Brooklyn N.Y., January 1959January 1959

On Saturday, January 24, 1959, at around 12:15 p.m., a man was walking in Prospect Park near the Music Grove in Brooklyn with a friend. The sky was perfectly clear, and he noticed a silver, metallic object high in the air moving very slowly. It left no jet trails or smoke. Two commercial planes and a private plane were flying in the same area, passing beneath the object. When he called his friend's attention to it, the friend glanced up briefly and said it was a plane, then walked away. The witness continued to observe the object for over forty seconds during multiple sightings. He cupped his hands over his eyes to see it better and noted that it had no wings, made no sound, and behaved unlike any aircraft he had ever seen. By the time he looked a third time, the object was gone.

The witness emphasized in his written account that he had heard jets at great altitudes before and had seen their vapor trails and heard their engines. This object showed none of those characteristics. He ruled out a balloon because of what he described as the object's size and its controlled motion, which did not match the behavior of a free-floating object. He asked Air Force officials directly what he had seen and whether UFOs were still being observed. The witness noted that his friend had also seen the object, though only for a brief moment, but had paid it little attention.

The Air Force's official evaluation form listed the conclusion as "probably sun reflecting from an aircraft" (abbreviated on the form as "Probably sun reflecting from afc"). The file also notes that the witness had reported another sighting in July 1954 at 9 p.m., but without any witnesses to corroborate that event.

The full case file, comprising 14 pages as held by the National Archives, is reproduced below.