April 1948 — three entries: the Longview, Washington flying men (predicted by this archive's earlier Chehalis Birdman report), the San Martino, Italy entity encounter, and a Cuban folk account of a fiery little devil. thinkaboutitdocs.com.
1948: April UFO|UAP & Entity Sightings Archive
This month completes a connection this archive flagged three months in advance: the January 1948 report on the Chehalis, Washington “birdman” specifically noted “a similar three-witness ‘flying men in dark suits’ case reported in nearby Longview, Washington… in April 1948” — and here it is, exactly as anticipated. On April 7, two laundry employees watched three men in dark, drab flying suits circle the city at roughly 250 feet, audible motor sounds but no visible propulsion, apparatus on their sides resembling guns. The month also carries a case worth framing carefully: a Cuban account of a small, fiery, horned figure throwing fireballs at a farmhand on All Saints’ Day, sourced not to any UFO investigation but to a published book of Cuban mythology, and explicitly framed by the witness’s own mother, in the story itself, as an encounter with the Devil.
Date: April 1, 1948
Location: About 9 miles southeast of Sorsogon, southeast Luzon Island, Philippines
Time: 09:55
Summary: USAF Lt. Meyers, leading a flight of four P-47 fighters of the 67th Fighter Squadron, flying south at 1,500 feet, saw a half-moon-shaped “flying wing,” roughly 30 feet wide and 20 feet long with a barely perceptible dorsal fin, flying north at about 1,000 feet, roughly 3 miles to his east. He made a 270-degree left turn to identify it; the object banked into a 90-degree left turn, leveled onto a west heading, and accelerated rapidly out of sight within 5 seconds, with no trail.
Source: FOIA; FUFOR Index (BBU)
Date: April 3, 1948
Location: San Martino in Pensilis, Italy
Time: 06:35
Summary: Giuseppe Langiano, a bus driver, and stationmaster Bavota saw a luminous orange object hovering about 10 meters above the ground at Fara di Gigno, emitting a beam of very bright white light — an inverted-bowl shape surmounted by a transparent “upside down cup,” 10-15 meters in diameter. A figure resembling a large puppet, about 1.5 meters tall, floated down from it, dressed in a stiff, metallic-looking one-piece garment with heavy metallic gauntlets and two round holes in place of eyes. When the witnesses ran toward it, the figure re-entered the object, which took off.
Source: UFO in Italia
Date: April 5, 1948
Location: Holloman AFB, New Mexico
Time: Afternoon
Summary: Holloman AFB personnel reported witnessing a disc-shaped object, 35 meters in diameter, executing a series of violent turns and maneuvers. Another disc reportedly displayed similar behavior the same day at Manila.
Source: Undocumented (BBU #139)
Date: April 7, 1948
Location: Longview, Washington
Time: 15:00
Case Status: Unexplained
Summary: Mrs. Viola Johnson and James Pittman, laundry employees, saw three men in dark, drab flying suits, moving through the air about 250 feet high, circling the city at roughly the speed of a freight train. No motors or propellers were visible, though motor-like sounds were heard, quieter than an airplane’s; the figures carried apparatus on their sides resembling guns. The men were gone before other witnesses could get outside, but other residents reported hearing plane-like motors and seeing three “planes” circling at high altitude.
Source: HUMCAT, quoting an INS news story
Editorial note: This is the case anticipated in this archive’s January 1948 full report on the Chehalis, Washington “birdman” sighting, which specifically flagged “a similar three-witness ‘flying men in dark suits’ case reported in nearby Longview, Washington, three months later, in April 1948.” Longview and Chehalis are roughly 30 miles apart in southwest Washington, and both cases describe humanoid figures in apparent individual flight apparatus, observed by multiple named witnesses, within the same three-month window and general region — a pattern worth noting even though this archive cannot establish any causal connection between the two cases. See the Chehalis Birdman full report for the earlier case.
Date: April 8, 1948
Location: Ashley, Ohio (possibly Delaware, Ohio)
Time: Unknown
Summary: No further detail preserved in the surviving source material.
Source: McDonald list; FUFOR Index (BBU)
Date: April 9, 1948
Location: Holloman AFB (possibly), Alamogordo, New Mexico
Time: 14:06 MST
Summary: No further detail preserved beyond the date, time, and location.
