Derwood, MarylandSeptember 1958

On the morning of September 29, 1958, at 4:25 a.m., a duty sergeant at a Nike missile battery near Derwood, Maryland, stepped outside and heard a whirring sound. He looked up to see a brilliant white object about half the size of the moon streaking across the sky from south to north, breaking into smaller pieces that stopped glowing as they separated from the main body. The object disappeared behind the mess hall roof after just two seconds. The sergeant then noticed a bright pulsating white light on the ground several miles to the west, apparently in a wooded area, which he and others watched grow dimmer over the next forty-five minutes as dawn broke.

A second witness, a private stationed at the battery, saw the same aerial object and independently described it similarly, though he said the color was predominantly green with white undertones. A newspaper carrier in the area also reported seeing a white object with a tail of sparks heading west, while an airman at Andrews Air Force Base control tower observed what he described as an object aflame, with orange-red coloring and green particles falling from it, visible for about a minute. Multiple observers in the region reported seeing a brilliant fireball that morning, including witnesses as far away as Pennsylvania and Indiana. Georgetown University Observatory received telephone calls from local residents and tentatively concluded the aerial phenomenon was a meteorite.

The Air Force investigation focused on identifying the ground light. Investigators followed the azimuth bearing taken from the missile battery and found a dairy barn nearly three miles away. On one end of the barn stood a powerful 200-watt floodlight with a white reflector. The barn owner explained that this light had been burned out for months because early autumn sunrise provided enough daylight for his morning work. Only days before the sighting, with the days growing shorter, he had replaced the bulb and used it for the first time that morning, turning it on a few minutes before the sergeant noticed the ground glow. Movement of air currents between the observation point and the barn light explained the fluctuating quality observers had noted.

The investigators concluded that the brief aerial phenomenon was likely a large meteorite breaking up as it fell, confirming observations reported widely across the region that morning. The persistent ground light that held observers' attention for nearly an hour was positively identified as the barn floodlight, newly activated by coincidence. A search of the ground around the barn location found nothing unusual, and reports from sources farther away indicated the meteor had continued northward rather than striking the ground. The accompanying whirring or humming noise heard by witnesses remained unexplained, though investigators suggested it might have been coincidental aircraft noise or a refrigeration unit starting up at the nearby mess hall.

The Air Force case file is reproduced below as held by the National Archives, comprising 20 pages.