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.
“Hill”9 pages
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
323 W. Tenth St., Pueblo, Colorado February 20, 1948 Office of the Chief of Staff U. S. Army Washington, D. C. Subject: Explosion in the sky near Norcatur, "ans. 4:00 p.m. (MST) February 18, 1948 Purpose: To call attention to some peculiarities in connection, whether coincidental or not According to an AP bulletin appearing in the Pueblo CHIEFTAIN for February 18, 1948, some object was seen moving eastward across the sky on the late afternoon of February 18th, and when this thing reached a position approximate to Norcatur, Kansas, exploded, or disrupted, or disappeared. The explosion is said to have been terrific. Directions given as to the progress of this appearance indicate that it moved from west to east. Information contained in the dispatch under a Denver dateline indicate that while many would call this object a bolide e.g., exploding meteor - the astronomers of Chamberlin Observatory (Denver) did not so assess it: it is said in the dispatch that these officials could offer no explanation of it. If this is the case, the appearance is anomalous, and may lend itself to other meteoric explanation. A sketch-diagram of the earth and moon's orbit reveals a peculiarity in connection with the appearance, which may be significant. If a line is stricken at right-angles across the meridional position of the site of explosion of this meteor at hour angle four o'clock (local time) and this line be considered the west-to-east course of the object, then it will be seen that if this line is continued outward into space toward the orbit of the moon it will intersect the lunar orbit at a place near to where the moon would be at from 80 to one hundred hours after the explosion took place. New moon occurred at 9 D 10 H 2 M February; First Quarter at 17D 8H M. February the moon moves approximately 12.5 degrees per day along its orbit.
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.