Detroit, MichiganJune 1953

On the night of June 10, 1953, an Air Force ROTC cadet at Wayne University in Detroit saw something in the sky that he could not explain. The cadet, Robert L. Alvey, was leaving a theater around 11:10 p.m. when he noticed a bright object in the western sky. It was white or light yellow, round in shape, and about five times larger than a bright star.

The object moved in a way that ruled out common explanations. It first appeared to fall slowly toward the north, then leveled off and accelerated to a high speed, heading due north in a straight line. The entire sequence took about 60 seconds before the object disappeared over the horizon. Alvey heard no sound, and the object cast no light beam and left no trail or exhaust. He judged the object's speed during level flight to be under 1,000 miles per hour, though he acknowledged he could not reliably estimate its true distance or altitude. Because he did not know the object's actual size, any speed estimate was necessarily uncertain. The sky was perfectly clear that night, with excellent visibility and light winds.

Air Force investigators checked several standard explanations. They confirmed that one commercial DC-4 aircraft was in the area, heading to Chicago, but concluded it was probably not involved. They also checked with the weather bureau and learned that a balloon had been released at 3:00 a.m., but this balloon burst before 4:10 a.m., long after the sighting. An astronomer at Ohio State University's Emerson McMillin Observatory reviewed the case and remarked in a letter to ATIC that the description "could not have been a meteor" and that a landing light seemed like the most plausible explanation.

Investigators classified the case as unsolved because the object's movements and the 60-second duration of observation made astronomical or meteorological causes unlikely, and known aircraft and balloons in the area did not account for the sighting. The full case file, as held by the National Archives, is reproduced below in 10 pages.