Azores, August 1956August 1956

On the night of August 17, 1956, the pilot of an Eastern Airlines flight heading toward New York reported seeing an unusual object over the Atlantic Ocean near the Azores. The pilot of Flight 49, flying at 6,000 feet on a southeasterly course, spotted a brilliant light that appeared to be round and orange and white in color. The object was roughly off to the side of the aircraft, at about the same altitude, and it bobbed across the sky in front of the plane. The pilot watched it for between 20 and 25 minutes. The object came within 1,200 feet (approximately 400 meters) of the aircraft at one point, approaching from above and then below.

The Air Force received the report through New York air traffic control and immediately began investigating. Investigators gathered weather data from the area at the time of the sighting, noting wind patterns at various altitudes. They also checked whether any weather balloons or research balloons from organizations like General Mills had been launched in the region that could account for the sighting. The inquiry went out to multiple Air Force commands, including the 1110th Air Support Group at Lowry Air Force Base in Colorado and the Air Technical Intelligence Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

The file indicates that investigators considered whether a balloon launched by General Mills (a company that conducted high-altitude balloon experiments in the 1950s) might have been responsible. However, the OCR text on pages 8 and 9 becomes difficult to read, and the precise conclusion reached by investigators is not entirely clear from the available pages. The case was evaluated by the Air Force, though the specific determination appears unclear in this file.

The complete case file, comprising 9 pages, is reproduced below as it is held by the National Archives.