Arlington Heights, IllinoisSeptember 1962

On the night of September 25, 1962, military police officers stationed near Arlington Heights, Illinois saw something that puzzled them. The witnesses described a large, saucer-shaped object about 200 to 300 feet across, hovering at low altitude with what appeared to be evenly spaced windows running around its perimeter, except for a gap of two spaces. The object made a whining sound similar to a jet engine and rotated slowly as it moved through the sky. It circled the area, came to a stop and hovered, then shot away at high speed and vanished. The entire sighting lasted between three and four minutes.

The Air Force moved quickly to investigate. Within days, the report had been forwarded through military channels to the Air Force Technical Intelligence Center and other agencies. An investigating officer gathered detailed witness statements from the military personnel who had seen the object. The witnesses described the object's movements, its appearance, and the sound it produced with considerable consistency.

The investigation revealed a possible explanation. The Air Force discovered that an advertising aircraft had been operating in the Chicago area on that date. Advertising planes sometimes fly at night with special lights arranged to display messages or shapes in the sky, and their engines can produce unusual sounds. However, the investigators noted that they could not confirm that any such aircraft matching the description of this particular sighting had actually been in the Arlington Heights area at the time of the incident. The case file states that the Air Force considered the sighting "unidentified," meaning the investigators could not determine with certainty what the witnesses had seen.

A follow-up note in the file, dated September 11, 1963, indicates that the Air Force eventually did confirm that an advertising aircraft had operated in the Chicago area during the relevant period, though the connection to this particular sighting remains unclear in the available records.

The full case file is reproduced below as held by the National Archives across 11 pages.