Documents / Official release
This U.S. Department of War file collects Project Sign era checklists and incident summary sheets for incidents 101 to 172. The largest item is the 18 February 1948 explosion over Norcatur, Kansas. For it the file gathers witness statements, speculative letters from Norman G. Markham, and Dr. Lincoln LaPaz's view that it was a genuine meteorite fall with curious aspects. Other entries cover B-29 crews, a two-decked wingless object over the Netherlands, a Turkish rocket report, a Moscow sighting, and George Gorman's 1 October 1948 Fargo encounter.
From the source: Release of 2026-05-08 Incident: N/A, N/A. NARA Record Group 38, catalogue id 143685. Each of these incident summaries 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 A Roy W. Cox, Director of Highways STATE HIGHWAY COMMISSION OF KANSAS Division 3 Norton NOTES TAKEN AT NORCATUR, KANSAS, Night of Feb 18 Mr. Ralph New, Postmaster at Norcatur, tells us that at approximately 4:50 PM he was standing in the north window of the post office in Norcatur looking toward the City Hall when he was suddenly illuminated very brightly by some terrific light. He ran outside into the street where others were looking toward the northeast at a very large cloud of white smoke high in the sky. He stated that in about a minute and a half, there was a terrific explosion followed by a heavy rumbling noise like thunder and that the smoke cloud was growing larger all the time. Also there was a white smoke trail in the sky from the southwest where the missile had come from. He said that from the center of the street, the explosion and the first big mushroom of smoke was directly overhead and at a tremendous height. Another man in Norcatur stated that just prior to the explosion, he had heard the motors of an airplane. Chief Scott learned from some man in Norton that just following the explosion, something fell at his feet on the street and he picked it up, to find that it was a small flashlight battery resembling those used in 'fountain pen flashlights' and that it was red hot. After a crowd of men gathered and examined it, he was unable to findit and thinks that someone took it. Kenneth Hays of east of Norton was about 5 miles south of Prairie View when he heard something roaring in the sky to the west of him, far away and very high. He says that it resembled a rocket traveling northeast toward Norton direction, and that suddenly there was a terrific explosion followed by a mushroom of white smoke and that there followed other explosions or something resembling explosions. When he saw it, it was nearing the ground or horizon, in other words, losing altitude. Edgar Young's boy at Reager, was standing beside the Reager elevator and heard something high over head, looked up to see a very bright flash of light and then a loud explosion followed by a big cloud of smoke. The airport at Norton thought about 20,000 feet, time 4:50. Checked but no planes missing.
Official release, 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. 178 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.