PHOENIX, ARIZ., July 1952July 1952

# Phoenix, Arizona Sighting - July 1952

On the morning of July 2, 1952, just after 4:20 a.m., a woman in Phoenix, Arizona, spotted something unusual in the predawn sky. She described it as a ball of fire shaped like a flattened grapefruit, about seven to eight inches across as it appeared to the naked eye. A trail of flame extended six to eight feet behind it, broad at the object's base but thinning as it stretched backward. The object appeared to move a little faster than searchlight reflections on clouds. It flew in a shallow arc across the sky and disappeared when a house blocked her view. She watched for three to four minutes as the flaming trail continued to glow after the main object vanished.

The witness was standing on the front walk of her home on Avenue in Phoenix when she saw the phenomenon. The object appeared first toward the northwest, then traveled in a broad arc to the southwest, at various angles of elevation: 40 degrees above the horizon when seen northwest, 30 degrees as it moved west, and just 10 to 15 degrees when it disappeared to the southwest. She estimated the object was seven to ten miles away.

The witness provided some helpful background about herself. She is farsighted and has lived near several air bases, so she frequently looks at the sky to see what aircraft are passing overhead. She set a "mental alarm clock" to wake early because she and her husband, an Army Ordnance officer, had planned a trip. She went outside for fresh air because she had been having trouble sleeping. Weather conditions at the time were clear with good visibility, a ceiling of at least 320 feet, and winds of about 4 knots from the north.

The Air Force investigation found no evidence of balloons released in the area at the time of the sighting. A crop dusting company based at a nearby airfield had a Cessna and a Navion aircraft take off between 4 and 4:30 a.m. and climb to 1,500 feet, showing steady red, green, and white navigational lights plus about eighteen inches of blue flame from the exhaust. Military or commercial traffic in the vicinity was ruled out. Investigators noted that a search of areas indicated on the witness's overlay had been requested, though no ground observations were reported yet.

The significance of this report was listed as undetermined. The full case file is reproduced below as held by the National Archives, consisting of 55 scanned pages.