Biloxi, MississippiJune 1962

On the night of June 9, 1962, a technical sergeant stationed at Keesler Air Force Base near Biloxi, Mississippi saw something unusual in the sky. While fishing off a pier about ten miles south of the base, he noticed a bright light near the horizon. Over the course of about five to seven seconds, the object rose from roughly three degrees above the horizon to forty-five degrees, traveling westward on what appeared to be a straight course. The observer described it as oval or oblong, about the size of an office desk, with a soft silvery glow. Most striking was its arrangement of lights: two rows of three lights at each end and one light in the middle. All the lights were very bright. The observer estimated the object's speed at somewhere between 7,200 and 35,600 miles per hour, though the wide range of that estimate likely reflects the difficulty of gauging such a sighting with the naked eye. The object eventually disappeared into a cloud bank.

The Air Force investigation noted several complicating factors. At the time of the sighting, there was considerable thunderstorm activity in the region, with lightning flashing between clouds and from clouds to ground. The Air Force reporting officer concluded the sighting was "improbable" and suggested the observer's perception had been affected by optical illusions created by the thunderstorms, lightning, and reflections off the cloud bank. The officer also noted that the estimated speed far exceeded what the human eye could realistically observe in such a short timeframe. Additionally, while one T-29 aircraft was airborne in the local area at the moment of the sighting, its exact location was unknown.

The case file indicates that additional witnesses were asked to complete detailed questionnaires about their observations, though the file's OCR rendering becomes increasingly garbled in its later sections, making those witness statements difficult to interpret with certainty. In its official evaluation, the U.S. Air Force classified this incident as unidentified, though the investigating officers leaned toward a mundane explanation tied to the severe weather conditions.

The full case file, consisting of 61 pages as held by the National Archives, is reproduced below.