Langley Field, Va., December 1949December 1949

On December 30, 1949, at 1210 (12:10 p.m.), a technical sergeant at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia spotted an unusual object while driving on a road about half a mile south of the base. The object was white, cone-shaped, and appeared to be eight feet across at its base and twenty feet tall. He estimated it was five thousand feet above the ground and roughly ten thousand feet away from his position, moving slowly toward the southeast. The base of the cone stayed steady while the top moved back and forth slowly. The sighting lasted about five minutes. The sergeant's supervisor and three other airmen who were with him also saw the object and confirmed his account.

An Air Force intelligence officer investigated the sighting by interviewing the witnesses, all of whom worked at the base and were considered reliable. The officer gathered details about the weather (clear skies), wind speeds at different altitudes, and what aircraft were in the area. He noted that no weather balloons had been released from the Langley weather station for several hours before the sighting, and no planes reported coming near the object. Nobody heard any sound, saw any exhaust, or spotted any lights on it.

The officer's report mentioned a comparison to other sightings recently reported in the Carolinas. One of those cases had been identified by airport officials as "a mass of ice crystals formed in the wake of an Air Force B-36 flying at 40,000 feet altitude," according to a newspaper. However, the file does not state a firm conclusion about what the December 1949 object actually was. The Air Force evaluation remained "unknown."

The full case file, as held by the National Archives, is reproduced below across 21 pages.