Southeast, Korea, [ILLEGIBLE]Date unknown

On August 9, 1952, a Marine pilot flying near K-3 airfield in southeastern Korea reported seeing a large dark object with a ball of fire at its rear and a long streamer of flame. The object passed about 500 yards to the pilot's right and roughly 1,000 feet above him. The pilot, identified as Richmond 13, said it was unlike any aircraft he had ever encountered and was traveling at an extremely high speed. He requested that radar operators on the ground verify the sighting.

A radar operator at the ground control station, Second Lieutenant Leo N. Nagrodsky, said he had detected several unusual blips on his scope around the same time Richmond 13 reported the sighting. The radar returns appeared roughly along a constant heading of about 205 degrees and showed an object moving at what he initially thought might be 1,200 to 1,400 knots (extremely fast), though he later revised that estimate downward to 600 to 800 miles per hour. He considered the possibility that two aircraft were involved rather than one, since the speed seemed too high for a single craft.

Nagrodsky later spoke with other members of the control station who reported seeing a meteor while off duty at a movie. The object they described, with its brilliant trail, seemed to match the timing of his radar sightings. Nagrodsky concluded that the radar blips were probably caused by a meteor, not an aircraft. His commanding officer agreed with this assessment. However, the officer also noted that if the object was indeed a meteor, the estimated speed was likely too low. A meteorite entering Earth's atmosphere could plausibly reach speeds around 1,500 miles per hour at an altitude of 10,000 feet while decelerating. The case was tentatively identified as a meteor, though with caveats about the speed estimates in the initial report.

The full case file is reproduced below as held by the National Archives, comprising 8 pages.