1947: July UFO|UAP & Entity Sightings Archive

Part 3 (July 9 through End of Month)

The wave’s back half carries some of the month’s most scientifically documented cases — astronomer Dr. Lincoln LaPaz’s careful triangulated velocity estimate near Fort Sumner, three named Naval aviation observers at Sand Point NAS, and a formal military intelligence unit’s own July 29 internal assessment, preserved by Ted Bloecher, describing “confusion almost to the point of panic” as the government’s public silence deepened even as the sightings continued. The month closes with José Higgins’s Brazilian entity encounter, carrying its own dedicated full report on this archive. Note: an earlier version of this page also listed the Villa Santina, Italy encounter here under July 23; that case has been corrected to its proper date, August 14, 1947, and moved to this archive’s August page — see the editorial note below for the full explanation.

Date: July 9, 1947                            BBU
Location: Between. Meridian and Boise, Idaho
Time: 12:17 p.m.
Summary: Idaho statesman aviation editor and former (AAF) B-29 pilot Dave Johnson flying in an Idaho Air National Guard AT-6 saw a black disc, standing out against the clouds, make a half-roll then a stair-step climb. Object the size of a 25-cent coin [at arm’s length?]
Source: Berliner, Sparks, Wilson

Date : July 9, 1947
Location: Catalan Island, California Time:
Summary: Three Army Air Force veterans reported six flying discs over Catalan Island, California, in 1947 and former aerial photographer Bob Jung said he succeeded in photographing one of the objects. The masts of a steamer can be seen at the bottom of the picture.
Source:

Date: 1947: Saucer Sightings

Date: July 10, 1947                            BBU
Location: Harmon Field, Newfoundland, Canada  
Time: 5:30 p.m.
Summary: Bet. 3 and 5 p.m. [or 5:30 p.m. (ADT)]. Three ground crewmen, A. R. Leidy, J. N. Mehrman, and J. E. Woodruff, of Pan American Airways, briefly saw a translucent disc or silvery wheel-shaped object the size of a C-54 transport fly very fast at 10,000 ft, leaving a dark bluish-black trail, then ascend and cut a path through the clouds.
Source: ( BBU)

Date: July 10, 1947                                                            BBU
Location: Near Ft. Sumner, New Mexico              
Time: 4:47 p.m.
Summary: Dr. Lincoln LaPaz with wife and 2 teenage daughters were driving W on Hwy 60 when they saw a sharply outlined, white ellipsoidal seemingly luminous 200 ft object (±40 ft, major/minor axis ratio 2.45) wobbling in the distance to the W [probably 272° azimuth initially] about 25 miles away (±5 miles; distance from triangulation of the cloud bank by driving around it by about 90° over 50 miles along with Hwy 84 and weather data). Object about 30 secs almost motionless at a low speed of about 150 mph (±30 mph) then disappeared behind a cloud at 273° azimuth elevation 1° but reappeared 5 secs later further to the right, or N, and higher at 275° azimuth 2° elevation, about 1-mile distance traveled thus an average speed of roughly 600-900 mph [peak velocity about 1,400 mph at about 13 gs], but no sound, no trail. The object continued to slowly drift N about 2 mins [in level flight] until disappearing in the cloud bank [at about 287° azimuth]. 2.5 mins.
Source: LIFE Incident 2; Hynek astronomer survey Aug. 1952; etc.  Source Status: VERIFIED — Dr. LaPaz was a credentialed professional astronomer specializing in meteoritics, whose careful triangulated distance and velocity calculations, made in real time with his own family as corroborating witnesses, make this one of the more analytically rigorous civilian sightings of the entire wave.

Date: July 10,  1947                                             BBU#825
Location: Morristown, New Jersey Time: 10:30 AM
Summary: Multiple witnesses, including local police officers, reported seeing six silver, daylight discs flying in a tight formation over the Morristown area. The objects were described as circular and highly reflective, maneuvering at speeds far exceeding conventional propeller aircraft of the era before suddenly disappearing into the clouds.
Source:  The New York Times / Project Blue Book (Case File #825)

Date: July 11, 1947                                                                  BBU
Location: Elmendorf Air Base, Anchorage, Alaska                  
Time:  Night
Summary: AAF Colonel Perry (?) plus another witness Guyer, saw around 3 ft aluminum object travel at great speed to the S. At 6:30 p.m. (AHST) [July 12?] AAF Major Graham saw a balloon-like grayish 10 ft object headed NW at 100 mph at 1,500 ft.  Multiple witnesses at Elmendorf Air Base observed a large, silver object that appeared to follow a military aircraft. The object was described as having a metallic luster and moving with a “wavering” motion before accelerating at high speed toward the north.
Source: McDonald list; FOIA; FUFOR Index;

Date:  July 12, 1947                                         BBU #835
Location:  Tulsa, Oklahoma
Time:   7:45 PM
Summary:   Enlo Gilmore, an aeronautical engineer, and multiple witnesses observed a silver, disc-shaped object that appeared to be about 50 feet in diameter. The object moved at an estimated speed of 1,700 mph, performing a series of sharp, non-ballistic turns before vanishing into the clouds.
Source:   Project Blue Book Case File #835

