June 1949 — four cases: the McLaughlin White Sands rocket-pacing sighting; the Anchorage, Alaska recollection; the Oak Ridge, Tennessee sighting; and the Mesa, Arizona objects.
1949: June UFO|UAP & Entity Sightings Archive
June 1949‘s central case is Capt. Robert B. McLaughlin’s Navy team watching two discs pace a V-2 rocket at White Sands — long misdated to June 10 rather than its correct date, June 14. The month also carries an ongoing run of Los Alamos green fireball reports and an unusual childhood recollection of a possible crash near Anchorage, Alaska.
Date: June 1949
Location: Youngstown, Pennsylvania
Time: 08:30
Summary: Sitting on a porch looking at the full moon, a witness and her husband heard a buzzing sound, looked for a plane, and saw an ellipsoid object instead. They continued watching as it crossed the moon and moved out of sight. A multi-colored elliptical object was observed in clear weather by a 60-year-old female witness on a farm for over three minutes.
Source: MUFON
Date: June 1949
Location: Jersey City, New Jersey
Time: ?
Summary: Nocturnal lights were reported (Roberts, A).
Source: Eberhart, George M. A Geo-Bibliography of Anomalies, Greenwood Press, Westport, 1980. ISBN:0-313-21337-2
Date: June 1949
Location: Lewisham, UK
Time: Around 15:00
Summary: A hovering flying disc was observed (Sturzaker).
Source: BUFORA
Date: June 1, 1949, BBU
Location: 2 miles from Stewart Field, Newburgh (or Walden), New York
Time: 8:30-9:00 p.m. (EST)
Summary: A Staff Sergeant and six others saw a yellow, oblong, soundless object appear and disappear every few minutes, about 30° NW of the moon. Duration 30 minutes.
Source: FOIA; FUFOR Index
Date: June 2, 1949
Location: Glendale / Little Tujunga Canyon, California
Time: 12:00
Summary: A silver, disc-shaped object flew northwest into Little Tujunga Canyon near Glendale at around noon, traveling very fast. It was observed by two experienced female witnesses in the canyon for over 15 minutes.
Source: Hatch, Larry
Date: June 3, 1949
Location: Petaluma, California
Time: 03:50
Summary: One object was observed by one witness for 12 seconds (Moore).
Source: Doubt Magazine
Date: June 3, 1949
Location: Shaker Heights, Ohio
Time: 08:00
Summary: One object was observed by one male witness (Comella).
Source: Fate Magazine
Date: June 10, 1949, BBU
Location: 20 miles SW of Boston, Massachusetts
Time: ?
Summary: USAF pilot Kirschbaum, flying a T-6 with the 58th Fighter Interceptor Squadron, saw a white, tubular object about 100 ft long flying at 100 mph. He gave chase but lost it.
Source: Project 1947; FUFOR Index
Date: June 10, 1949
Location: Anchorage, Alaska
Time: 21:00
Summary: The witness, a child at the time in the company of adults, recalled a disc first visible at about 10,000 ft elevation roughly ten miles off, moving SSW as it emerged from behind the southern profile of the Chugach Range near 12th and G streets. Clearing the southernmost visible peak, it made a near-U-turn and proceeded NNE on the west side of the mountains, now below the peak elevations (5,000-7,000 ft), gradually losing altitude and closing distance. It appeared disc-shaped with a slightly curved underside, a wider band below the midpoint, and a domed top with windows just above the midpoint; the windows appeared clear yellow as if heated, with the craft showing a faint glowing hot-metal appearance tinged green, blue, and orange. It began to wobble as it descended, apparently about to crash; there was no sound in flight or at impact, though the witness recalled a low vibration. The witness was told the next day that government employees had been sent to recover debris, which was crated and sent to Wright-Patterson. The witness notes the date given is a best estimate, made long after the fact.
Source: NUFORC
Date: June 14, 1949 (originally logged as June 10; corrected per Brad Sparks’s Comprehensive Catalog of Project Blue Book Unknowns), BBU
Location: White Sands, New Mexico
Time: Approximately 15:35-15:40 local
Summary: A team of Navy engineers and technicians under the command of Capt. Robert B. McLaughlin, USN, watched two round, white discs — about 20 ft across — pace a V-2 rocket during a test launch from White Sands. One disc passed through the rocket’s exhaust and then shot straight up; no sound was heard. At least five U.S. Navy rocket scientists and engineers witnessed the event, which lasted over 15 minutes. This case is not among the original Blue Book Unknowns but is included in Brad Sparks’s Comprehensive Catalog; Sparks determined the correct date was the 14th, not the 10th as previously listed. The Los Angeles Times reported that film had been taken, but AFOSI was told the film showed nothing. WSMR launch records show no Navy missile launches in June 1949 (the only Viking launches that year were May 3 and September 6), but an Army V-2 was launched on June 14, 1949, at 15:35 local time — the “Blossom IVB” ionosphere/solar/biological mission, reaching an apogee of 133.9 km and carrying cosmic and solar radiation, temperature, pressure, ionosphere, and photo experiments for the Air Research and Development Command, along with a live Air Force Aero Medical Laboratory monkey, Albert II, who survived the flight but died on impact.
