Toledo, OhioApril 1949

On April 9, 1949, a teenager in Toledo, Ohio reported seeing three flying discs. The boy, identified in newspaper accounts as 15-year-old Henry Jordan of Whitford Road, told the Toledo Blade that he watched the round, silver, saucer-like objects for about five minutes as they passed overhead near Herr Road and East Central Avenue at a speed of roughly 40 to 50 miles per hour. He was confident the objects were not airplanes.

The story appeared in print on April 10, 1949, and reached the U.S. Air Force, which opened an investigation through its Office of Special Investigations (OSI). Investigators tried hard to verify the sighting. They visited the addresses mentioned in the newspaper account, checked school and police records in the Toledo area, contacted the Ohio State Highway Patrol, and even consulted the postmaster of nearby Sylvania to confirm the witness's identity. None of these efforts succeeded. No one could locate the boy or his family, and no official record of the incident turned up in local law enforcement files.

The investigation also discovered that the Toledo Blade had not independently verified the story before publishing it. According to the newspaper's city editor, the account came from a telephone call to the newsroom, and no attempt was made to fact-check the details before the article ran. The city editor promised to notify the Air Force directly if he received any future reports of similar events.

The case file contains the newspaper clipping, official correspondence requesting the investigation, and detailed records of where investigators checked. However, the Air Force evaluation listed in the case metadata was "unknown," and no clear conclusion about what was seen appears in the available records.

The full case file is reproduced below as held by the National Archives, consisting of 7 pages.