March 1-10, 1950 — four cases: the Wright-Patterson AFB interception; the Selfridge AFB radar case; the Tonantzintla Observatory sighting; and the Phoenix, Arizona ovoid.
1950: March 1st – 10th UFO|UAP & Entity Sightings Archive
The first ten days of March 1950 pair the Air Force’s own explanations with the cases that resisted them. A bright light over Dayton’s airports on March 8 drew the Ohio Air Guard, two scrambled fighters and a radar echo, and Air Materiel Command concluded it was Venus in daylight and ice clouds. At Selfridge AFB, Michigan, two radar sets tracked an object for hours on March 9 that Continental Air Command’s own experts said no known electronic effect could produce, though Blue Book filed it as a balloon. The period also carries the photographed light at Tonantzintla Observatory in Mexico, a Holloman AFB officer and five airmen watching a white ball for 85 minutes at Vaughn, New Mexico, and a seven-witness ovoid near Phoenix, while the Berger searchlight pattern in Norwood, Ohio added two more incidents.
Date: March 1, 1950
Location: Knoxville, Tennessee
Time: Night (2155 to 2330 on March 1; also March 2 and 3)
Summary: A radar station near Knoxville reported unidentified returns at about 40,000 feet to the north-northwest on three successive nights. The Atomic Energy Commission’s security chief at Oak Ridge could find no aircraft to account for them and doubted the set’s efficiency, and the Army and Air Force discussed sending a qualified operator. Project Blue Book concluded probable ground returns from an inversion, plus an aircraft on March 3. [Full Report]
Source: Air Force OSI memorandum of March 6, 1950; Project Blue Book record card
Date: March 1, 1950
Location: Chihuahua, Mexico
Time: Daytime
Summary: A metallic disc hovered over the city and airport at about 5 km altitude, then flew away rapidly to the south. Observed by a male witness at the airport for five minutes.
Source: Lumieres Dans la Nuit
Date: March 2, 1950
Location: Long Beach, California
Time: Unknown
Summary: An unidentified object moving in a straight trajectory across the sky was observed by two witnesses for two hours.
Source: Data-Net Report
Date: March 2, 1950
Location: China
Time: Unknown
Summary: A procession of objects was reported.
Source: Vallee, Jacques
Date: March 2, 1950
Location: Tonantzintla Observatory, Puebla, Mexico
Time: Unknown
Summary: Observatory director Luis Enrique Erro produced a photograph of an object that crossed the sky on March 2. The press described a black square with a diagonal band of light, and Erro said the observatory had wondered ever since what it was and did not know. The image shows a diagonal band of light across a dark frame. [Full Report]
Source: Los Angeles Times (UP), March 12, 1950, as filed in Project Blue Book (No Case, information only)
Source Status: Blue Book treated it as information only and did not evaluate it.
Date: March 3, 1950
Location: Chihuahua, Mexico
Time: Around 1500
Summary: A daytime disc was reported.
Source: Petrowitsch, Pablo
Date: March 3, 1950
Location: Selfridge AFB, Michigan
Time: 11:05 p.m. EST
Summary: 1st Lt. Frank K. Mattson, leaving the Officers’ Club, saw a yellowish light drop vertically over the Post Exchange to about 5,000 feet and hover about a minute. It then moved west about 50 miles, turned south about 50 miles and came back north in an erratic course, vanishing after four minutes, he said. He compared its glow to a house window at night seen from 30 yards. A C-47 flew past just after the object moved west and faded from sight at about eight miles, while the object did not diminish in size or brightness as it moved away. Mattson would also be a witness in the Selfridge radar case six days later.
Source: Project Blue Book (BBU 650); AFOSI spot report of March 10, 1950, quoted in the Selfridge radar file
Source Status: Blue Book’s record card concludes UNIDENTIFIED. This is a visual report only; the radar tracking at Selfridge was on March 9.
