Cleveland, OhioJuly 1961

On the night of July 5, 1961, a World War II pilot named Ernest Stadvec was flying a small aircraft near Cleveland, Ohio when he and his two passengers spotted something unusual in the sky. Stadvec said the object first appeared around 10:13 p.m. while he was flying at about 4,000 feet. He described it as brilliant and greenish, moving on what looked like a collision course with his plane. Stadvec called out to his passengers that the object was going to ram them. Instead, it reversed direction abruptly and climbed rapidly into the clear night sky.

The same object, or one very similar, appeared again the following night. Stadvec said it flashed up in front of his aircraft, then climbed away at tremendous speed toward the northwest.

The U.S. Air Force investigated the sightings. Officials concluded the pilots had probably witnessed an optical illusion caused by atmospheric refraction of the star Capella, a bright star visible in the sky at that time. In other words, the air force thought Stadvec and the other witnesses had seen starlight bent and distorted by the atmosphere into something that looked like a moving object.

Stadvec firmly disagreed. He issued a written statement saying that in his decades of flying, day and night in all kinds of weather, he had seen many falling stars and other atmospheric effects. What he saw, he insisted, was nothing like that. He said the object maneuvered, dove at his plane, and climbed away at speeds no star could match. He ended his statement with a direct challenge: "I will end my statement to wit, that I have never seen a star climb and maneuver and I doubt that anyone else has either."

The Air Force officially classified this case as unidentified. The full case file, containing 37 pages as held by the National Archives, is reproduced below.