Mackenzie Bay, AlaskaMarch 1962

On the night of March 31, 1962, a KC-135 tanker aircraft was flying at 44,000 feet near Mackenzie Bay, Alaska when the co-pilot spotted a bright white light in the sky. The light appeared as a single, non-blinking point about as bright as a first-magnitude star. The object was visible for roughly one minute as it passed from right to left across the aircraft's flight path.

The co-pilot watched the light move from an elevation angle of 50 to 60 degrees above the horizon at a bearing of 266 degrees. It then moved to a position 45 degrees above the horizon, directly ahead of the plane, before vanishing as if it had gone into haze or behind the aircraft's wing. The plane was flying straight and level on autopilot at the time. No sound accompanied the sighting, and no other crew members reported seeing the object.

Military investigators checked multiple sources to explain what the co-pilot had witnessed. They contacted the Federal Aviation Administration, NORAD, the Strategic Air Command, and the Air Force Technical Applications Center. None reported any aircraft, classified or otherwise, in the area during the sighting window. Radar sites nearby were all operational and detected nothing unusual. The Army Signal Corps Ice Island reported no weather balloon releases for that time period.

The investigating officers narrowed the possibilities to two: either a high-altitude weather balloon with a light attached, or a classified surveillance aircraft such as a U-2 spy plane. Given how high the object was positioned in the sky, the Air Force concluded that a classified aircraft was the more likely explanation. The case remained listed as unidentified, though investigators suggested the sighting was probably connected to military operations that could not be disclosed in an unclassified report.

The full case file is reproduced below as held by the National Archives, comprising 11 pages of microfilm.