Greenville, North CarolinaFebruary 1954

On the night of February 15, 1954, a woman visiting friends near Greenville, North Carolina saw something unusual in the moonlit sky. She watched a solid ball of brilliant orange light dart across the darkness, trailing two parallel streams of luminescence. The object appeared about the size of a teacup saucer and moved with jerky, erratic motions rather than the smooth flight of an ordinary aircraft. She managed only about ten seconds of observation before the object vanished. When she turned to call her friend's attention, neither could locate it again.

The Air Force investigated the sighting several weeks later, in March 1954. The observer, Mrs. Marylyn R. Kunkel, wife of a colonel stationed at Donaldson Air Force Base, was judged reliable in matters of color and shape, though poor at judging distances. Weather that night was clear with an almost full moon and minimal cloud cover. The Air Force found no weather balloons, unusual meteorological conditions, or other phenomena that might explain the sighting. No aircraft were known to be in the area at the time. Donaldson Air Force Base checked its own flight operations and confirmed nothing was aloft.

The same evening, however, radar operators detected a separate target traveling at high speed through a restricted airspace near the base. This radar "blip" was large enough that operators briefly wondered if they were tracking two aircraft flying close together. The radar object traveled at extremely high velocity and violated the boundaries of the prohibited zone. One radar track from the base even merged briefly with a transponder signal from an aircraft flying the normal civilian route between Columbia, South Carolina, and Augusta, Georgia, which was moving at a much slower speed.

The connection between the two sightings is unclear from the file. The radar operators logged their observations as routine. When the Air Force finally received formal notification on February 23, more than a week after the event, the lag in reporting limited the thoroughness of investigation. The file indicates the Air Force concluded the radar observation was a probable fireball meteor with some error in timing, though it does not explain the visual sighting definitively.

The complete case file is reproduced below as held by the National Archives and includes 40 pages of interviews, technical analysis, weather data, and aeronautical charts.