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.
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## EXHIBIT B Statement taken from Leland Sammons My name is Ireland Cammons, and I live on a farm 14 miles west of Stockton and 1 mile north, off WS 24. On February 18 at about 5:14, I was standing near my hog-pen about 100' east of my house, when I heard the pheasants raising a disturbance and the chickens all rushed to the chicken-house. I looked around toward the house to see what was causing it and saw something hovering just above the house. I ran toward the house, and it then lowered over the north end of the house and settled toward the ground. I was then very near it, approximately 6' when it stopped about level with my face, and just wobbled around for an instant, fire belching out of it and sucking back in. The thing was about 4' long, shaped something like a funnel. There was a pipe sticking out the back of it, and once as it wobbled around, the pipe was sticking right at my belly. Suddenly there was a lot of sparks showered from it, and the fire increased as if a fuse might have lighted, and it took off in a north-westerly direction very fast, gaining altitude as it went. My wife heard it leave and ran out where I stood, and we watched it go, leaving a trail of smoke all the way. Suddenly there was a great cloud of smoke in the sky, not more than 40 seconds after it left my yard, and in a few seconds or more, we heard an explosion. I then stepped off from my house to where it had been, and it was five steps. Yes, it was hot, I could feel the hear from it. Had I not been washing my car prior to the occurrence, wetting the ground, there would have been a bare spot in the yard where the thing started up because there was a great rush of fire from it when it left. It must have been quite high when it exploded. Kenneth "ays, son of Floyd Hays, 14 miles east of Norton on US 36, at the Jet. of K-60, south side of highway. At about 5 to 5:30 P.M., not sure of time, was riding his horse in a pasture, when he heard something queer in the sky. Looking up to the south-west, he saw what appeared to him to be a rocket, just like he had seen during the war in Europe. It startled him, and he jumped off the horse. He then remounted, watched its course, almost on a level but losing altitude a little, and it then exploded with a big cloud of smoke, apparently over Norton, from where he was, south of Prairie View. He rode on toward home a ways, when suddenly the sound and jar of the explosion reached him. Mrs. Hays was home in the house, when she heard and felt something like a truck might have struck the house. She ran out of the house and then first saw the huge cloud of smoke. About 40 minutes later, a part of the smoke cloud drifted directly over their house, and went on east over Phillipsburg. Ralph New, postmaster at Norcatur, stated that at about 4:50 P.M. he was standing just inside the front window of the postoffice in Norcatur, when he observed a blinding flash as if someone had taken a flashlight picture. He could locate no one with a camera, but noticed several men walking to the center of the street and looking up. He then walked out to where they were and looking up, saw a high cloud of smoke in the sky almost diredtly overhead
Report, from the pursue 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. 210 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.