Cincinnati, Union, OhioJune 1949

On June 5, 1949, multiple observers in Ohio and Florida reported seeing an unidentified object in the sky. The Air Force Office of Special Investigations looked into two separate sightings.

Near Union, Ohio, a farm family watched an object pass overhead around 2:00 p.m. The wife described it as dull white, shaped like an artist's palette, roughly two feet across, and flying at about half the speed of a jet plane between five and eight thousand feet. The object appeared at a forty-five degree angle in the northwest, traveled southeast directly overhead, and disappeared at about thirty-five degrees. The sighting lasted less than two seconds. Her husband, an employee of the National Cash Register in Dayton, saw the same object and gave a similar account, adding that it was two feet wide and three to four feet long, with no trail or projections.

About 150 miles south near Cincinnati, Ohio, another observer reported a more dramatic encounter. A project engineer at Crosley Motors watched an object at roughly 2:00 p.m. from near Lunken Airport. The object appeared baseball-sized and dark grayish brown. When first spotted almost overhead at eighty-five degrees, it seemed round. As it moved away, it appeared to change into a sausage shape. The object passed through a cloud, climbed steeply, came to a halt, and reversed course, flying northwest at higher altitude. The entire sighting lasted about forty-five seconds. The object left no trail, made no sound (though planes from the airport were flying nearby at lower altitude), and had no visible effect on the cloud it passed through.

The file also contains additional reports from Florida of a bright, slow-falling object with a spectacular trail observed that same evening, though the connection between these sightings and the Ohio incidents is unclear from the available case materials.

The full case file is reproduced below as held by the National Archives, totaling 30 pages of investigation records.