Wonsan-Sunchon B-29 "Orange Globe" Sightings

Winter 1952. The Korean War had settled into stalemate. B-29 bombers flew night missions deep into North Korea. Wonsan, on the east coast, sat under a US Navy blockade. Sunchon, to the northwest, lay in a zone of heavy MiG-15 air combat.

The crews were no novices. They were combat veterans of World War II and Korea. A newspaper column later called them "steady, sensible fellows."

The night of January 29. Just before midnight. A B-29 cruised somewhat above 20,000 feet near Wonsan. The tail gunner and the fire-control man in the waist looked out. Something was keeping pace with them.

It was a globe. The official message described a "globe shaped object with a slight tear drop effect noted on lower side." Its colour "resembled the sun, a light orange, and it occasionally changed to a bluish tint." LIFE wrote that it "wore a halo of bluish flame" and "appeared to pulsate." The shimmering light suggested spinning, though the crew could not say so for certain. It approached from the eight to nine o'clock position and flew parallel to the bomber, no closer than an estimated 200 yards. At its nearest they judged it 3 feet across. After about five minutes, it "pulled ahead and shot away at a sharp angle."

Twenty-four minutes later, near Sunchon, a second B-29 met a similar globe. "It came in on the same level as the B-29 and remained in the same relative position to the B-29 for approximately 1 min and then receded on the same path." No hostile action was seen.

The report reached the Air Technical Intelligence Center as a Secret message. On February 19, 1952, it became public. The United Press story ran nationwide. Edward J. Ruppelt noticed something unusual. There was no Air Force denial.

On February 21, Senator Richard B. Russell, chair of Senate Armed Services, wrote to Air Force Secretary Thomas K. Finletter. He asked for an "official report of these observations together with your evaluation thereof." Analysts weighed Soviet fighter exhaust, airborne searchlights, wartime foo fighters, balloons and even a ramjet powered helicopter. The Propulsion Branch, through Peter A. Stranges, agreed the objects appeared propelled. But not by a conventional jet, pulsejet or rocket.

On March 5, Gen. Nathan F. Twining signed the Air Force evaluation. It offered two tentative answers. Exhaust from an La-9 or La-11 Soviet fighter. Or "an airborne searchlight attached to a conventional aircraft on a very dark night." Finletter sent it to Russell on March 8 without comment.

Not everyone was convinced. Lt. Gen. Otto P. Weyland, commander of the Far East Air Forces, told Stars and Stripes: "You'd have to be looking right up the tail pipe of a jet to see the glow, and I can't say that I ever have." The case never reached a firm resolution.

On April 7, 1952, LIFE ran "Have We Visitors from Space?" The Korean globe was Incident 9. Excerpts appeared in more than 350 newspapers. Ruppelt, who went on to run Project Blue Book, wrote that a "huge ball of fire paced two B-29's in Korea" and "started a slow build-up of publicity that was to far surpass anything in the past." That build-up led to the summer flap and the Washington, D.C. sightings. Decades later, Jan Aldrich of Project 1947 pieced together the paper trail behind it.