Documents / Report

U.S. Air Force Analysis of Flying Objects in the United States, 101-172

U.S. Department of War · 210 pages · text by OCR

This declassified U.S. Air Force compilation of unidentified flying object incidents 101 to 172 contains check-list reports from 1948 and 1945. Incident 101 covers the 18 February 1948 sky explosion over Norcatur, Kansas, with letters from Norman G. Markham suggesting a lunar spacecraft, Dr. Lincoln LaPaz's reply judging it a genuine meteorite fall, and witness statements. The final incident, 172, records George F. Gorman's 27 minute F-51 pursuit of a white light over Fargo on 1 October 1948, corroborated by tower controllers and Dr. Cannon.

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.

  • p. 10 …These reports have never been seriously considered by science, which in general ignores them. However, according…
  • p. 81 …Col Siegmund was never questioned but some sort of investigation obviously should be made in lieu…
  • p. 95 …a jet aircraft that I perhaps had never seen - because we as civilians know very little…
  • p. 165 …Another car stopped near them with two occupants who claimed that they had never witnessed anything…
  • p. 169 …many vapor trails from planes but had never observed anything like this. He states: "It was…
  • p. 182 …a definite sharp outline - something I had never seen before. At first I thought it might…
  • p. 195 …this aircraft on Channel "B" and "C", "VHF" but acknowledgment of his transmission was never received.
Mrs. Zittek said that the objects looked like something going through air currents. They had a blunt nose and the tail was obscured. At first they looked like a dark blot. Both ends were indistinct. They were visible for three or four minutes and began to fade away.

Subject's powers of observation were checked on air craft flying in the area and were found to be good as far as direction and movement, but poor for distance and altitude.

A check at Patterson Field Operations showed two F-80's in the air at the time of sighting.

Capt. Darnell, pilot of one F-80, was flying a loose formation in trail of Lt. Collins while pacing him on a calibrated speed check. The aircraft were not equipped with wing tip tanks. The pilots stated that they were in the Columbus Area. Mrs. Zittek position was from a three quarter rear position at sighting.

An article was published by the Columbus Citizen News Paper, Columbus, Ohio, 8 Jul 48.

Cases discussed

About this file

Report, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. The text was read from the page images by an OCR model; expect the odd misread word. 210 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.