IMPERIAL BEACH, CALIFORNIANovember 1952

At the Naval Communications Station at Imperial Beach, California, security supervisor Carl Crittenden and lookout Fred Parks observed a large yellow-orange disk of light on the evening of November 16, 1952 (the incident report notes the date, though logged entries reference the 16th). The two men watched from the station's lookout tower as the object hung motionless for about three to four minutes before accelerating westward toward the sea at high speed. When Parks went on patrol, the object reappeared, and he radioed back to Crittenden: "There it is again." The object then descended behind nearby buildings. Both witnesses described it as traveling just above the water with no sound and no aircraft in the area to account for it.

When viewed through binoculars, Crittenden noted a "bluish reflection" around the object's perimeter. Both men had naval security experience and were accustomed to observing activity from their tower vantage point. The object appeared to them as a solid, glowing sphere of light rather than an aircraft or known phenomenon. No physical evidence was recovered, and no radar confirmation is mentioned in this portion of the file.

The Naval District Intelligence Officer who documented the case evaluated the observation as "possibly meteor" but found the witnesses credible, particularly given Crittenden's 27 years of naval service and five years as a security watch officer. The incident remains in the file marked as unidentified, though the date discrepancies in the paperwork and the spotty OCR quality in some sections make certain details unclear.

The file reproduced below is held by the National Archives as a Project Blue Book case spanning 46 pages.