Rabat, French Morocco, March 1953March 1953

A crew of three experienced Air Force pilots watched something unusual while flying over Rabat, Morocco, on the night of March 25, 1953. What they saw changed course several times as they flew, and a radar station picked it up. But by the time investigators looked into the case, the mystery remained unsolved.

The sighting happened just after 9 p.m. (21:23 hours). Colonel Gilmer Walker Jr., the pilot of a C-47 transport plane, was on a routine training mission. Major Norman I. Radin was serving as instructor pilot. First Lieutenant Leo C. Fletcher was the alternate pilot. As the C-47 flew toward Sidi Slimane airfield at an altitude of 5,000 feet, Walker spotted a bright white light ahead and slightly above his aircraft.

At first, Walker thought it was another plane. The light was clear and steady, much like a normal aircraft landing light. But when Walker asked nearby radio towers about traffic in the area, no one knew of any other aircraft nearby. Over the next two or three minutes, the light closed the distance fast, passing overhead at about 400 miles per hour (possibly faster) at roughly 2,000 to 3,000 feet above the C-47. Then the light slowed down noticeably. Walker and Radin watched as it began a series of slow, tight turns around their aircraft, sometimes moving erratically. Walker described the behavior as very different from how normal aircraft move.

Around 9:28 p.m., the light descended rapidly toward the ground south of Nouasseur Air Base and began circling as if following a traffic pattern. When it reached a point about 1.5 miles south of the runway, it came to a stop. The light stayed put for the next 15 to 20 minutes, sometimes growing brighter and dimmer without any regular pattern. Walker and Radin circled overhead in their C-47, keeping watch. They fired a green flare and turned on their landing lights to mark the spot for a ground team sent out from the airfield to investigate.

As ground fog rolled in around 10:21 p.m., visibility dropped fast. The light vanished. When Walker directed the C-47 lower to help the ground team pinpoint the location, they could no longer see the object. The fog made any further search pointless. Walker and Radin decided to head back to base.

The ground party sent out from Nouasseur had no luck finding anything either, and they returned with no report. When the tower's radar operators reviewed their logs, they found something interesting. Their radar had picked up four targets in the area. But only three aircraft were supposed to be there. The fourth blip matched the location of what the pilots had seen.

A Port Lyautey Naval Station radar site, about 40 miles away, had also been tracking the object from 10 p.m. to roughly 11:55 p.m. According to the radar operators' notes, the target appeared very strong and bright on their screens. It changed altitude quickly, which made one operator think it was a jet. When the object faded from radar sight, heavy radio interference on the radar screens faded too. During earlier moments when the object came and went on the radar display, the same interference pattern showed up. The operators noted that the interference looked like jamming based on their past experience.

Walker and Radin both had eight and ten years of flying experience respectively, with thousands of hours logged. Fletcher had eight years of experience. They reported seeing no trails, no exhaust, and no red or green running lights on the object itself, only a single white light. The weather that night was clear with excellent visibility, though some patches of ground fog were scattered about in the area.

By the time the Air Force filled out its initial report, a French C-54 transport plane was found to have landed at Nouasseur at 9:20 p.m. Investigators concluded that the object on the ground was stationary and might have been a light source there. However, the file leaves open the question of what the pilots saw in the air during those first minutes, especially the fast-moving light that outmaneuvered their aircraft and appeared on radar screens at a distance from the base.

No final explanation is offered in the declassified case file. The full case file is reproduced below as held by the National Archives across 36 pages.