Houston, TexasJuly 1961

On July 20, 1961, a Trans Texas Airways pilot and crew member spotted two unusually bright objects while flying a DC-3 aircraft from Houston to Jefferson County Airport near Port Arthur, Texas. The objects first appeared as the plane took off from Houston at 1463 hours (roughly 2:43 p.m.). The pilot reported the objects hovering between 6,000 and 7,000 feet over Baytown, Texas, appearing almost straight ahead. They were impossibly bright, too bright to see their shape clearly, and glowed white. No trail or exhaust was visible, and no sound was heard.

The two objects were flying in formation. As the DC-3 climbed to 5,500 feet on a heading of 65 degrees and 168 knots, the objects began moving erratically, changing altitude rapidly from 12,000 feet down to 6,000 feet. The pilot noted they seemed to travel much faster than an aircraft could manage. The objects disappeared on a heading between 65 and 78 degrees at around 18,000 feet near the High Bridge between Orange and Port Arthur, Texas. Throughout the roughly thirty-minute sighting, they appeared intermittently.

The crew reported the sighting to the control tower at Jefferson County Airport and requested confirmation with binoculars, but cumulus clouds blocked the tower operator's view. A weather radar at a nearby station did pick up two small, faint targets in the general area of the sighting, but the signals were too weak and scattered to analyze further. When the pilot descended to land, the objects vanished to the east. The reporting pilot, an aircraft captain, was described as cool-headed and reliable. The second observer, a first officer, was not available for detailed interrogation.

Because no conclusive explanation could be determined from the available data, the Air Force classified this case as unidentified. The full case file, comprising 42 pages as held by the National Archives, is reproduced below.