Documents / Report
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.
“US Navy”3 pages
3. A determined effort is under way to check up on Sammons' veracity (and sanity!) I have neither seen nor talked to Sammons, but another member of the Institute of Meteoritics party (Dr. D. M. Gragg, an Instructor in the Department of Mathematics) who did so believes Sammons (who is a well-to-d0 farmer) to be sincere and very badly scared. Of course nearness to a big meteorite fall would scare one as badly as an atom bomb; but how could it produce such testimony as Sammons". The "meteoritic" incidents from the great fall of 1945, November 29 (from which no meteorites have been recovered either!) through the sequence of similar falls culminating in the Four Corners and Norcatur incidents, coupled with such tings as the Ussuri incident, convince me that either the earth is under a most unusual cosmic bombardment or many of the fireballs are not meteorites at all. While I still cling to the meteoritic hypothesis, it is clear that which ever alternative is the right one, the situation cries aloud for thorough investigation.
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.