Fürstenfeldbruck Air Base radar-visual sighting (Project Sign Incident 222)

Autumn 1948. Germany was under occupation, and Fürstenfeldbruck Air Base, about 25 km west of Munich, sat in the US Zone. Since 13 August it had been home to the 36th Fighter Group, the first USAFE unit equipped with jets. Lockheed F-80 Shooting Stars.

The Air Force was already watching the sky. In May 1948 the Office of Military Government for Bavaria had ordered personnel to report "flying discs." Across the Atlantic, Project Sign was weighing a run of radar cases, and they were winning some converts.

November 23, 1948. Around 10 p.m. Capt. Hugh Slater, an F-80 pilot, saw an object in the air directly east of the base. It looked like a reddish star moving south across Munich at somewhere between 200 and 600 mph. Then it changed course, south-west first, then south-east.

A second F-80 pilot, Capt. Darwin R. Addiz, confirmed the sighting. One catalogue adds a first lieutenant of the 23rd Fighter Squadron. They watched it from the ground.

Slater phoned operations. Operations asked the "Racecard" DF station to check its radar. At first there was no target.

Then radar called back. A target at 27,000 feet, some 30 miles south of Munich, traveling at 900 mph. A few minutes later, another call. The target had climbed to 50,000 feet and was circling 40 miles south of Munich. Other accounts put that last altitude nearer 40,000 feet.

Capt. L. H. McCormack, the Wing Intelligence Officer, sent the report to the Commanding General at Air Materiel Command, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, and it was logged as Sign Incident 222. The witnesses were called "completely reliable observers and reporters." The Air Weather Service ruled out a balloon. No known aircraft of the time could match the performance. J. Allen Hynek's evaluation went into the Project Grudge report, but what he concluded is not in the published accounts.

Edward J. Ruppelt, later chief of Project Blue Book, called it "one of the better types of UFO reports," because radar and visual sightings happened at the same moment. It came just before the Top Secret "Estimate of the Situation" was rejected. After that, enthusiasm at Sign faded.

No published explanation addresses this case directly. The light was seen over Munich, while the radar target was 30 to 40 miles south and radar found nothing until it was prompted. Even the paperwork is unsettled. The time appears as 2200 in one account and 2220 in others. The case is missing from the official Blue Book list of 1948 unidentified cases, yet Brad Sparks counts it as Case 141 in his catalogue of Blue Book unknowns.

Online summaries call it the first documented ground radar-visual UFO case. One commenter has pointed out that it may only be the first documented by Project Sign. Wartime radar-visual cases came earlier, in the years when "foo fighters" were reported over Germany. Either way, a reddish star over Munich left its mark on a radar screen. It has never been explained.