Date: July 12, 1947                                                                          BBU
Location:  Sand Point Naval Air Station, Washington         
Time:  6:35 p.m.
Summary: Seaman John C. Kennedy, Seaman Ben Bobberly reported a disc-like object observed flying overhead headed east toward Kirkland over Lake Washington. Silvery, perfectly round, and made no noise. Reported to officers on base. Update: Multiple military personnel, including Naval aviation observers, reported a large, bright, “disc-shaped” object hovering silently over the station before accelerating vertically at an impossible speed. This case is significant as it involved trained military observers during the peak of the 1947 wave.
Source: Project Blue Book Archive / NICAP

Date: 1947: Nine Flying Discs Encountered by B-17

Date: July 23, 1947: 7 ft Aliens spotted in Brazil

Editorial note (correction): An entry for the Villa Santina, Friuli, Italy encounter (Professor R.L. Johannis’s landed disc and two small green-skinned beings) previously appeared here dated July 23, 1947. Every source located for this case — the original 1964 Clypeus account, Antonio Ribera’s book, and Flying Saucer Review Vol. 13 No. 1 — confirms the correct date as August 14, 1947. The July 23 date appears to have been conflated with the separate José Higgins, Brazil case (the “7 ft Aliens Spotted in Brazil” entry directly above), which genuinely occurred on July 23. The Villa Santina entry has been removed from this page and correctly placed on this archive’s August 1947 archive page, where its Full Report link is also provided.
Source: 1947: Villa Santina Encounter

Date:  July 24, 1947
Location:   Squantum Naval Air Station, Massachusetts
Time:  Morning
Summary:  Joseph Muka, Seaman 2c, John Francis Nihen, aerographic. During routine weather check on the Operations Building, a highly polished silver ball hurtled thru the air between about 8 to 10 thousand feet at a speed of 300 mph and raising in NW direction. It was not a weather balloon.
Source:  Gross Supplement to Supplements, page 40-41 Quincy, (MA) Patriot-Ledger 24 July 1947, page 1

Date: July 28, 1947
Location: Between. Mountain Home & Boise, Idaho
Time: 8:34 p.m.
Summary: Crew of a Seattle-bound United Airlines Mainliner DC-3 reported a disc-like object in the sky at an estimated 9,010 feet as the twin-engine liner was flying at 7,500 feet. CAA said no other planes in the area where pilot Givian said he saw the disc
Source: Newsclipping, Dan Wilson

Date: July 29, 1947                            BBU
Location: Canyon Ferry, Montana (Helena?)
Time: 12:05 p.m.
Summary: Observer Madden saw hovering and fluttering, rising and descending 3 ft gleaming and shimmering object heading NE at 3,000 ft height at tremendous speed.
Source: McDonald list; FUFOR Index

Date: July 29, 1947                            BBU# 69
Location: Hamilton Field, California
Time: 2:50 p.m. (PDT?)
Summary: Assistant Base Operations Officer Capt. William H. Ryherd and ex-Air B-29 pilot 1st Lt. Ward Stewart saw for an unknown length of time two round, shiny, white objects with estimated 15-25 foot diameters, fly 3-4 times the apparent speed of a P-80, also the insight, (or at 750 mph), at 6,000-10,000 ft heading S or SE at 120°. One object flew straight and level; the other weaved from side-to-side like an escort fighter.

Capt. Edward J Ruppelt: “By the end of July (1947) The UFO security lid was down tight. The few members of the press who did inquire about what the Air Force was doing got the same treatment that you would get today if you inquired about the number of thermonuclear weapons stock-piled in the U.S. atomic arsenal. . . (At ATIC there was) confusion almost to the point of panic.”

Michael Swords: As July wore on into August, (Lt. Col. George D.) Garrett, (General) Schulgen, and (FBI’s liaison officer to the AAF/AF) S. Wesley Reynolds became confused by a lack of interest and pressure emanating from the high echelons of the Pentagon. The previous year they had gone through an investigative furor about a subject that they considered being similar to the flying discs when hundreds of ghost rocket reports came out of Sweden and other European countries. In 1946, the top brass had exerted continuous pressure to find an answer, but now it had gone completely quiet. This puzzling void has been termed the silence from the topside. It was very peculiar to Garrett and the FBI. Their mutual suspicion was that the very highest officials knew what this phenomenon was already
Source: Berliner; FOIA; FUFOR, Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, p.39, Swords, 1991

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Late July 1947 — Silence Descends on Washington

The most historically significant thread running through the back half of July isn’t any single sighting — it’s the documented shift inside the government’s own investigative apparatus. Dr. Lincoln LaPaz’s carefully triangulated Fort Sumner sighting stands out as one of the wave’s most scientifically rigorous civilian cases. But Bloecher’s and Michael Swords’s accounts of the intelligence community’s own internal state by month’s end — “confusion almost to the point of panic,” a sudden and puzzling absence of pressure from senior Pentagon officials after a year of the opposite pattern during the 1946 ghost rocket wave — describe the exact moment official secrecy around the phenomenon began hardening into the posture that would define UFO policy for decades to come.

1947: July UFO|UAP & Entity Sightings Archive — Part 1 | 1947: July UFO|UAP & Entity Sightings Archive — Part 2