Arkansas City, KansasJuly 1956

On the morning of July 18, 1956, residents across central Kansas reported seeing strange glowing objects in the sky. In Arkansas City, two witnesses who had been fishing, along with the wife of one of them and three local police officers, watched a single orange object with green points of light for about forty minutes. The object resembled a large light bulb and appeared to hover at an altitude of five to six thousand feet. It drifted slowly in a southeasterly direction.

Other witnesses in nearby towns, including Wichita, Hutchinson, Eldorado, and Wellington, reported seeing similar objects described as huge illuminated globes. Some accounts mentioned tear-shaped objects with streams of light shooting downward, and colors ranging from metallic blue to bluish-green. The sightings lasted well into the early morning hours, with some objects vanishing around 8:15 a.m.

Military aircraft responded quickly to the reports. The U.S. Air Force sent a B-29 bomber from McConnell Air Force Base at Wichita and dispatched two jet fighters from Smoky Hill Air Force Base to search the area. A radar operator at Hutchinson Naval Air Station reported picking up an unidentified object moving east at high speed. A B-47 bomber pilot from Forbes Air Force Base in Topeka flew a reconnaissance mission over Arkansas City, Wellington, and El Dorado but reported finding only "waste gas torches in an oil field."

The Air Force's official conclusion, stated in the case file, was that the sightings were "probably generated by a balloon from Dodge City, Kansas or possibly a balloon from Wichita." The file noted that wind patterns in the upper atmosphere at the time of the sighting corresponded exactly with the path the object appeared to take. The full case file, containing 12 pages, is reproduced below as held by the National Archives.