Project Blue Book Case File
Indianapolis, IndianaJuly 1948
Summary
On the morning of July 31, 1948, a man and his wife in Indianapolis saw an object shaped like a cymbal move rapidly across the sky. The object was white, flat, and measured about twenty feet across with a center height of six to eight feet. It crossed the sky in roughly ten seconds, traveling at an estimated 1,250 miles per hour on a level, eastward course. The couple reported that the object shimmered in the sun, giving the appearance of spinning, and made no sound or exhaust trail.
The man was standing near an open bathroom window when he first spotted the object. He called his wife over to the kitchen window, and both watched it pass. The husband estimated the object was large enough to carry one person. The Air Force investigation noted that visibility was good from both windows and that no other reports of the sighting were received.
The case file mentions that this sighting occurred in Indianapolis just two days after another reported UFO sighting in the same city (Incident 151). An investigator noted that while the descriptions of the two objects differed in some ways, they shared similarities in shape and had roughly the same length-to-width ratio. The investigator raised the question of whether any special military experiments might have been underway in the Indianapolis area at the time. He also remarked that setting aside hallucinations, these two incidents and a handful of others seemed to be among the most tangible and difficult to dismiss of all the cases reported.
The Air Force concluded that there was no astronomical explanation for the observed object. The full case file is reproduced below as held by the National Archives, consisting of 11 pages.
Reported location
Indianapolis, Indiana
Date of incident
July 1948
State / country
IN / US
Page count
11 scanned pages
USAF evaluation
unidentified
Microfilm
T1206, Roll 3