Project Blue Book Case File
Quincy, WashingtonSeptember 1962
Summary
In September 1962, a farmer in Quincy, Washington plowed his field and found a piece of metal on the ground. He forwarded it to the U.S. Air Force, wondering if it might be connected to the decay of Sputnik IV, the Soviet satellite that broke apart in the atmosphere around that time.
The Air Force analyzed the metal. Scientists determined it was made of aluminum alloy, type 3003. The piece itself showed no sign of coming from outer space. The conclusion was clear: the object was not from a spacecraft.
This case file is brief but tells a common story from the early space age. As satellites orbited Earth, pieces would eventually fall back to the ground when their orbits decayed. Members of the public, seeing news reports about space vehicles breaking up, sometimes sent fragments to the Air Force hoping they had found evidence of something extraordinary. In this instance, the metal turned out to be ordinary, but the Air Force investigated anyway. The full case file is reproduced below as held by the National Archives across 23 pages.
Reported location
Quincy, Washington
Date of incident
September 1962
State / country
WA / US
Page count
23 scanned pages
USAF evaluation
unknown
Microfilm
T1206, Roll 46