Barksdale AFB, LouisianaAugust 1953

On the night of August 11, 1953, Major Jack D. Swickard and Staff Sergeant Otis Rector were stationed near Flag Lake on Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana when they witnessed something unusual streak across the sky. The object appeared as a reddish ball of fire, about three times the size of a bright star, moving at tremendous speed. It traveled almost parallel to the ground before rising slightly and disappearing from view. The entire sighting lasted only a few seconds.

Major Swickard, who had studied astronomy, was confident the object was not a meteor or shooting star. He judged its speed to be considerably faster than any jet aircraft, a conclusion he would later compare against actual B-47 bombers in the area that night. Sergeant Rector caught only a brief glimpse when Swickard shouted to him, but he reported that he had observed similar objects three times before and had remained silent out of fear of ridicule.

The night was clear and cloudless with no moon. At nearly the same time as the sighting, Barksdale's weather station released a weather balloon. Air Force investigators later noted that a very slight breeze was blowing that evening, which would make it unlikely the object was the weather balloon, given how fast the witnesses said it was moving.

The Air Force eventually learned that a local newspaper in nearby Shreveport had reported several people downtown claiming to have seen an unidentified flying object at around 9:32 p.m. that same night. Police revealed they had also inflated a balloon downtown earlier in the evening, described as roughly eighteen to twenty-three feet in diameter, though the timing and direction of that balloon did not align with what Swickard observed.

The Air Force marked this case as unidentified. The complete 10-page case file is reproduced below as held by the National Archives.