Date: March 4, 1950
Location: Near Newburgh, Indiana
Time: Unknown
Summary: A man driving east about two miles east of the junction of Indiana State Hwy 66 and 261, north of Newburgh, saw an object he believed was a rocket at a distance of about 50-75 yards in front of his car.
Source: Unknown
Date: March 4, 1950
Location: Tessalit, Kidal, Mali
Time: Around 0200
Summary: One object was observed by six military witnesses for over one minute.
Source: Michel, Aime. The Truth About Flying Saucers, Pyramid T1647, New York, 1967
Date: March 4, 1950
Location: Hamilton, Texas
Time: 16:15
Summary: One object was observed by four witnesses briefly (Jeschke).
Source: Newspaper
Date: March 4, 1950
Location: Lisbon, Portugal
Time: Night
Summary: One object was observed by several witnesses.
Source: Stendek (CEONI)
Date: March 4, 1950
Location: Cross Plains, Texas
Time: 12:00 CST
Summary: A civilian wrote to Air Materiel Command that he saw four or five flat, elliptical, white-to-silvery objects moving slowly, one of which did a barrel roll. AMC acknowledged the letter on March 10, 1950.
Source: Project Blue Book record card (listed as “Grass Plains”); Air Materiel Command reply of March 10, 1950
Source Status: Blue Book’s March list gives the conclusion A/C.
Date: March 5, 1950
Location: Ometepec, Guerrero, Mexico
Time: Unknown
Summary: Two airline pilots sighted a disc flying at incredible speed. Observed by two witnesses in-flight briefly.
Source: Hatch, Larry
Date: March 5, 1950
Location: Saltsburg, Pennsylvania
Time: 01:30
Summary: A turtle-shell-shaped disc, about 15 meters across, hovered at low altitude and kept its distance when the witness approached. One domed disc, about 80 ft across, was observed by one military witness on a highway for ten minutes.
Source: Doubt Magazine
Date: March 5, 1950
Location: Gering, Nebraska
Time: 07:00
Summary: A 25-ft nocturnal light at low altitude changed shape and became extremely bright before maneuvering to the southeast. One shifting-shape object, about 40 ft across, was observed by 20 witnesses (as reported to police) in town for over six minutes (Ekberg).
Source: Doubt Magazine
Date: March 5, 1950
Location: Houston, Texas
Time: 22:00
Summary: A metallic disc was observed by five witnesses in the city for five minutes; it hovered, darted about, jumped into clouds, trailed a ribbon, then departed east.
Source: Gross, Loren E. UFOs: A History. 1950: January-March, Author, Fremont, 1983
Date: March 5, 1950
Location: Denver, Colorado
Time: Night
Summary: One object was observed by one witness for over four minutes.
Source: Doubt Magazine
Date: March 5, 1950
Location: Bloomfield, New Mexico
Time: Night
Summary: A dark, five-foot-diameter disc paced a moving car; when the driver stopped, the object circled the car before speeding away. The two Colorado businessmen, from Durango and Cortez, kept the story quiet for days and said it was too fast for a bird and too small for an airplane.
Source: Newspaper clippings, March 10 and March 27, 1950; United Press, March 14, 1950, as filed in Project Blue Book (No Case, information only); Loren Gross, UFOs: A History, 1950: January-March, pp. 31-32
Date: March 5, 1950
Location: Vaughn, New Mexico
Time: 11:35 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. MST
Summary: Maj. William J. Haynor, Air Provost Marshal at Holloman AFB, and five other witnesses watched a white, round object the size of a ping-pong ball at arm’s length at about 75 degrees elevation on an azimuth of about 190 degrees. It moved on a straight, level track at roughly 180 to 200 mph for about 1 hour 25 minutes until it faded. Three Holloman photographers took movie film, which the OSI retained, and Holloman’s Electronics and Atmospheric Branch could offer no logical explanation. Haynor had a previous sighting on February 18. Blue Book’s card concludes Venus.
