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
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It is held by rocketry experts (example, WILLY LEY - see his ROCKETS, p. 192, diagram and note in connection therewith) that it would take about 100 hours for a rocket-craft to negotiate the distance from Earth to Moon. Prior to its explosion over Norcatur, this object of Feb. 18th was variously reported as a "falling plane", a "jet plane", and a "ball of fire". It is said by some to have left a trail of smoke behind it. It is the suggestion of this writer that the Army collect and assimilate reports on this object, with a view to determining where it was seen as an object trailing smoke and where as a ball of fire. If this thing is a rocket of some kind headed for the moon, it might first have been seen as a streak of smoke, then later as a ball of fire, and lastly as a tremendous explosion when it at last reached sufficient speed and elevation for take-off. The writer has in mind the various and unexplained reports on "flying saucers", and bases this speculation upon a long consideration of various oddments of reports whose significance might be of space-craft from other worlds of space. The so-called "meteoric procession" which crossed Toronto in February 1913, consisted of a number of groups of illimunated bodies traveling in groups of three and moving in "rigid formation", all pursuing a course across the same streak of the earth's surface. If a line is projected backward along this line of flight it will be seen that this line "comes out" at the position of the moon at the time. The 1913 phenomenon occurred in the mid-period of a series of reports on dirigible aircraft of appearance like zeppelins which were seen over England and whose appearance terminated - or reports on the appearances stopped - just prior to the inferior conjunction of Venus of April 24, 1913. The writer begs to call attention to the fact that the times prior to and just after inferior conjunction of Venus are prolific in reports of strange things seen in the sky. Also that lights have been reported on the moon from time to time, back for at least a century. If in the future of military experiment the moon is selected as a base for the launching of rockets (which has been suggested by some writers), it may be well to look first
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.