Los Angles, CaliforniaNovember 1951

In November 1951, a Los Angeles resident reported seeing a large, unusual object hovering directly overhead for about three minutes. The witness described the craft as roughly 400 feet long and 60 feet high at its center, with its outer surface covered in metal plates. The witness watched as the object remained stationary above him, noticing that the plates appeared to glow brighter as internal activity increased.

Ten years later, in September 1961, the witness wrote to President Kennedy to explain what he believed he had seen. He theorized that the craft used an electrically charged rotating ring at its center to create opposition to Earth's gravity. According to his account, the rotating ring could make the metal plates alternately hot and cold, and by varying the electrical charges, the ship could climb, descend, or move horizontally. The witness also included a sketch of the object as he remembered it. He mentioned that his dog had reacted strongly to the sighting, standing on its hind legs and barking at the craft.

In his letters, the witness discussed the 1953 death of an Air Force captain (referring to Captain Thomas Mantell) and suggested a connection to UFO encounters. He proposed that gravity research could advance American space technology and called for a government research department to investigate anti-gravity flight.

The case file also includes a separate report from an airline first officer dated November 2, 1951, describing a bright green object with a whitish tail observed during a cargo flight near Abilene, Texas. The object reportedly traveled at several times the speed of the aircraft before exploding in a burst of red fireballs. The Air Force evaluated the Los Angeles sighting as unidentified. This case file comprises 8 pages held by the National Archives.