Sao Paulo, Brazil, May 1952May 1952

Insufficient Data

Summary

The OCR text for page 12 is substantially unreadable and contains only garbled characters. However, pages 1 through 11 contain enough coherent material to construct a summary.

In May 1952, military personnel at George Air Force Base in California reported a series of nine sightings over three weeks. The most thoroughly investigated sighting occurred on May 20, when an Air Force officer and pilot set up a coordinated observation effort. They stationed a T-6 aircraft equipped with a telephoto lens, positioned ground observers with a telescope, and had radar and fighter jets standing by. At 1430 (2:30 p.m.), the ground team spotted the object through the telescope and identified it as a balloon. A few minutes later, the Air Force received word that Edwards Air Force Base had just launched a weather balloon (called a rawinsonde, a balloon used to measure conditions in the upper atmosphere) that had burst at 75,000 to 80,000 feet southeast of the station, roughly over George Air Force Base. The investigators concluded that the object sighted was this balloon.

The file documented several other sightings at George Air Force Base during the same period, some attributed to balloons and others that remained unexplained. The investigators examined balloon release schedules and times to match them against witness reports, with varying degrees of success. For most sightings, no firm conclusion was reached about what observers had seen.

The full case file, reproduced below as held by the National Archives, consists of 12 pages.

Reported location

Sao Paulo, Brazil, May 1952

Date of incident

May 1952

State / country

? / XX

Page count

12 scanned pages

USAF evaluation

unknown

Microfilm

T1206, Roll 10

; TW, A \ PROJECT 10073 RECORD CARD 0 & by | : \ ho - J. — ee ee ee ee ee ee et ee et i. tats eee ee Se et, re tet A AE ( 2. LOCATION ( 12. CONCLUSIONS . | ' { > ’ ; 1. PY 0 Wos Balloon Di SME | Sao Paulo, Drazil 0 Probobly Balloon 3 okteTwe eons TTT TTA HRE of oasenvATion O Possibly Bolloon Covell is © ++ Th CUE — | iXGround- Visual 0 Ground-Redar > Probably Aircraft ov1. 0] Ao 8 Z Era ! 0 Air Visvol O Air-Intercept Roder O Possibly Aircraft I'S. PHOTOS 7” RABE "TTT T8. SOURCE : 0 Serle pg amt , aah r 0 robably Astronomica Opie | Civilian (lette ) & Possibly Astronomical 1 J5TEOR 7. LENGTH OF O3SERVATION 8. NUMBER OF OBJECTS | 9. COURSE : COREE RR CR i ROR ; 0 Insufficient Data for Evaluation 3 secondd 1 0 Unknown CN : White color. !leteor shape. Arched down and exploded. wl Description 1s possibly meteor. \ : La : ~3 NN \ 4 : - ; : A Leite BT 11d Fi Le) N ATIC FORM 329 (REV 26 SEP 52)