Project Blue Book Case File
TRAVIS AFB, CALIF., January 1952January 1952
Summary
On the morning of January 11, 1952, an airman at Travis Air Force Base in California reported seeing an unusual flying object near his base. The sighting lasted between fifteen and thirty seconds.
The witness, Clifford W. Smith, an armament and electronics specialist, was walking east along Travis Avenue near the Wherry Housing Area around 5:00 a.m. when he spotted the object heading toward him at a bearing roughly northeast (approximately forty five degrees to his left). He estimated it was about one quarter mile away and flying at roughly three hundred feet altitude. The object descended slowly, comparable to a jet aircraft coming down from clouds. Smith described it as a bright green, tear drop shaped object with a red flame extending from the rear that threw off large colored sparks. The whole scene lit up the surrounding area. During the fifteen to thirty seconds he watched, the object appeared to descend about fifty feet. Smith heard no sound and saw no crash. He stated that the object resembled no meteor or shooting star he had ever seen before.
The investigation, documented in Air Force intelligence reports, found no conventional explanation for the sighting. The file notes that the observer was alone at the time, with no other nearby witnesses, and that weather conditions were dark but clear, with a high broken overcast. The observer was familiar with aircraft and natural phenomena, and felt confident the object he saw was genuinely unidentified.
The full case file, containing eight pages as reproduced by the National Archives, is available below.
Reported location
TRAVIS AFB, CALIF., January 1952
Date of incident
January 1952
State / country
? / XX
Page count
8 scanned pages
USAF evaluation
unknown
Microfilm
T1206, Roll 9