Munich / Fürstenfeldbruck Radar-Visual Sighting

Late 1948. Project Sign was collecting reports of unidentified objects. Toward the end of November, a wire arrived from Germany.

It came from a US air base near Munich. Edward J. Ruppelt, who later told the story, left the base name blank. Researcher Brad Sparks, in his Comprehensive Catalog of Project Blue Book Unknowns, gives the name: Fürstenfeldbruck. The 36th Fighter Wing, the first jet unit in US Air Forces in Europe, had been assigned there on 13 August 1948. Its 23rd Fighter Squadron flew F-80 Shooting Stars.

23 November 1948. About 10 p.m. A captain, an F-80 pilot, saw an object directly east of the base. It looked like a reddish star. But it was moving in a southerly direction across Munich. It turned slightly to the southwest. Then to the southeast. The witnesses put its speed at 200 to 600 mph.

A second captain, also an F-80 pilot, verified the sighting. Sparks names the first pilot as Capt. Slater and adds a first lieutenant from the 23rd Fighter Squadron. The report described the main witness as an experienced pilot who "is considered to be completely reliable."

The captain called base operations. At first radar reported seeing nothing. Then radar called back. A target at 27,000 feet, some 30 miles south of Munich, traveling at 900 mph. A few minutes later radar called again. The target had climbed to 50,000 feet. It was circling 40 miles south of Munich.

Sparks's version differs in the details. The call went to the Race Card DF Station, a radar direction-finding site. The top altitude was 40,000 feet. The time was 22:20.

Air Weather Service checked whether it could have been a balloon. The answer was "not a balloon." No aircraft were in the area. The report closed with a single line: "Nothing we know of, except possibly experimental aircraft, which are not in Germany, can climb 23,000 feet in a matter of minutes and travel 900 miles per hour."

Ruppelt saw the case as a turning point. "It was the first report where a UFO was seen and simultaneously picked up on radar. This type of report, the first of many to come, is one of the better types of UFO reports."

No one has ever suggested a hoax. No published skeptical explanation deals with this case. Still, some questions stay open. The light was seen east of the base, over Munich. The radar target was 30 to 40 miles south. The report treats them as one object, but that is an inference. Radar also found nothing at first. With 1948 equipment, a false echo or an unrelated target would be worth ruling out. The original wire has not surfaced in digitised form, so the 40,000 or 50,000 feet question is still unresolved.

Ruppelt placed the case in Chapter 3 of The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, "The Classics," beside Mantell, Chiles-Whitted and Gorman. Sparks lists it among the Blue Book unknowns. Its claim to be the first is not secure. Five weeks earlier, on 15 October 1948, a P-61 night fighter crew over Fukuoka, Japan, reported a radar-visual contact of their own. Even so, the Munich wire set a pattern: eye and radar together, the first of many to come.