Tinker AFB, OklahomaJuly 1953

On July 2, 1953, multiple guards and tower personnel at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma spotted an unidentified object in the sky during daylight hours. The object was round, bright white or shiny, and appeared to be between 35,000 and 50,000 feet in altitude. Seven witnesses from the base control tower used binoculars to observe it, and one operator photographed the object with a Videon Stereoscopic camera, taking seven exposures as the object moved slowly westward and then appeared to vanish.

The object first appeared slightly east and south of the base around noon and drifted slowly toward the facility. Witnesses reported it hovered nearly motionless for about 22 minutes before moving, then reportedly took off to the northwest at high speed, faster than any jet aircraft. Local radar operators reported no radar return from the object. Base officials noted that one aircraft was in the vicinity at approximately 2,000 feet but was not the object in question.

The Air Force investigated whether the object could have been a weather balloon. A weather officer noted that winds aloft from the northwest would have carried any balloon from the opposite direction, yet this object appeared from the southeast. The lack of a Moby Dick upper air research balloon in the area at the time of the sighting, confirmed by a check with Lowry Air Force Base, made the weather balloon explanation questionable. A weather balloon recovery from approximately two miles east of the base on July 3 proved to be an unrelated piece of equipment. The file notes that the object's disappearance did not match typical balloon behavior.

Investigators noted no radar contact, no physical evidence, and no damage. Seven photographs were forwarded to the Air Force Technical Intelligence Center for analysis. The case file does not state an official Air Force conclusion about what the object was. The full case file is reproduced below as held by the National Archives in 37 pages.