Sioux City, IowaJanuary 1954

On January 3, 1954, a driver traveling south on Highway 53 near Sioux City, Iowa saw an unusual object in the sky. The witness was moving at about 50 miles per hour when he spotted what he described as roughly one-third the size of the moon. The object appeared green with an orange tail. He watched it for about 2 to 3 seconds while it hung at an elevation of 40 to 50 degrees above the horizon.

The Air Force Intelligence Officer who filed the report noted that the witness had formerly served in the Army Air Corps and was considered reliable. However, the officer wrote that he could not analyze what might have caused the sighting. The Air Force's official evaluation, recorded on the case card, listed the sighting as "Probably Balloon," though the case file contains no detailed explanation for this conclusion.

A separate letter in the file, dated January 10, 1954, came from a civilian in Tennessee who reported seeing jet aircraft performing crisscross maneuvers for four consecutive hours around the same dates. The writer wondered whether those jets had been chasing a UFO. The file includes weather data from the time period showing wind speeds and directions at various altitudes, though these are not analyzed in the available text.

The full case file, comprising 9 pages, is reproduced below as held by the National Archives.