Dayton, OhioAugust 1957

On a summer evening in August 1957, someone in Dayton, Ohio spotted an unusual object in the sky. The witness saw what appeared to be a main object with three smaller lights beneath it. The sighting was brief enough that only a handful of details were captured in the official Air Force questionnaire.

The investigation file indicates the Air Force received information about small lights positioned under a larger object, and weather data showed winds from a particular direction at the time. According to the case record card at the front of the file, investigators noted that a weather balloon had been released from Sulphur around the time of the sighting, and the wind direction was consistent with the object's movement.

Despite the balloon explanation documented in the file, the Air Force ultimately marked this case as unidentified. The OCR quality of the handwritten portions of this file is too degraded in places to extract complete witness details or interview notes, which limits what can be confirmed about the specifics of the observation. The full case file, consisting of 10 pages as held by the National Archives, is reproduced below.