Muroc Army Air Field disc sightings

July 1947. Reports of flying discs were pouring in from across the United States, and they peaked on 7 July. The next day brought the Roswell announcement. Muroc Army Air Field sat in the Mojave Desert, in Kern County, California. Its people ran up prototype aircraft and staged parachute tests on Rogers Dry Lake. Over two days, they reported something else in their sky.

7 July, about 10:10. Maj. J.C. Wise was running up an XP-84 when he saw a yellowish white sphere at about 10,000 feet. It was "oscillating in a forward whirling movement without losing altitude," at 200 to 225 MPH. He first took it for a weather balloon. But he had been briefed on the high-altitude winds, and it was travelling against them. Some sources put this sighting on 8 July.

8 July, between about 9:30 and 10:00. A group at the billeting office looked up. 1st Lt. Joseph C. McHenry saw two silver objects, "spherical or disc-like," at about 8,000 feet. A third "circled in too tight a circle and too severe a plane to be any aircraft." Asked what he had seen, he answered: "They are flying Disc."

The stenographer Jannette Marie Scott watched "two, silver colored disc like objects flying toward Mojave, California." They were "flying in a tight circle, neither losing nor gaining altitude." No engine drone was heard. S/Sgt. Gerald E. Nauman and T/Sgt. Joseph Ruvolo gave similar speeds and heights.

11:50. An observation truck on Rogers Dry Lake. The men inside were waiting for a test parachute, and four of the five saw "a round object, white aluminum color." It fell at three times the rate of the test parachute and showed "a distinct oval-shaped outline, with two projections on the upper surface." Then it "drifted slowly north of due west against the prevailing wind." For about 90 seconds, there was no smoke, no flame and no engine noise. The statement was signed by a Capt. "Strapp". Ted Bloecher and NICAP identify him as John Paul Stapp.

Around noon, Maj. Richard R. Shoop saw a "thin metallic object" about the size of a pursuit airplane, 5 to 8 miles away. It came down "in oscillating fashion, almost to the surface of the ground and then started climbing again." His wife saw it. So did the base commander, Col. Signa A. Gilkey. It lasted about eight minutes. At about 16:00, an F-51 pilot 40 miles south saw a "flat object of a light-reflecting nature" above him. His plane "would not climb high enough" to reach it.

Fourth Air Force intelligence at Hamilton Field took sworn statements between 11 and 14 July. Its report of 18 August 1947 closed the matter: "No further investigation of these incidents is being considered by this headquarters." Project Sign, at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, disagreed. It put Muroc at the front of its confidential report of 23 April 1948. It considered lighted advertising blimps and found them insufficient.

Balloons were the obvious answer, and Bloecher reports that the Air Force gave it for several of the sightings. The witnesses kept pointing out that the objects moved against the wind. Gilkey believed at the time that what he saw was paper. Stapp judged his object to be man-made. The McHenry sighting went onto the Project Blue Book list of unknowns.

Edward J. Ruppelt wrote that these reports stayed unexplained, and he used them to argue against hysteria. The witnesses, he said, were "pilots acquainted with the tricks that flying can play on the eyes." Muroc became Edwards AFB in December 1949.