Ft. Worth, TexasApril 1950

In April 1950, Ira Maxey, a former Air Force radar bombardier, reported photographing strange objects in the sky near Fort Worth, Texas. According to news accounts, Maxey had called his wife around 5:30 p.m. on a Sunday and asked her to bring his camera outside. He said he saw two groups of objects moving across the sky from west to northeast. The objects appeared to be traveling at some distance and looked to him like banana-shaped, tailless aircraft. They seemed to be moving through or near a thunderhead cloud, and in some photographs they appeared to leave vapor trails.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram published the photographs and story on April 18, 1950, with wide distribution by AP Wirephoto. This made it the first time images purporting to show "flying saucers" had appeared in a major American newspaper, which prompted immediate investigation by the U.S. Air Force.

When Air Force intelligence officers interviewed Maxey a few days later, they found significant differences between his account and what the newspaper had published. Maxey described photographing vertical streaks of light moving in formation, and he noted that crescent-shaped objects appeared on the film after development. However, after thorough examination of the original photographic negatives by Air Force photo technicians at Eighth Air Force headquarters, the investigators reached a different conclusion. They determined that the "objects" visible in two of the four photographs were not aircraft or anything in flight, but rather abrasions or creases in the film itself. The damage likely occurred during handling, either when the film was loaded into developing equipment or during some other stage of processing. The technical evidence showed that the scratched areas had uniform density, unlike actual objects that would reflect different amounts of light depending on their size and angle. This finding was supported by the fact that one photograph, taken from the same group, showed no such objects between the first and second images despite being separated by only minutes.

The Air Force also checked local radar installations and weather records, but found nothing unusual. The officers noted that Maxey had been somewhat nervous during the interview and mentioned some unrelated experiences, including reception of strange radio signals years earlier while flying near Japan. In the end, the Air Force concluded that the photographs showed no evidence of actual flying saucers, only the result of film damage. The full case file is reproduced below as held by the National Archives, spanning 15 pages.