seriously Markham's 11 invasion by beings from Venus or the Moon" theory: <,) he appeals to, and biases in his favor, such untrustworthy evidence as newspaper stories, e.g., the absurd statement attributed to Dr. Rocht of the Chamberlin Observatory) . Nevertheless, Markham is justi fied in calling attention to certain incidents as tD1explained, for example, the 11 flyin6 lenses" (in my opinion 99% hoax and imagination and 1% r eal). As r egards the Norcatur, Kansas incident, I remain convinced t hat, like the Four Corners incident, it was a genuine meteorite fall, although one of exceptional size (again like the Four Corners fall ) . Hovrever, there are many curious aspects of bot h these falls, some of an objective nature, like the singular fact that in spite of intensive searches (ad mittedly tmder bad terrain a nd weather conditions), not a t race of meteoritic material has so far been found; some of a non-objective nature, like the amazing testimony given by Mr . Leland Sammons, Mr. Alfred Gle:m , . and other witnesses of the Norcatur incident, both to members of the State H1gtiway Commission of Kansas and to l nstitute of Meteoritics field survey parties. (See exhibits A, B, am C enclosed.) Some comment on such testimony as appears in 1i.,B, and C would seem desirable: 1 . Glenn first reported the battery case as red hot. hhen I pointed out that the pa·'er on it was not charred, his account was changed to "too hot to handle". The Institute of Meteoritics party found only two men, not four, who saw the battery case fall. The battery case '1as been examined by Dr. 11ictor Regener, Department of Physics, University or New "'exico, who stat.es that it appears to be identical witn the small batteries used in portable radios. 2. K. Hays ' identification of the Norcatur object as a rocket has the following support: On the morning of February 19, I talked to the to,rer man and two assistants at the Air Base at McCook Field, Neb!'aska. All three denied the Norcatur object was a fireball and described it as a filack object with an extremely bright jet of flame pouring out of t he rear. Furthermore, a l h-year old, and presumably unbiased, schoolgirl in Oberlin, Kansas wrote me a similar description of the "Fireball." l
Report, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 210 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.