[ILLEGIBLE], November 1956November 1956

An Air Force pilot and navigator reported seeing a dark object flying just above the water off the coast of South Carolina in November 1956. The two officers were in flight from Bermuda to Charleston Air Force Base when they spotted the mysterious object at 1748 hours (5:48 p.m.). They said it was about 100 feet above the water and roughly 10 miles away from their aircraft. The object kept steady company with their plane for approximately 10 minutes before disappearing from view.

The witnesses reported that the object was traveling northwest at roughly 170 knots, matching their aircraft's course direction. It left no wake on the water, which ruled out some conventional possibilities. However, the two most striking details were its lack of distinguishing features and its mysterious behavior: the pilots could not determine any definite size, shape, or color.

The incident triggered an investigation that quickly hit obstacles. The Air Force officer who reviewed the case file expressed considerable skepticism about what the pilots claimed to have observed. He questioned how an object traveling at 100 feet above the water could have remained in sight for 10 minutes while the pilots' aircraft and the unidentified object were flying in different directions. At the aircraft's stated speed of 170 knots, he wrote, it would have been "highly improbable" for the object to stay visible that long. He also doubted whether the pilots could have seen something flying so close to the water's surface at the aircraft's cruising altitude of 9,000 feet. In his professional judgment, the sighting report had "very little validity."

The file does not provide a final Air Force conclusion on what the object was. The 26 pages of original documentation, microfilm roll 27, are preserved in the National Archives.