28DEGN 92DEGw Off Coast of La., December 1952December 1952

On December 6, 1952, a B-29 bomber returning to Texas from a training flight detected a series of high-speed objects on radar about 160 miles from Galveston and roughly 100 miles south of the Louisiana coast. The aircraft was cruising at 18,000 feet in bright moonlight near the Gulf of Mexico when the radar operator first spotted the contacts.

The radar officer, Lieutenant Sidney Coleman, was monitoring the scope when an unidentified blip appeared at its edge. On the next radar sweep, the object had traveled 13 miles in seconds, suggesting a speed of over 5,200 miles per hour. Coleman immediately alerted the pilot, Captain John Harter, who ordered the radar set recalibrated to check for malfunctions. By the time recalibration was complete, four separate UFO blips were racing across the scope.

Over the next six minutes, three distinct groups of radar contacts were tracked by Coleman and flight engineer Master Sergeant Bailey. The objects moved at calculated speeds exceeding 5,000 miles per hour in a straight line, crossing the B-29's flight path at a closest approach of roughly 20 miles. Two crew members saw the objects visually: Staff Sergeant Bailey spotted a blue-white blur streak from front to rear under the wing, and Staff Sergeant Ferris also reported seeing two blue-white streaks passing by. Remarkably, at one point the smaller radar blips merged with a large half-inch curved arc on the scope. The merged object then accelerated across the radar screen at a computed speed of over 9,000 miles per hour before vanishing. The bomber's instruments remained stable, the weather was clear with excellent visibility under a full moon, and no attempt was made to intercept the contacts.

After landing, Captain Harter and the crew were extensively interrogated by Air Force intelligence officers. All witnesses maintained their accounts, and none of them believed the radar returns were equipment malfunctions. The Air Force evaluation concluded the case as "Unknown." The full case file, spanning 15 pages as preserved by the National Archives, is reproduced below.