Source: AFOSI 17th District Report of Investigation (file 24-8-26, S/A Robert R. Johns, 22 March 1950); Project Blue Book record card (“Astro (Venus)”); NICAP 1950 UFO Chronology (Sparks)
Source Status: Blue Book’s card notes the movies are not in its file.
Date: March 6, 1950
Location: Houston, Texas
Time: 05:05
Summary: A hovering object was observed by two witnesses (Floyd).
Source: Newspaper
Date: March 6, 1950
Location: Gotzis, Austria
Time: 05:48
Summary: Nocturnal lights were reported (Peyerl).
Source: Schoenherr, Luis
Date: March 6, 1950
Location: Dallas NAS, Texas
Time: Daytime
Summary: One object was observed by one witness at the airfield briefly (Edmundson).
Source: Keyhoe, Donald E. Flying Saucers Are Real, Fawcett 107, New York, 1950
Date: March 6, 1950
Location: Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico
Time: 22:00
Summary: A disc-like object flashed overhead, moving at a fantastic speed. Observed by four male witnesses at a mountain for over one minute.
Source: Hatch, Larry
Date: March 6, 1950
Location: Fort Bliss, Texas
Time: 6:45 a.m. MST
Summary: 1st Lt. Philip W. Arant and Cpl. Johnnie L. Adams of the 59th AAA Automatic Weapons Battalion, in an open jeep 30 yards northwest of the flagpole, saw a silver, star-like object that caught the sun at about 60 degrees elevation to the southeast. It moved slowly north for 40 to 50 seconds. The weather was clear with scattered clouds at 23,000 feet and no aircraft in the vicinity, and the interrogator judged both men intelligent and trustworthy.
Source: Fourth Army G-2 transmittal and interview forms, March 1950; Project Blue Book list of March 1950 sightings (Astro (Venus))
Date: March 7, 1950
Location: Durango, Mexico
Time: Unknown
Summary: Two discs passing over Durango stopped in the sky for two hours.
Source: Lumieres dans la Nuit; Los Angeles Times
Date: March 7, 1950
Location: Tunis, Tunisia
Time: Daytime
Summary: One object was observed by several witnesses for over one minute (Blanc).
Source: Doubt Magazine
Date: March 7, 1950
Location: Ciudad Real, Spain
Time: Afternoon
Summary: One object was observed by one witness.
Source: Data-Net Report
Date: March 7, 1950
Location: Reutte, Tirol, Austria
Time: 21:30
Summary: Nocturnal lights were reported.
Source: Schoenherr, Luis
Date: March 8, 1950
Location: Mexico City area, Mexico
Time: Unknown
Summary: Ray L. Dimmick, a sales manager of the Apache Powder Company described as an expert on chemicals and explosives, told reporters his friends said a flying saucer had crashed on a mountainside outside Mexico City, 46 feet across, built of a metal resembling but harder than aluminum and powered by two motors, with a 23-inch pilot dead and embalmed. He later said the only piece he saw was a strip about six feet long, eight inches wide and three-quarters of an inch thick, and that the crash had happened about three months earlier. Col. Joseph Anderson, assistant U.S. military attaché in Mexico City, said he had not heard of any such thing, and the Air Force in Washington said the same. [Full Report]
Source: AP dispatch of March 9, 1950, as printed in the New York World-Telegram and filed in Project Blue Book (No Case, information only)
Source Status: Disputed. A crash claim relayed secondhand, with no confirmation from any official source.
Date: March 8, 1950
Location: Mazatlan, Mexico
Time: Unknown
Summary: A Naval commander sighted a UFO in the sky over Mazatlan, which he described as an “artificial device.”
