The Arizona Republic sifted through more than 100 reports from the Project Blue Book files, searching for the interesting, the bizarre and the unbelievable stories from Arizona’s UFO sightings. Many of the names and specific locations within the reports were redacted by the U.S. Air Force.
4 p.m. July 7, 1947- The 30-year-old Mr. Rhodes of Phoenix heard the approach of an incoming jet . He stepped out his backdoor to look, but saw nothing. After several seconds however, a gray disc appeared over the horizon to the northeast. Mr. Rhodes ran to his workshop, grabbed his camera and snapped two pictures as the disc dipped under the clouds again. The disc then disappeared over the western horizon. The entire event lasted about 60 seconds.
5:45 p.m. April 28, 1949- A Tucson florist stood with two friends, when a silver object appeared over the rim of the Catalina Mountains. “It appeared sausage like in shape,” the florist noted in his firsthand account. It had no wings, windows, fins or visible openings, facts corroborated by all three men. The sausage seemed to revolve in a slow roll, similar to an airplane at speeds estimated about 500 miles per hour, and at a height of about 5 to 10 miles above the Earth. The sighting lasted for about 12 minutes.
2:30 p.m. May 9, 1949- A U.S. Air Force sergeant spotted two flying objects while reclining on the front lawn of his home in northeast Tucson. The objects were flat, silver, reflective and “perfectly round.” They appeared in the southwest of the sky, about the size of washtubs, approximately 10,000 feet in the air traveling between 750 and 1,000 miles per hours.. The pair headed northwest, banked to the left, then abruptly to the right, fading from view over the Catalina Mountains.
7:45 a.m. April 3, 1952- A civilian pilot instructor landed at Marana Air Base. While taxiing, the instructor noticed an object described as a “bright star” in the morning sky. The pilot instructor continued to keep his eye on the object. “It never moved the slightest fraction in relation to the canopy of my aircraft,” he said in the report. After about 45 minutes of observation, the object suddenly vanished. “The object was bright and shone like polished aluminum. I’ve been flying for 25 years and never saw anything like it. It was weird,” Logan said in a news article about the incident.
7:15 p.m. Jan. 27, 1953- A Cottonwood man stood outside his home watching an airplane fly overhead when he noticed the illuminated object.It appeared as a yellow-orange light, larger and brighter than any of the stars in the night sky. The man ran inside, grabbed a pair of binoculars and returned to see the light heading south. Through the binoculars, he could see the object was made of two lights, one brighter light near the head of the object, and a second fainter light near what he assumed was the tail. The man followed the object for about five minutes before it faded into the night.
Dec. 23, 1954- Kenneth Hite was a first lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force stationed at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson. Hite was flying a local combat air patrol mission when he encountered an unidentified object near Nogales. He was flying at an altitude of 15,000 feet, and noted the object was about 5,000 to 10,000 feet above him. Hite followed the object, which appeared about 10 miles ahead of him, he said. He continued pursuit at an altitude of 28,000 feet and a speed of 350 knots. After reaching Douglas, it turned south and Hite, again, gave chase. Not long after, Hike began to run low on fuel and had to return to base.
Oct. 17, 1955- Reports from a missing case file indicate that approximately 12 pale, yellow lights appeared over Yuma. The observer, described as a military source, said the formation of the pale lights was a wide “V” at a high altitude. The lights grew dimmer, smaller and faded away over the course of about three to four seconds. Air Force conclusion: The duration and height of the sightings led military officials to believe the observer saw a meteor shower.
7:45 p.m. April 8, 1958- Two men in their 20s saw an unidentified flying object speeding from north to south while driving west on Main Street in Mesa. At first, the men said it had the appearance of a falling star with an approximate size of a grapefruit held at arm’s length. What was peculiar, according to the report, was the object’s movement and speed. The light rapidly descended to about 1,500 feet over the city of Mesa then slowly pulled into a steep climb until it performed a near vertical ascent, all the while accelerating. The object disappeared from view after a total of 10 seconds.
6:27 p.m. Oct. 19, 1958- A group of astronomers set up about nine miles outside of Benson to watch the Russian space satellite, Sputnik 1, and the third-stage rocket that helped it get into orbit. The observers instead saw a bright object over the southeastern horizon. It traveled rapidly across the sky then vanished out of view over the north-northwestern horizon after about five minutes.It was traveling in the opposite direction of the satellite’s projected path, and was much too bright to be airplane lights, the observer wrote in the account.
6:20 p.m. Feb. 24, 1960-The sun had just set behind the mountains when a 31-year-old Tucson man and his wife encountered a white, globular light while driving outside of downtown. He pulled to the side of the road to more closely examine the object. The object appeared over the mountains to the west, heading east over the city. As it flew, the object made drastic maneuvers, changing direction and slanting. After about 5 minutes, the diagonal streaks broke off the initial band of light, circling the object, then absorbed back into the original band. It appeared to glide over the sky, gently rising and then fading away to the south.
4:30 a.m. Aug. 10, 1964- An object with a trail of whitish-yellow flames and sparks skittered across the early-morning sky over Phoenix, according to reports from civilian and military observers. Two of the reports indicated the object looked like a fireball and could have been a meteor. Most agree, the source was very bright and came from a single object. No sound was reported. Most on the ground observed the object heading from west to east, but two flight crews reported the object moving southwest to northwest.
Sept. 7, 1965- A Tempe liquor-store clerk watched as six whitish-yellow objects flew low over the city as if they were going to land, before disappearing to the southeast over the mountains. Each of the objects were oval-shaped, and had windows that emanated a pinkish light, according to the clerk. Two of the lights were side by side, and four together. They emitted a high-pitched hum that hurt the ears of the observer, and gave her a headache.The officer producing the report noted that the clerk was convinced UFOs exist and had seen numerous UFOs during the four years prior. The clerk also said she had hypersensitive hearing that allows her to hear UFOs before she sees them.
Oct. 25, 1965- Nine miles southeast of Luke Air Force Base in Glendale, a military official watched the night sky from home. The observer noticed a bright object to the southwest. At first, the observer thought it resembled a star or planet. It oscillated from white to orange and black to white. Then it began to move. It changed directions from south to north, then moved to the southeast and east. It changed elevation, disappeared, then reappeared an hour after its first appearance. The observer described the movements as “erratic” and emphasized it moved at high speed.
8:05 p.m. Nov. 26, 1965- A husband, wife and son standing outside watched an explosion in the sky similar to Fourth of July fireworks, except that the rocket burst into a perfect circle of blue starlike objects.The cluster of 30 to 50 objects then moved south over Phoenix. Ten to 15 seconds after the first sighting, the cluster began “swarming like bees, resolving into two undulating ‘V’ formations,” then melding back into a single V before disappearing while heading due south, according to a summary of the event from the husband, who included his qualifications as an astronomer and a teacher of aircraft identification during World War II.
5:40 p.m. Oct. 9, 1967- A 13-year-old boy said he watched a UFO take off from the desert. He described the object as looking like a large, silver water heater with 2 legs, each fitted with a curved pad. The boy said the UFO made a humming sound as it took off, and left an indescribable taste in his mouth. The report includes pictures of impressions in the sand the boy alleges were created by the UFO. The Aerial Phenomena Branch received the report, took pictures and soil samples, then sent them to the Ohio River Division Laboratory for testing. In turn, the lab found that the UFO could not possibly have been the size or dimensions described by the boy.
source: azcentral.com
