Oak Harbor, WashingtonFebruary 1959

On the night of February 13, 1959, a tower operator at Oak Harbor Naval Air Station in Whidbey Island, Washington, watched a bright green object emerge from the water around 2:50 p.m. (military time 1450). The object was round and roughly the size of a basketball. It had a long tail and appeared very bright to the witnesses who observed it.

The object climbed steeply into the sky at high speed and disappeared over the horizon in just two to five seconds. The tower operator was so alarmed by the sighting that he feared the object might collide with the tower. Several other military personnel at Whidbey Naval Air Station witnessed the event independently, from a different location than the tower operator.

An initial report described the object as emerging from the water with a hissing or whirring sound, moving at low altitude before climbing rapidly. Weather conditions at the time included overcast skies with some breaks, surface winds from the southeast at 18 knots, and visibility of about 18 miles. Naval Intelligence officers interrogated six military witnesses after the initial sighting. Their follow-up investigation noted that some of the weather data in the original report did not seem realistic, though the independent observations from two separate areas appeared credible.

The Air Force requested further investigation to determine the cause of the sighting, including a specific check with the Naval District to determine whether a missile might have been fired from a submarine. The case file does not clearly state a final conclusion about what the object was. The full case file is reproduced below as held by the National Archives, comprising 9 pages.