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.
“Hill”8 pages
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
A large white ball of fire was observed some four to five miles directly ahead of and slightly above the aircraft. It was observed for only a split second and was comparable to the explosion of a shell There were no streamers or "tails" observed such as usually related to a meteor or a distress signal. As the aircraft approached the approximate position where the ball of fire was observed a single white light was seen on the water surface. However, this disappeared within a few seconds after sighting because of the existing cloud coverage. More lights were immediately observed on the water surface some 10 miles north of the plane's course. It is the opinion of the witness (6apt Barnes) that these were from a surface vessel. Some 10 minutes elapsed after these lights were observed on the water surface when an aircraft was sighted flying a reciprocal course (240 $ ^{\circ} $ ) at about 1000 ft below the observers's aircraft and slightly to the right of the course. Capt Barnes made numerous attempts to contact this aircraft on Channel "B" and "C", "VHF" but acknowledgment of his transmission was never received.
CONFIDENTIAL 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.