Source: Gross, Loren E. UFOs: A History. 1950: January-March, Author, Fremont, 1983
Date: March 8, 1950
Location: Wright-Patterson AFB and Vandalia Airport, Ohio
Time: About 6:50 a.m. to mid-morning EST
Summary: Airport controller George Barnes saw a luminous, bullet-shaped object with a vapor trail, and the Vandalia control tower, a TWA crew and many ground observers watched a bright object in the southeast for hours. Two aircraft were sent after it, and Lt. Col. Dale E. Shafer Jr. of the Ohio Air National Guard climbed an F-51 to an indicated 58,000 feet without closing. An Air Materiel Command investigation concluded that the visual object was Venus, seen in daylight and refracted by morning mist, and that a large radar return at about 11:30 was reflection from ice-laden clouds. Blue Book’s card says the same. [Full Report]
Source: Air Materiel Command intelligence reports and Daily Intelligence Brief of March 9, 1950; Project Blue Book record card; Dayton newspapers; Gross, Loren E. UFOs: A History. 1950: January-March, Author, Fremont, 1983
Source Status: Explained by the Air Force: Venus (visual) and ice-crystal clouds (radar).
Date: March 8, 1950
Location: Pompaples, Switzerland
Time: 04:00
Summary: Physiological effects were noted. Nine objects were observed by one witness for 30 minutes.
Source: Poher, Claude. Etudes Statistiques Portant sur 1000 Temoignages, undated
Date: March 8, 1950
Location: Kufstein, Tirol, Austria
Time: 12:00
Summary: A daytime disc was reported.
Source: Schoenherr, Luis
Date: March 9, 1950
Location: Santiago, Cuba
Time: 10:00
Summary: A disc-shaped object was sighted by witnesses on the ground and by passengers and crew of an airliner flying from Santiago to Antilla, Cuba. Ground observers tracked the object with a theodolite.
Source: Gross, Loren E. UFOs: A History. 1950: January-March, Author, Fremont, 1983
Date: March 9, 1950
Location: Selfridge AFB, Michigan
Time: About 7:45 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. EST
Summary: Two radar controllers, 1st Lts. Francis E. Parker and Frank K. Mattson, watched a target on an AN/CPS-5 surveillance radar and an AN/CPS-4 height-finder at about 40,000 feet and 65 miles to the west. It faded, returned minutes later, climbed and dived between 15,000 and 45,000 feet, held stationary for about two minutes, and at one point moved on both sets at once. Parker logged a track from 2046 to 2052 that carried it from 45 to 79 miles out at 25,000 to 35,000 feet. They judged it B-36-size and thought it sometimes followed the vectors of the jet fighters in the area. Continental Air Command’s technical experts said the two radars’ very different frequencies and the correlation between them almost ruled out anomalous propagation, and that no known electronic phenomenon could produce all the observations. Blue Book’s card carries the handwritten conclusion Balloon. [Full Report]
Source: Continental Air Command memorandum INT 373.5, April 1950, with narrative reports of Lts. Parker and Mattson; AFOSI spot report of March 10, 1950; Project Blue Book record card
Source Status: Blue Book lists the case and concludes Balloon over the command’s own technical comment.
Date: March 9, 1950
Location: Norwood, Ohio
Time: 20:00, lasting 55 minutes
Summary: More than one object was observed by 11 witnesses for 55 minutes (Berger). [Full Report]
Source: Stringfield, Leonard H. CRIFO Newsletter & CRIFO Orbit
Date: March 9, 1950
Location: Brussels, Belgium
Time: 21:00
Summary: Nocturnal lights were observed by several witnesses.
Source: SOBEPS
Date: March 9, 1950
Location: Orangeburg, South Carolina (also reported from Columbia)
Time: 6:05 to 6:25 p.m. EST
Summary: Six members of the Orangeburg Times and Democrat staff and scores of other residents saw a bright disk the size and color of a new moon turn slowly in the air and hover about 15 minutes in the western sky before it vanished, leaving a vapor trail. At Columbia, witnesses saw a similar silvery object at about 6:15 to 6:30 p.m. and one thought it a new aircraft. An Army counter intelligence agent who watched it called it presumably a very high-flying aircraft.
Source: Atlanta Journal and Columbia Record, March 10, 1950; Third Army G-2 transmittals of March 14 and 15, 1950; Project Blue Book record card
Source Status: Blue Book’s card remark says it was very probably a contrail from high-flying aircraft, while its handwritten conclusion reads “Astro: Meteor.”
