Atlantic City, New JerseyJuly 1953

On July 22-23, 1953, civilians in Atlantic City, New Jersey reported seeing unidentified objects moving northward across the sky. The objects were observed for approximately eleven minutes. An operations officer from a U.S. Air Force detachment followed up by contacting Naval and Air Force facilities in the area to determine whether any jets had been operating in the region at the time. The response came back negative. The Air Force ultimately classified the Atlantic City sighting as unidentified.

A separate incident occurred on July 24, 1953, when a Seaman Apprentice attending the Fleet Sonar School in Key West, Florida observed a bright white object in the night sky. The object was so small that the observer could barely see it, about the size of a pinpoint or ordinary star. It traveled rapidly from the western horizon to directly overhead, where it blinked out and then dropped below the eastern skyline. The observer noted no aerodynamic features, trail, exhaust, propulsion system, or sound. The observer made a second sighting on August 1, 1953, with similar characteristics but lasting only about forty seconds. In both cases, the observer described the object as making regular, equal changes in course laterally while maintaining an eastward trajectory, with the maneuvers resembling the kind of course an aircraft might take while tracking a beam. An Air Force investigator who interviewed the observer found him credible, stable, and inconsistent in his recollections. The investigator had no comment on the report other than noting that the observer appeared skeptical of his own sighting. The Air Force file includes weather data from the time of observation, a detailed background on the observer, and routing messages between various intelligence offices, but offers no definitive conclusion about what he saw. A handwritten note dated November 23, 1953 from an Air Force officer reviewing multiple UFO reports that month remarks that the Key West sightings of July 24 and August 1 would have warranted follow-up investigation if they were more recent, and notes that "with present information I have no suggested explanations." The full case file is reproduced below as held by the National Archives, spanning 21 pages.