Ludington, MichiganApril 1949

On April 21, 1949, two high school students in Ludington, Michigan reported seeing a white object that looked like a comet with a long tail. The students, sophomores at Ludington High School, watched it travel west and disappear over Lake Michigan. The sky was clear with no clouds overhead. The object's tail was described as a block long, though the exact length of time they observed it is not recorded in the file.

Eight days later, on April 29, two employees of the Psi Milk Company in Homer, Michigan reported a separate sighting. They said they saw six flying discs moving over the area around 0915 hours (9:15 a.m.). The men pursued the objects in a car for about five miles before losing sight of them. They described the discs as appearing to be about ten inches in diameter, moving in wide circles and following a course that paralleled the highway. The objects were flying low enough that the witnesses tried to chase them by car.

The U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations launched an inquiry after learning about these sightings through newspaper reports in the Grand Rapids Press and Detroit Free Press. Special Agent Jack L. Heckelman conducted interviews and gathered details from the witnesses. By September 1949, the Air Force's Special Investigations office reported that all logical leads had been exhausted and closed the case. The file does not state a final conclusion about what the witnesses saw.

The full case file is reproduced below as held by the National Archives, totaling 13 scanned pages.