Source: Trakowski, GRUDGE report (BBU)
Date: April 9, 1948
Location: Montgomery, Alabama
Time: 15:10
Summary: Lt. Col. Hughes, an Air Tactical School instructor from Tyndall AFB, Panama City, Florida, flying a P-51H fighter at 16,000 feet and just completing a 180-degree left turn, spotted a silver, parachute-shaped, 8-foot disc with a 5-foot cable or shroud suspending a silver canister or ball beneath it, at his 10 o’clock position, roughly 300-500 feet away and 200-300 feet below him. He banked sharply left to follow at 310 mph IAS, but the object disappeared within 5 seconds without dropping in altitude.
Source: FOIA (BBU)
Date: April 11, 1948
Location: Alton, Illinois
Time: Unknown
Summary: No further detail preserved in the surviving source material.
Source: McDonald list; FUFOR Index (BBU)
Date: April 14, 1948
Location: Near Remedios, Las Villas, Cuba
Time: Midnight
Summary: On All Saints’ Day, Jose Espinoza got up early to arrange sugar cane carts left in the fields, over his mother’s objections that “the Devil himself” was known to be at work on that holy day. Climbing onto the first of four carts, he noticed a small figure — about a foot and a half tall, fiery red, emitting sparks from horn-like protrusions and a tail — standing on the last cart. The figure noticed Espinoza and repeatedly flung small, growing balls of fire at him; Espinoza narrowly avoided each one before finally screaming “this is the devil!” and running to his house without stopping.
Source: orestes100350 (via email), quoting Samuel Feijóo, Mitología Cubana
Source Status: The cited source, Mitología Cubana, is a published work of Cuban folklore and mythology, not a UFO investigation or sighting catalogue, and the account itself explicitly frames the figure as a devil within Cuban religious/folk tradition (the witness’s own mother warns him of “the Devil” before he leaves, and Espinoza himself identifies the figure the same way). This entry is best understood as documented regional folklore consistent with this archive’s high-strangeness scope, not as a UFO or extraterrestrial entity report.
Date: April 18, 1948
Location: 1 mile north of Fairbanks, Alaska
Time: 13:06
Summary: USAF member Johnson, 375th Reconnaissance Squadron-Very Long Range, Ladd AFB, at the Cheechako Hotel, saw a noiseless, flat, discus-shaped object, roughly 8 inches at arm’s length, oscillating rapidly in flight at 2,000-3,000 feet, about a mile away, traveling northeast to southwest at 250-300 mph, visible only when its flat side reflected high-intensity sunlight toward the observer.
Source: FOIA; FUFOR Index (BBU)
Date: April 18, 1948
Location: North Atlantic, between Iceland and Greenland
Time: Unknown
Summary: No further detail preserved in the surviving source material.
Source: McDonald list (BBU)
Date: April 19, 1948
Location: Greenville AFB, South Carolina
Time: 16:15
Summary: Lieutenants Henning and Loomis heard jet fighters and, looking for them, saw a stationary silvery or white sphere directly overhead at 15,000-20,000 feet, resembling a weather balloon (though none had been launched). After about a minute, an identical object joined it at a similar altitude, also remaining relatively stationary; after roughly another minute, both suddenly accelerated to high speed to the north-northeast in trail formation, disappearing within about 30 seconds, while the original object appeared to drift north. Size was estimated as slightly smaller than a 42-foot AT-6 aircraft at the indicated altitude.
Source: FOIA; FUFOR Index (BBU)
Date: April 30, 1948
Location: South of Anacostia NAS, Maryland
Time: 10:15
Summary: Navy pilot Lowe, flying an SNJ (Buno 90731) south at 5,500 feet, saw a yellow sphere on an opposite course, south to north, at a constant altitude roughly 1,000 feet below him.
Source: Jan Aldrich; Project 1947; FUFOR Index (BBU)
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
April 1948 — The Predicted Longview Case, Confirmed
This month’s most satisfying find isn’t a new discovery so much as a confirmation: this archive’s January 1948 report on the Chehalis “birdman” specifically flagged a related Longview, Washington case as occurring in April, three months later — and it’s here, matching that description closely. Two named laundry employees watched three men in dark flying suits circle the city at low altitude, no visible propulsion but audible motor-like sound, apparatus resembling guns strapped to their sides. Whatever explains one of these two southwest Washington cases may or may not explain the other, but the pattern itself deserves to be tracked. Elsewhere this month, a Cuban “little red devil” account is retained but reframed honestly: its own source is a published mythology collection, and the story explicitly identifies its subject as the Devil rather than an extraterrestrial visitor.
“I couldn’t see any motors or propellers on them, but I could hear motors like airplane motors, but not as loud.”
Mrs. Viola Johnson, describing the April 7, 1948 Longview, Washington flying men.
