Bronson, Fla., May 1961May 1961

On the night of May 23 to 24, 1961, three civilians driving south on U.S. Highway 19 near Bronson, Florida, spotted a strange light in the sky ahead of them. The object appeared suddenly at about 15 degrees above the horizon, directly in their path of travel. The witnesses described it as a round or oval glow with a faintly visible green halo below it, and compared its brightness to starlight but much more intense. The light moved ahead of their car, climbing higher in the sky and gradually shifting toward the east and southeast.

The sighting lasted nearly one hour and 56 minutes. During that time, the object moved at speeds comparable to a slow aircraft and made noticeable maneuvers, changing its flight path as the witnesses watched. One of the three people, a fashion coordinator from St. Louis, attempted to photograph the object with a box camera loaded with color film. Those photographs were being processed at a support base at the time the report was filed.

Unknown to the civilians, the U.S. Air Force radar station at Cross City, Florida, picked up the same object on its height-finding radar (an AN/FPS-6A unit). The radar tracked the target for roughly two hours, watching it move from about 162 degrees at 45 miles away and 8,380 feet altitude to 186 degrees at 7 miles away and 8,490 feet altitude. The object's altitude varied between about 6,200 feet and 19,000 feet during the tracking. The radar operators noted that when they tried to lock the antenna onto the target, it would begin "hunting violently," and moving the antenna just a few degrees would stop this behavior. Whenever the hunting occurred, the radar scope filled with interference.

The Air Force investigation noted that all four military observers at the radar station (Technical Sergeant George W. Kloss, Staff Sergeant Peter Detrant, Airman First Class Woodrow R. Bass, and Airman Third Class William Potts) were experienced and reliable. The civilian witnesses' reliability was listed as unknown. Weather conditions at the time included scattered to broken clouds between 5,000 and 18,000 feet moving west to east at approximately 20 knots, with stars clearly visible between cloud breaks.

The Air Force classified the case as unknown. No explanation appears in the file for the radar target's unusual behavior during antenna lock, its apparent lack of visibility to the search radar at the station, or the cause of the interference it generated. The full case file, comprising 10 pages, is reproduced below as held by the National Archives.