Source: Confirmed by Capt. R. B. McLaughlin, USN; Brad Sparks, Comprehensive Catalog of Project Blue Book Unknowns; Dan Wilson (Blue Book microfilm research)
Date: June 14, 1949
Location: Emmett, Idaho
Time: 21:00
Summary: One object was observed by several witnesses for 20 minutes (Knox).
Source: Newspaper
Date: June 17, 1949
Location: Battle Creek, Michigan
Time: Daytime
Summary: An object was observed and photographed. One luminous triangle was observed by one witness (Sanders/Saunders).
Source: Arnold, Kenneth. Coming of the Saucers, Authors, Amherst, 1952
Date: June 20, 1949
Location: Glendale, California
Time: ?
Summary: One transparent object was observed by 18 witnesses in a residential area for over 15 minutes; the semi-transparent object hovered, flipped over, then vanished.
Source: Hatch, Larry
Date: June 20, 1949, AFOSI Case 73 or 74 (catalog does not distinguish which)
Location: Los Alamos, New Mexico
Time: 20:10
Summary: One observer, rated reliable, saw a blue-green object pass directly overhead moving west to east, with no train and no sound, vanishing as though extinguished. Duration about 1.5 seconds.
Source: NICAP
Date: June 21, 1949
Location: Tuolumne County, California
Time: ?
Summary: One object was observed for several hours.
Source: Doubt Magazine
Date: June 22, 1949
Location: Oak Ridge, Tennessee
Time: 19:00
Summary: A teacher, a scientist, and one other witness watched two delta-shaped UFOs and a disc fly over the U.S. government nuclear research facility around 7 p.m. The objects appeared metallic and flew slowly toward the northwest, visible for 15 minutes. Known as the Teacher incident. This same case is misdated onto the still-uncorrected July 1949 archive page; it belongs to June.
Source: Hatch, Larry
Date: June 23, 1949
Location: Toledo, Ohio
Time: ?
Summary: An unidentifiable object was observed at close range (Gass).
Source: Project Bluebook
Date: June 24, 1949
Location: Central Washington
Time: Daytime
Summary: An unidentified object was sighted, with an unusual appearance and performance — changing color from white to gray and back, revolving while hovering, perfectly round, and then moving away at a high rate of speed. Observed by three experienced male military witnesses at a military facility (Howard, R).
Source: Sullivan, Edward. CSI/LA investigation files
Date: June 24, 1949, AFOSI Case 75
Location: Mesa, Arizona
Time: 3:45 p.m.
Summary: Two witnesses of unknown reliability reported five objects, steel-gray in color, at least one a disc with two flanges. One moved vertically; four moved horizontally, in directions ranging from SE to E to NE to E. Four objects were tracked for about 30 minutes and one for about 25 seconds, at speeds up to 400 mph, before fading from view.
Source: Project Bluebook
Date: June 1949
Location: Wildrose Canyon, California
Time: 21:00
Summary: One object was observed by four witnesses for a few minutes (Turner).
Source: Bloecher, Ted R.
Date: Late June 1949
Location: Vernon, British Columbia, Canada
Time: Around midnight
Summary: One object was observed by one witness briefly (Delong).
Source: NICAP
Date: June 27, 1949
Location: Albera Ligure, Italy
Time: 20:20
Summary: A brass, domed disc with a transparent dome was seen at only about 10 meters altitude. It emitted a gaseous cloud of vapor, then flew away over a hill.
Source: Hatch, Larry
Date: June 27, 1949
Location: Durango, Colorado
Time: 22:35
Summary: One object was observed by one witness briefly (Heard).
Source: Newspaper
Date: June 29, 1949
Location: White Sands, New Mexico
Time: ?
Summary: A Naval rocket expert observed a silvery disc. Too little detail survives in this record to confirm whether this is a separate sighting or a fragmentary restatement of the June 14 McLaughlin case above.
Source: NICAP
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The McLaughlin Rocket-Pacing Case, Correctly Dated at Last
The month’s central correction reunites the McLaughlin V-2-pacing sighting at White Sands, which had been split across two live-page entries: a full narrative dated June 10, and a separate, contentless June 14 entry holding only Brad Sparks’s research note explaining that the true date was the 14th, tied to the documented Army “Blossom IVB” V-2 launch carrying the monkey Albert II. Both are merged into a single, correctly dated entry. The June 22 Oak Ridge, Tennessee entry is cross-referenced against a misdated duplicate still sitting on this site’s not-yet-corrected July 1949 page.
“One of the discs passed through the rocket’s exhaust and then shot straight up.”
From the June 14, 1949 White Sands account, confirmed by Capt. R. B. McLaughlin, USN.
