Kelly AFB, TexasAugust 1952

On August 14, 1952, at 3:45 p.m., seven civilian employees and one airman at Kelly Air Force Base in Texas watched a round, metallic object fly slowly across the sky for roughly thirty minutes. The observers stood at the Compass Rose, a small building at the end of Runway 3-27 used to calibrate aircraft compasses. One of the group spotted the object first, pointing it out to the others. What they saw was a silverish, aluminum-colored sphere about the size of a softball, moving at an estimated 1,500 miles per hour at an altitude between 20,000 and 30,000 feet.

The object behaved in ways the witnesses found puzzling. It made slow, sweeping turns and reversed direction, but performed no sharp maneuvers or hovering. It appeared and disappeared repeatedly, sometimes moving behind a cloud, sometimes gradually receding until it faded from sight. Each time it reappeared, it was in roughly the same general area but at a different spot. The observers reported the sighting to the Kelly Control Tower while it was underway. None of the witnesses heard any sound, saw any exhaust trail, or noticed any visible propulsion system. The weather was fair at the time, and no unusual atmospheric conditions were noted. The observers included both civilian employees and a military aircraft repairman who had worked around aircraft for years and were presumably familiar with conventional planes.

The Air Force investigation found no physical evidence, no radar confirmation, and no known air traffic in the area at the time. No interception attempt was made. The file notes that the possibility of multiple objects could not be ruled out, given the way the object intermittently appeared and disappeared. The case remained officially unidentified. The full case file is reproduced below as held by the National Archives, consisting of 18 scanned pages.