Glendale, ArizonaMay 1960

On May 1, 1960, a man in Glendale, Arizona watched a round, white object the size of a quarter travel across his backyard at very high speed. He was standing outside observing a dust devil, a spinning column of wind that was tossing paper around, when he noticed the object cross its path. At first he thought the wind had picked it up, but the object moved in a straight line at such rapid speed that he knew it was something else. The whole sighting lasted no more than 15 seconds before the object faded from view toward the northeast.

The observer was interviewed by an Air Force investigator and came across as intelligent and cooperative. He was careful to tell the investigator that he was not claiming to have seen a UFO, only that he had seen something he could not explain. When the investigator tried to get him to contradict himself with leading questions, he would not take the bait. The Air Force rated his reliability as F-3.

The Air Force investigation looked for conventional explanations. Weather data from the area showed a strong temperature inversion between 11,000 and 15,000 feet at the time of the sighting, a condition where cold air is trapped below warmer air. The investigator noted that such an inversion could bend light rays and cause reflections that might make a white object appear to behave strangely. Radar stations in the Phoenix area detected nothing unusual at the time. The investigator concluded that the observer probably saw a white piece of paper picked up by the wind, and that the inversion may have distorted how it appeared to the eye. No physical evidence was found.

The full case file, eight pages as held by the National Archives, is reproduced below.