[ILLEGIBLE], October 1952October 1952

On the night of October 14, 1952, at 1255 p.m. (1:55 p.m.) in Hopewell, Virginia, a man was sitting on a sidewalk looking north when he suddenly saw a rocket-shaped object with flaming exhaust moving rapidly from east to west. He watched it for about five seconds as it traveled in a straight horizontal line roughly 20 miles away. The observer described the object as silent and stated it could not have been a weather balloon or aircraft. He reported that the object appeared twice as high in the sky as a distant house and was traveling at extremely high speed across the night sky.

The witness was confident enough in his observation to provide detailed information about his location and his view point. He estimated the object appeared to be about 20 miles away and roughly 22 to 95 feet high. The object displayed flames similar to those from a rocket engine and was followed by smoke. The entire sighting lasted only a few seconds before the object disappeared.

The Air Force received the report on October 23, 1952, and classified it as "probably balloon" on the initial evaluation card. However, the full case file contains the detailed narrative statement from the observer as well as a completed observers questionnaire in which he described the event. Several official documents in military dispatch format forwarded the sighting information to the U.S. Air Force Intelligence Directorate in Washington, D.C., and related commands. The file contains 24 scanned pages held by the National Archives.