Shreveport, La., April 1952April 1952

On the night of April 16, 1952, a Captain with the U.S. Air Force saw something striking in the sky above Shreveport, Louisiana. The officer, a senior pilot with over 3,000 hours of flight experience, was standing on his lawn when he spotted a brilliant white circular object directly overhead at around 10:28 p.m. The object was roughly ten times brighter than the brightest star visible that night.

What the captain observed next happened fast. The object traveled in a straight line across the sky at extremely high speed, making no sound and trailing nothing behind it. Then, in a move that seemed impossible for any conventional aircraft, it executed a sharp 180-degree turn in about six seconds and reversed direction. During the turn, the object's color shifted from white to pinkish and then to red. Its shape also appeared to change, from a flat circular form to something thinner, almost like a lens. About ten seconds after completing the turn, the object briefly emitted a faint reddish glow with some fragments appearing to break away from the main body. The entire sighting lasted roughly 70 seconds, during which the object traveled an estimated distance of at least 25 miles.

After the sighting, the captain immediately contacted meteorological observers at nearby Barksdale Air Force Base and the Civil Aeronautics Administration (the predecessor to the FAA). He learned that Barksdale had launched a weather balloon at 10 p.m., about 28 minutes before the sighting. However, the balloon carried only radio equipment and no lights. The Air Force noted it was doubtful the object was the balloon, though some personnel suggested it might have been one, possibly due to optical effects of viewing it against the night sky. The file also mentions a half moon was low in the eastern sky at the time of the sighting. The Air Force's final evaluation, marked on the cover sheet, indicates the object was either unknown or probably a balloon, though the distinction is unclear from the OCR text.

The full case file is reproduced below as held by the National Archives, consisting of 7 pages.