Between Tonopah And Las Vegas, Nevada -- Desert, November 1957November 1957

In the early morning of November 23, 1957, 1st Lieutenant Joseph F. Long reported seeing four disc shaped objects on the ground near Tonopah, Nevada. Long was driving between Stead Air Force Base and Las Vegas after completing the Air Force's Advanced Survival Course when his car engine suddenly failed around 0630 hours. He heard a high pitched whining sound and observed the objects about three hundred to fifteen hundred yards from the highway. He walked toward them until he was roughly fifty feet away. According to his account, the objects were about fifty feet in diameter, disc shaped, and glowed with their own light. Each had a translucent dome on top and three hemispheral landing gears. The objects emitted an almost unbearable humming sound, and when Long approached them, they rose slowly and disappeared behind nearby low hills. He reported seeing small impressions in the sand where the landing gear had rested.

The Air Force evaluated the sighting through multiple investigative channels. An official check showed that Long had just completed the rigorous Survival Course at Stead Air Force Base the day before and had driven all night with little rest. The Air Force considered several possible explanations. One hypothesis was optical illusion caused by fatigue, road hypnosis, and the conditions of dawn in a flat desert environment with good reflective qualities. Another was a deliberate hoax. A third was that the objects were actually conventional aircraft or helicopters misidentified under stress.

To examine the case from a psychological perspective, the Air Force requested that Dr. Paul M. Fitts of Ohio State University's Department of Psychology review the materials. Dr. Fitts had previously conducted over two hundred analyses of UFO sightings for the Air Force. In his report, Dr. Fitts concluded that the most likely explanation was road hypnosis brought on by excessive fatigue and loss of sleep, a phenomenon well documented in truck drivers on long desert roads at night. He also noted that the observer's account lacked specific structural details one would expect from someone claiming to be within fifty feet of an object. Dr. Fitts recommended an hour by hour analysis of Long's activities during the seventy two hours before the sighting to check for unusual physical or psychological stresses and to determine exactly how much sleep he had received.

The case was closed with the Air Force's conclusion that the sighting was most likely a case of mistaken identity or confusion in perception under unusual circumstances. No official OSI special investigation was pursued. The full case file is reproduced below as held by the National Archives, with a scanned page count of 53 pages.