Cartersville, Ga., January 1948 - Incident Number: [ILLEGIBLE]January 1948

On the night of January 9, 1948, a commercial airline pilot flying near Cartersville, Georgia saw an unusual object cross in front of his aircraft. The pilot, identified in the file as a captain with Eastern Airlines, was heading from Charlotte, North Carolina to Atlanta at around midnight when he and his crew spotted the object at approximately 4,000 feet altitude, traveling at roughly 60 miles per hour in a direction nearly parallel to their own flight path.

The object was most striking for its bright blue flame. The pilot described the color as "light sky blue" at first, then as "intense blue," and noted that the flame appeared to come from the rear of the object as it moved. The object itself had a roughly circular shape except for a flat section at the top, giving it a pot-like appearance. The pilot estimated the object was moving at around 300 miles per hour. Shortly after passing the aircraft, the blue flame sputtered, turned downward at a steep angle, and disappeared entirely. The pilot saw nothing hit the ground.

The pilot believed the object resembled something he had heard about from RAF (Royal Air Force) pilots in England during the war, a craft they called the "Foo Combat." He also ruled out the possibility of a missile, noting that the object did not follow the curved path a wingless missile would normally take. A second crew member aboard the Eastern Airlines flight also saw the flame but could offer no additional details for its identification. Army Flight Service found no record of any jet aircraft in the vicinity that night.

The Air Force investigation that followed was thorough but inconclusive. Wright-Patterson Flight Service Center checked all available records and interviewed personnel at Maxwell Flight Service Center and base weather operations, but no one recalled any reports of jet aircraft, fires, or explosions in the area. The file notes that while meteors cannot be ruled out entirely, they are not known to travel as slowly as this object appeared to move, nor to exhibit the intense blue color described. The pilot also reported concerns about a sudden, unexplained disease that killed seventy-five cattle in nearby Newman, Georgia around the same time, though the U.S. Department of Agriculture found no evidence linking the two events.

The full case file is reproduced below as held by the National Archives, 13 pages.