Lat 78 Deg 30' Long 21 Deg 6' (Cuba), October 1950October 1950

On October 31, 1950, four men flying a Beechcraft Bonanza aircraft over Cuba spotted an unusual object in the sky. The pilot was a Cuban businessman named Alejandro Suero Falla. His three passengers were Roy Carver, a pilot and engineer, and two other Cuban engineers. The plane was cruising at 5,500 feet near Central Najasa in Camaguey Province when the object appeared off their right wing.

The witnesses described a circular, highly polished aluminum disk slightly larger than a DC-3 aircraft. The most striking feature was an intense blue flame shooting from the rear, with a reddish tint on its edges. The flame stretched about 8 to 10 times the diameter of the object itself, resembling the flame from an acetylene welding torch. The disk maintained a level flight path at roughly 7,000 feet altitude, moving at what the observers estimated was over 1,000 miles per hour. The entire sighting lasted only about three seconds before the object vanished into a cloud bank. The pilot immediately reported the sighting by radio to the control tower at Camaguey airport.

The American embassy in Havana forwarded the witnesses' signed statement to U.S. Air Force intelligence in November 1950. The embassy attaché vouched for the reliability of the observers. In response, the Air Force requested a photographic analysis. A photograph allegedly showing the object was submitted and examined by photographic experts at Air Materiel Command. The analysis concluded the image was too blurred to verify. The negative showed signs of poor handling, fogging, and processing defects. The experts stated they could not confirm the photograph actually captured an unconventional aircraft. A 1950 Air Force memo acknowledged that while the witnesses probably saw something, the poor quality of the photographic evidence prevented any definite conclusions.

The full case file is reproduced below as held by the National Archives across 16 pages of microfilm.