PHOENIX, ARIZONAJune 1952

On the evening of June 30, 1952, a couple driving on 35th Avenue near Phoenix, Arizona saw a strange bright object in the sky. It was around 9 p.m., and the object appeared to be about 45 degrees above the horizon to their east. They stopped the car to get a better look.

Both witnesses described the object as roughly round in shape, very far away, and emitting an intense white light. One of them compared it to the bright glow from a welding torch. As they watched, the object moved downward and to the right at extremely high speed, then suddenly disappeared. It reappeared near the horizon moments later, shot upward at what they called an "extremely high rate of speed," and vanished again. When it appeared a third time, it was again about 45 degrees above the horizon. The witnesses estimated they watched the object for about 30 seconds total. Neither heard any sound. The couple said the object moved much faster than any aircraft they knew of. One witness said it looked about as large as the full moon, while his wife said it was bigger than a star but smaller than the moon.

An Air Force investigator from Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico interviewed the witnesses on July 1, 1952. The couple ran a business in Phoenix and appeared to be reliable observers. The investigator found no other reports in the area that matched their sighting, so the case was closed locally.

A related report came in from California. On the same night around 10 p.m., a Treasury Department Special Agent standing near his house in southern California near the coast saw what he described as a thing that looked like a meteor. He watched it for 1.5 to 2 minutes as it came from the south, turned to parallel the coastline toward Santa Monica, and changed altitude. He described it as spherical with a white color, blue haze, and yellow flame around it. He estimated it at about one-third the size of a full moon and did not estimate its speed.

The file also includes a technical analysis of a fireball observed in Wisconsin on June 28, 1952, which appears to have been a separate astronomical event and is not clearly connected to the Phoenix sightings.

The Air Force classified the Phoenix sighting as unidentified. No further investigation was conducted. This case file consists of 8 pages held by the National Archives.