Caddo Lake, LAMay 1949

On May 22, 1949, at approximately 5:00 p.m., a family on a fishing trip at Caddo Lake, Louisiana, about one mile west of Horningport, spotted an unusual object in the sky. The main witness and his wife, along with their son and the son's guest, were watching an F-82 aircraft fly across the lake when one family member noticed something else. All four observers then directed their attention to the new object.

The witnesses described the object as silver in color, oblong in shape, and about the size of a baseball. They estimated it was extremely high in the sky, between 8,000 and 10,000 feet up, and roughly two miles away when first spotted. The object flew in a straight line toward the southeast at what they calculated to be around 500 miles per hour. There was no sound. The observers watched it for approximately four minutes until it gradually faded from view in the distance. The main witness stated that the object's great altitude made it impossible to see fine details.

When Air Force investigators conducted a routine check, they found the observers credible. The main witness was a civil service employee at Barksdale Air Force Base working as a paint shop foreman. The investigation discovered that at the same time and location, an Air Force reporting officer had spotted a B-36 bomber at about 30,000 feet altitude. The reporting officer noted that it was very difficult to identify any aircraft against the bright sun, though the B-36's distinctive engine sound was unmistakable. Based on this finding, the investigating officer suggested the object might have been the same B-36 or a similar aircraft, though he acknowledged that the witnesses' ability to accurately estimate altitude was questionable.

The case file consists of 6 pages held by the National Archives.