Simiutak, Greenland, June 1953June 1953

On June 24, 1953, Airman 2nd Class Richard A. Hill was tracking a weather balloon through a theodolite (a telescope used to measure angles and altitude) near Simiutak, Greenland, when the balloon burst at around 18,000 feet. At that exact moment, Hill saw a red, rotating object about three miles away. He thought the object had collided with and destroyed the balloon.

Hill described the object as roughly twice the size of the balloon, with a shape that seemed somewhat triangular. It hovered in place for about fifteen seconds, making slow circular motions, before suddenly accelerating to the northwest. As it climbed rapidly away, it appeared as a red ball-shaped dot with no visible trail. Hill watched it for five minutes as it climbed to a bearing of 301 degrees before disappearing from view.

The timing was striking. The object appeared instantly when the balloon burst, in the same spot where the balloon had been. Weather data showed winds at that altitude were generally from the northwest, suggesting the object moved with the wind pattern after departing. A 100-gram weather balloon would not normally burst below 30,000 feet, and there was no abnormal air pressure at the time. The only other person who might have witnessed the event, the Weather Detachment commander, offered a simpler explanation: he believed the sighting was likely an optical illusion or a parallax effect in the theodolite's lens, a viewing distortion that can occur when looking through certain optical instruments.

Hill was an experienced weather observer with three and a half years on the job. No one else saw the object. The Air Force rated it as an unidentified aerial object, though without further evidence or corroboration. The full case file, containing eighteen pages of official reports and correspondence, is reproduced below as held by the National Archives.