Cecil NAS, FLa, August 1957August 1957

On the night of August 29, 1957, a civilian man drove along a road about one to eight miles east of Cecil Naval Air Station near Jacksonville, Florida. Around 2221 (10:21 p.m.), he spotted an object hanging in the sky. It was bell shaped with a rotating vane and a disc at its base. Two bright white lights hung below it with no visible attachments. The object was roughly fifty feet across.

The man described the object as moving at speeds from zero to extremely high, and it made a pulsating sound like a helicopter. He pursued the object in his car at speeds exceeding 90 miles per hour. When the object hovered about ten feet above the highway near him, his car stopped. He said his car's battery was completely drained afterward. The sighting lasted from 2223 to 2214 hours (about the same time period, though the exact duration is unclear in the OCR text).

The Air Force noted that the observer was a 25 year old civilian considered reliable. His wife also saw the object but was unavailable for investigation. The observer initially reported the sighting anonymously to the local press, but the Navy later located him. He requested that his identity not be released publicly and was assured it would be protected.

The file also records an interesting detail: the object apparently departed at nearly instantaneous speed when an unassociated jet aircraft took off from Cecil Naval Air Station. The weather at the time was broken clouds at two thousand and twelve thousand feet, with visibility of six miles and light rain showers between 2127 and 2350 hours. The case file noted that an Air Force memo mentioned the object's description was "similar to Adamski's Saucers," referring to the flying saucer claims made by contactee George Adamski in that era.

The Air Force's evaluation concluded the sighting was "probably balloon," citing the presence of a helicopter in the area and noting that the description matched helicopter characteristics. No interception action was taken.

This 12 page case file is reproduced below as held by the National Archives.