North Arlington, VirginiaJuly 1954

On July 2, 1954, a resident of North Arlington, Virginia, witnessed a small, silver object in the sky for about 40 to 45 seconds. The object appeared roughly the size of a half-dollar coin. The witness first spotted it at an elevation of approximately 62 degrees, looking toward an azimuth of 160 degrees (roughly south-southeast). The object descended slightly in a gentle arc, moving to about 33 degrees elevation while maintaining the same azimuth, then faded from view.

The Air Force interviewed the witness, who was identified as a civilian engineer with a reserve officer rank. Two other witnesses were also questioned, a housewife and a mechanic, both living in the North Arlington area. All were regarded as fairly to highly reliable observers. The weather at the time was clear over the local area, though thunderheads were visible to the south. The Air Force's Wright-Patterson Air Force Base Weather Station provided meteorological data from the time of the sighting.

At Bolling Air Force Base in Washington, the duty air defense officer suggested the sighting might have been a thunderstorm phenomenon. However, the official Air Force evaluation listed the case as "unidentified." The brief summary on the case card noted only that the object was found, silver, about the size of a half-dollar, and observed falling slightly while moving on a heading of 160 degrees azimuth.

The complete case file, consisting of 12 pages held by the National Archives, is reproduced below.