El Paso, TexasMay 1949

On May 30, 1949, at 1:32 p.m., a soldier at Sunrise Acres near El Paso, Texas, spotted an unusual object in the clear daytime sky. The soldier was watching a fighter plane when something bright and reflective caught his eye. The object appeared to be about one inch long (roughly the length of a thumb), oblong in shape, and had a glassy or shiny surface. It looked similar in size to a small Cub aircraft, but shorter.

Over three minutes, the object moved across a large arc of the sky, traveling from nearly overhead (90 degrees from the horizon) to the northeast (35 degrees). It made no sound. The most striking behavior was that it rotated slowly as it moved, spinning along its long axis like a tumbling stick. The soldier described the object as highly reflective, with no visible trail or projections. After three minutes, it disappeared into some scattered clouds.

The Army officers who investigated checked whether other aircraft were in the area. Holloman Air Force Base had released weather balloons called rawinsonces at 1:35 p.m. that same day. Biggs Air Force Base reported an F51 fighter plane in the vicinity around 1:30 p.m., but that pilot reported seeing nothing unusual. The investigators noted that the weather was clear with good visibility and a ten mile-per-hour wind from the west. White Sands Proving Ground, located nearby, also had no reports of unusual objects. Two soldiers provided their accounts, and the investigators found both to be reasonably intelligent and reliable.

The Air Force concluded there was no data to suggest the object could not have been an aircraft, and the case remained officially unidentified. The full case file, as held by the National Archives, is reproduced below, consisting of 13 pages.