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.
of February 16 over northern Kansas was just that, inasmuch as meteorites have been recovered from it." There were found, beginning April 24, first several smaller fragments up to one of 4 1/2 pounds. Then a disturbed spot in a clover field led to the digging up of a piece of some 109 pounds embedded about two feet in the soil. The stone is what is termed as an "achondrite", a technical name for an unusual type of stony meteorite. It is reported to be of a type which will deteriorate rapidly.

A photograph of the trail of the meteor, made by amateur photographer Duane N. Wray of Norton, shows the vapor trail left in the sky by the explosion of a meteor which was seen in Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, and ebraska. It was made at Wray's home, nine miles north of Norton, just four minutes after the meteor exploded. A smudge of blue-white smoke remained in the sky for an hour February 18th. This photograph is in file under Incident #101.

Further remarks are contained in supplement.

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.