The Tulagi Formation: Sgt. Stephen J. Brickner's 150 Silver Objects

August 1942. On 7 August the 1st Marine Division landed on Tulagi, Gavutu and Tanambogo, opening the Guadalcanal campaign. Tulagi sits in the Florida Islands group, across the sound from Guadalcanal. Japanese air raids on the area were frequent. Sergeant Stephen J. Brickner was bivouacked there with his squad. One retelling says it was his fifth day in combat. By the calendar, 12 August was the sixth day after the landings. A small slip, but worth noting.

August 12, 1942. About 10 in the morning, during a lull in the fighting, the air raid alert sounded. Brickner heard "a mighty roar that seemed to echo in the heavens." It "didn't sound at all like the 'sewing-machine' drone of Japanese aircraft formations."

"A few seconds later I saw the formation of silvery objects directly overhead." He counted over 150 of them. They flew in "straight lines of 10 or 12 objects, one behind the other." He searched for the familiar outlines of aircraft but said, "I couldn't seem to make out wings or tails." He added, "Their color was like highly polished silver."

One detail stayed with him: "They seemed to wobble slightly, and every time they wobbled they would shimmer brightly from the sun." They moved a little faster than Japanese planes. They were soon out of sight. Brickner called it "the most awe-inspiring and yet frightening spectacle I have seen in my life." One retelling notes he was in a highly emotional state at the time.

No wartime report of the sighting is known. There is no Project Blue Book file and no mention by AARO. Older Wikipedia text said "Brickner and others" saw the objects, but no other witness has ever been named. There are no photographs, no radar record and no physical traces.

The account lived on in private research files instead. Richard F. Haines, a NASA scientist who later studied encounters between aircraft and UFOs, kept an item titled "A Formation of 150 Roaring UFOs in the Pacific in 1942" among his papers, now held at the American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming. Keith Chester covered the case on pages 28-29 of Strange Company: Military Encounters with UFOs in World War II, and the Project 1947 NavCat catalogue cites him. Some summaries trace it to Leonard H. Stringfield's Situation Red: The UFO Siege, though that link is unconfirmed.

No published sceptical analysis of the case has surfaced. The obvious candidate is a Japanese bomber formation. An alert was sounding, and raids were common. But Brickner insisted the sound was wrong and that no wings or tails were visible. A raid of 150 machines would also have been far larger than typical raids in the area.

Memory is the other question. The account seems to come from a later recollection, and it has hardened in retelling. Brickner's "lines of 10 or 12" became, in later catalogues, a block "ten across and fifteen deep, in a perfect square."

The Tulagi formation is filed among the foo fighter reports of the Second World War, yet it stands apart. Most foo fighters were amorphous lights. Brickner described apparently solid, craft-like objects, flying in ranks and glinting silver in full daylight. Kevin Randle sets it against the Pacific "balls of fire" reports for exactly that reason. The original statement, when it was written and to whom, has still not been found.