Easton, MarylandJune 1957

On the night of June 29, 1957, around 9:40 p.m., a woman driving near Easton, Maryland spotted three unusual objects in the sky. The objects looked like inverted shallow umbrellas and were glowing with a steady amber light. They traveled in single file from east to west, taking about thirty seconds to cross roughly one mile of open sky. The woman watched them from a farm lane about eight miles west-northwest of Easton, on the eastern shore of Chesapeake Bay. She noticed the glow seemed to throb at first, then became steadier as the objects moved behind trees on the western horizon.

The witness reported hearing no sound above the noise of her car engine. She also noted that the objects bore no resemblance to standard aircraft lights and left no visible trail or exhaust. Based on the distance and time, she calculated their speed at approximately 173 feet per second, or about 120 miles per hour.

The sighting was corroborated when the witness's employer mentioned the following day that another person had reported seeing unidentified flying objects in the same area the previous evening, roughly half an hour after this initial sighting. The Air Force noted that the location lay within a heavily traveled air corridor, close to Annapolis, Aberdeen Army Proving Ground, and three major air traffic lanes. However, the Air Force also highlighted that the area was being used for training exercises involving specially equipped aircraft designed to simulate the movement of artificial satellites using amber lights. The file indicates such flights were part of a public awareness program called "Moonwatch," meant to help civilians prepare to observe the forthcoming Sputnik satellite. The speed calculated from the sighting, 120 miles per hour, matched the typical cruising speed of light planes used in such exercises. The throbbing amber glow was consistent with how aircraft engine exhausts appear when viewed from a distance. The full case file, comprising 22 pages held by the National Archives, is reproduced below.