Bogalusa, LAAugust 1950

On August 12, 1950, a man vacationing near Bogalusa, Louisiana saw an unusual object in the sky while taking an evening walk with his wife and sister-in-law. The witness was on a country lane walking north when his sister-in-law spotted the object first, directly overhead, and called out to him. The man said he heard the sound before he saw the thing itself.

The object was moving due west and traveling fast, at least 350 miles per hour according to the witness. It flew at a low altitude of roughly 1,800 to 2,500 feet. The sound was unlike anything familiar to him. He described it as similar to a light peal of thunder, which initially confused him because the sky was clear. It was not the "put-put" sound of a gasoline engine, nor the "swoosh" of a jet plane. Within seconds the object disappeared.

The witness provided a detailed description of how the object looked. It appeared to be about fourteen inches long and eight inches wide. Most distinctively, it was tilted at a forty-five-degree angle, with the top pointing north and the bottom pointing south, even as it traveled westward. The outer edges looked like polished aluminum. In the center was a round object about the size of an orange, glowing fiery red or old gold in color. The witness's wife, sister-in-law, fourteen-year-old son, and nine-year-old nephew all saw the object as well. The witness became more convinced of what he had seen after finding a magazine article that same evening discussing flying saucer sightings across the country. He decided to report his experience to the Air Force, as instructed in the article.

The Air Force Office of Special Investigation received and filed the report. The OCR text of the case file becomes less clear after the initial report, with subsequent pages containing unrelated investigations, including sightings in Newfoundland and the United Kingdom in August 1950. No final conclusion regarding the Bogalusa sighting appears clearly stated in the available OCR. The full case file, as held by the National Archives, comprises 14 pages of scanned microfilm.