Los Alamos, N. M., December 1949December 1949

On December 28, 1949, around 1530 (3:30 p.m.), a woman and her children near Trumansburg, New York, reported seeing flying objects in the sky. Air Force investigators interviewed many neighbors, teachers, students, police, and pilots. Almost no one else had seen the objects.

Investigators found that two Robinson Airlines DC-3 aircraft landed at the Ithaca airport that afternoon, one about 1555 (3:55 p.m.) and one about 1522 (3:22 p.m.). Both circled near where the woman said she saw the objects. A pilot who flew one of the DC-3s said he saw nothing unusual. The case was closed.

The file also includes a separate report from Hamlet, North Carolina, on December 28, 1949, around 1645 (4:45 p.m.). Residents, including two pilots, saw a strange craft flying erratically, resembling a balloon or blimp. One pilot who chased it said it looked like a large metal ball with no fittings, about 20 to 30 feet across. A weather station suggested it might have been a radiosonde balloon.