San Antonio, TexasMarch 1959

On the evening of March 25, 1959, someone in San Antonio, Texas spotted an unusual object in the night sky. The witness described it as bluish-white, roughly the size of a grapefruit, and cone-shaped with a tail. The object was moving fast toward the southeast when the observer first saw it at a 45-degree angle above the horizon. Then it did something odd: it stopped, continued moving again, and repeated this pattern. This stop-and-start behavior made the object appear to rock back and forth. The witness watched it for four hours as it moved across a 100-degree arc of sky.

The Air Force checked the facts. Lieutenant Gordon R. Wood, positioned about five miles southwest of the observer, saw nothing unusual in his direction. Weather conditions that night were clear with visibility of ten miles. Winds at altitude were blowing from roughly west at 78 miles per hour. The Air Force also confirmed that no balloons or aircraft were in the area that could explain the sighting.

The case moved up the chain of command, and the Air Force Technical Intelligence Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base asked for more details. They requested elevation and bearing angles at the start and end of the observation, plus a check with local observatories for any unusual astronomical activity. The Air Force duly reported back: the object had risen from 45 degrees elevation at azimuth 100 degrees (roughly east), and dropped to 15 degrees elevation at 110 degrees (still roughly east) by the time it disappeared.

Dr. Paul L. Seabase, director of the Trinity University Moonwatch Team, looked into several reports from that same evening in the San Antonio area. After his investigation, he concluded that the object was probably an unusual type of meteor. The official Air Force evaluation listed the case as "unknown," though the file notes indicate some skepticism. This case file, comprising 15 pages as held by the National Archives, includes witness questionnaires, military message traffic, and official correspondence.