Tirol, Italy, December 1962December 1962

On the evening of December 18, 1962, a Red Cross nurse in Schlanders, a town in the Tirol region of northern Italy, watched a large, glowing mass fall from the sky. She was watching from her hospital window between roughly 5 and 7 p.m. The object appeared to descend into the nearby mountains or forested areas. She could not see it hit the ground because a balcony wall blocked most of her view.

The nurse later learned that an American military satellite called Transit 5a had been launched into orbit on December 18 or 19, and that it had suffered an electronics failure shortly after launch. She enclosed newspaper clippings about the failed satellite with her account and wrote to the U.S. Department of Defense to report the sighting, wondering if there might be a connection. She also asked a local forest ranger to watch for signs of debris during his patrols.

The U.S. Air Force received the report in March 1963 and forwarded it to its Foreign Technology Division. The Air Force evaluated the sighting as "probably astronomical" and noted that the object was most likely a meteor. The case file indicates the object was a falling meteor, though no confirmation of an impact or debris was ever documented. The full case file, totaling 8 pages as preserved on microfilm, is reproduced below.