Project Blue Book Case File
Wheelus AB, Tripoli, Libya, December 1960December 1960
Summary
On the night of December 2, 1960, a duty observer at Wheelus Air Base near Tripoli, Libya watched a glowing object streak across the sky. The observer was conducting a weather observation when they spotted what appeared to be a ball of flame with a tapering tail, orange in color, moving across the horizon at a bearing of 250 degrees (roughly west-southwest) and an elevation of about 14 degrees above the ground. The object seemed to move from north to south, or possibly from northwest to southeast.
What caught the observer's attention was that the object appeared larger and slower than a typical shooting star. The sighting lasted several seconds as the flaming object crossed the night sky. The observer reported the event through official Air Force channels, describing a phenomenon consistent with a meteor or fireball, though its unusual size and speed left room for further investigation.
The Air Force received the report and evaluated it as a probable balloon, though the file does not clearly explain the reasoning behind this conclusion. The OCR quality of the case file's technical analysis pages is poor, making it difficult to determine what additional investigation was conducted or what specific evidence led to the balloon assessment.
The full case file, totaling seven pages as held by the National Archives, is reproduced below.
Reported location
Wheelus AB, Tripoli, Libya, December 1960
Date of incident
December 1960
State / country
? / XX
Page count
7 scanned pages
USAF evaluation
unknown
Microfilm
T1206, Roll 41