Panama City, FloridaNovember 1953

On the morning of November 19, 1953, an assistant fire chief at the U.S. Naval Marine Countermeasures Station in Panama City, Florida, noticed a bright glare in the sky overhead. Looking up, he saw what he described as a large, flat metallic object, shaped somewhat like a water tank and roughly the size of a B-29 bomber. The object appeared bright aluminum in color.

The witness said the object approached the station from directly north, descending at about a 30-degree angle while remaining horizontal. It stopped and hovered over the station for about one minute, then flew around the area and climbed back up along the same path it had come down, returning to its starting point. The object then climbed straight up and vanished. The entire sighting lasted about five minutes. No sound was heard at any time. The observer estimated the object's altitude at between 7,000 and 10,000 feet.

When Air Force investigators questioned the witness, they found him to be sober, sincere, and serious about what he had seen. However, they noted that he was a poor judge of distance and altitude. The investigating officer also observed that seventeen Tyndall Air Force Base aircraft were flying in the area at the time of the sighting, visibility was ten miles, and weather conditions were clear with scattered clouds. No radar activity was detected that matched the sighting time.

The Air Force's conclusion, recorded in the official report, was that the sighting was probably caused by a local aircraft. The investigator reasoned that the combination of the observer's unreliability in judging altitude, the presence of military planes in the area, and clear visibility made a mundane explanation more likely than anything unusual. The full case file is reproduced below as held by the National Archives, spanning 7 pages.