Galveston, TexasJuly 1949

On July 20, 1949, a man reclining in a beach chair on Galveston Public Beach saw a bright, round object moving across the sky. The sighting lasted less than thirty seconds. The object appeared as large as a star and glowed with a bright, luminous color. The man estimated it was about 10,000 feet away, moving in an almost straight line from east to west across the Gulf of Mexico.

The object seemed to slow down or stop when it reached a point directly overhead, at a 90-degree angle above the beach. The observer called his wife's attention to it at that moment. Immediately after, the object shot away toward the west at tremendous speed, fading into the distance in just a few seconds. No sound or odor was detected, which the observer attributed to both the object's high altitude and the noise of the ocean breakers. The sky was cloudless with intense blue color and a 15-mile-per-hour wind.

The Air Force investigator noted that the apparent stopping point could be explained by the object's high altitude and angle of flight. It may not have actually stopped, but simply reached the highest point of its arc as seen from the observer's position on the ground. A small yellow civilian airplane was also in the area at the time, flying north and south about a mile west of the shore, but it was not identified as the object. Both observers were wearing green sunglasses during the sighting.

The Air Force classified this case as unidentified. The full case file, as held by the National Archives, is reproduced below in its entirety across 6 pages.