Mankato, KansasJanuary 1958

On January 4, 1958, at dawn, near Mankato, Kansas, a civilian and his wife reported a single object while driving on a highway. The sighting lasted several minutes, possibly five. The object looked like a large airplane, possibly a stratocruiser, in flight near the horizon. It was entirely a luminous red color, with its outline clearly visible. An aerial with a white light at the top extended above the cockpit, and a second aerial extended part way to the tail. When the witnesses stopped, the object appeared stationary above the horizon. The nose then began to disappear, and the object faded away in an irregular line back through the cockpit and tail until only the white light of the aerial remained, then it was gone. The witness wrote to the Air Force asking what it was. The report was filed under Project 10073, the Air Force's official record for unidentified flying object reports. The Air Force replied the object was probably one of the new radar-search aircraft, which had the same general shape as a stratocruiser.