Project Blue Book Case File
New Orleans, LouisianaDecember 1957
Summary
On December 5, 1957, an object struck a house in New Orleans, Louisiana. It pierced through a metal screen porch and embedded itself in the wall of the home. The occupant, a man who lived at the address, pulled the object out by the protruding end, but it was so hot that he blistered his fingers.
The object was roughly nine inches long and one and three-eighths inches in diameter. It was made of aluminum and had four holes or ridges bored at an angle near its rear end, apparently to make it spin during flight. The back end was blackened by carbon residue from fuel and smelled strongly of iron sulfide. The object weighed about six ounces and had no identifying markings. The hole in the wall was about eight feet from where the object punched through the porch screen, and the impact point on the wall was roughly six inches lower than the hole in the screen, suggesting the object had been falling.
The Air Force and Navy investigators who examined the object determined it was an M-131 parachute flare, a military signaling device used to illuminate an area. Based on the angle at which it entered the house, they concluded it had been fired from the neighborhood ground rather than from an aircraft. The investigators found similar spent flares in the area. Because the flare appeared to have been fired by non-military personnel, the case was turned over to the New Orleans City Police as a civil matter. The physical object was sent to Air Force headquarters on December 10, 1957.
The Air Force's official evaluation of this case was "unidentified," though the investigators had identified it as a parachute flare. The complete case file, held by the National Archives, comprises 8 pages.
Reported location
New Orleans, Louisiana
Date of incident
December 1957
State / country
LA / US
Page count
8 scanned pages
USAF evaluation
unidentified
Microfilm
T1206, Roll 31