Port Moresby, New Guinea, August 1953August 1953

On August 23, 1953, a Department of Civil Aviation official in Port Moresby, New Guinea, was near the Marine Base Workshops when he noticed a cloud forming in a south-westerly direction at very high altitude. As he watched, the cloud grew more intense. Then suddenly an object emerged from one side of the cloud and climbed steeply toward the north-west at what appeared to be extremely high speed.

The witness could not make out the object's shape or size clearly, as it appeared only slightly larger than a pinhead to his eye. But whatever it was, it left a sharp, well-defined vapor trail behind it as it gained altitude rapidly until it disappeared from view. The witness had a movie camera with a telephoto lens with him and filmed the entire incident. He believed the object was some type of very high-speed aircraft, though he noted that Air Traffic Control had no record of any aircraft movements in that area. Given the extreme altitude, he was confident it could not have been a civilian airplane. Weather conditions at the time were clear and cloudless.

The Department of Civil Aviation's regional director confirmed the witness's account and stated that no aircraft with the performance characteristics described in the sighting were known to be operating in that area at the time. The U.S. Air Force requested all available scientific data on the object's maneuvers and a copy of the film footage. No conclusion regarding the object's identity appears in the available case file pages.

The full case file is reproduced below as held by the National Archives, 9 pages.