Project Blue Book Case File
S Knoxville, Tenn, June 1948 - Incident Number: 136June 1948
Summary
# South Knoxville, Tennessee, June 1948
In June 1948, a witness in South Knoxville, Tennessee saw an object that fit the description of a fireball. The object was orange in color with a bluish exhaust trail and appeared to scatter sparks as it moved. It passed over the horizon during the sighting.
The two witnesses who reported the incident disagreed sharply on how long they watched it. One claimed the object was visible for three minutes, while the other said only three seconds. Air Force investigators noted that the shorter time estimate was far more consistent with meteor phenomena, since people tend to overestimate time intervals rather than underestimate them. They also remarked that the longer estimate was likely less accurate.
The file's cover sheets and summary materials are heavily degraded by age and scanning, making it difficult to extract additional details about the sighting itself. What is clear from the case materials is that the Air Force considered this incident potentially explicable as a natural phenomenon, namely a meteor or fireball.
The full case file, consisting of 28 pages as held by the National Archives, is reproduced below.
Reported location
S Knoxville, Tenn, June 1948 - Incident Number: 136
Date of incident
June 1948
State / country
? / XX
Page count
28 scanned pages
USAF evaluation
unknown
Microfilm
T1206, Roll 2