Date: March 9, 1950
Location: Baldwin Hills, Los Angeles, California
Time: Unknown
Summary: A flying saucer whirling over the Baldwin Hills turned out to have strings on it: a red cardboard disk about 18 inches across with yellow wings that spin, flown on two control strings by Roy Wolford, a former jet test pilot who designed it as a high-speed aerial gunnery tow target. Wolford suggested such kites explain some saucer reports, and an earlier six-foot metal model had once been checked by the FBI.
Source: New York World-Telegram and Sun, March 10, 1950, as filed in Project Blue Book (No Case, information only)
Source Status: Explained: a flown target kite.
Date: March 10, 1950
Location: Denver, Colorado
Time: Unknown
Summary: One object was observed (Hayden).
Source: Scully, Frank. Behind the Flying Saucers, Holt, 1950
Date: March 10, 1950
Location: Tessalit, Sahara Desert, Mali
Time: Unknown
Summary: An object was observed from a car; one circular object was observed.
Source: Weinstein, Dominique. Aircraft UFO Encounters, Project ACUFOE, Paris, 1999
Source Status: Possibly related to the March 4 Tessalit entry above, given the shared location within the same week.
Date: March 10, 1950
Location: Ciudad Juárez, Mexico
Time: Unknown
Summary: One top-shaped object was observed by numerous witnesses in the city for two minutes.
Source: Hatch, Larry
Date: March 10, 1950
Location: Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Time: 07:00
Summary: Three objects were observed by one witness briefly (Richards; Stoddart).
Source: Doubt Magazine
Date: March 10, 1950
Location: Guerrero, Mexico
Time: Around 1200
Summary: A daytime disc was reported.
Source: Petrowitsch, Pablo
Date: March 10, 1950
Location: Leon, Guanajuato, Mexico
Time: 12:35
Summary: A daytime disc was reported.
Source: Petrowitsch, Pablo
Date: March 10, 1950
Location: Burbank, California
Time: 17:30
Summary: One wheel, about 20 ft across, was observed by one witness in a residential area for ten minutes (Coffman; Lytle).
Source: Doubt Magazine
Date: March 10, 1950
Location: Phoenix, Arizona
Time: About 6:00 to 6:30 p.m. MST
Summary: Seven witnesses in a moving car near Phoenix watched an elongated, ovoid object for about ten minutes at an azimuth of about 160 degrees. NICAP’s summary gives its size as about 200 feet by 30 feet at an estimated 40,000 to 50,000 feet. [Full Report]
Source: NICAP 1950 UFO Chronology (Sparks; Blue Book microfilm Roll 91, pp. 338-340, 467-468); Loren E. Gross, UFOs: A History, 1950: January-March
Source Status: The Full Report’s size figure differs from NICAP’s; the two are not reconciled in the sources I had.
Date: March 10, 1950
Location: Norwood, Ohio
Time: 19:00, lasting ten minutes
Summary: A huge UFO was reported in a searchlight; it may have risen to avoid the beam. One object, of huge size, was observed by a male witness in town for ten minutes (Berger). [Full Report]
Source: Stringfield, Leonard H. CRIFO Newsletter & CRIFO Orbit
Date: March 10, 1950
Location: Gallup, New Mexico
Time: 19:50
Summary: One object was observed by three witnesses for over three minutes (Romero).
Source: Newspaper
Date: March 10, 1950
Location: Sylvan Lake, Alberta, Canada
Time: Night
Summary: One object was observed by one witness briefly (Stark).
Source: Newspaper
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Venus, Ice Clouds and a Radar Case the Experts Couldn’t Explain Away
Project Blue Book’s record cards sort the period. Wright-Patterson/Vandalia was Venus and ice-laden clouds, Vaughn was Venus, Fort Bliss was Venus, Orangeburg was a contrail or meteor, Knoxville was ground returns, and Cross Plains was an aircraft, while the Selfridge visual report of March 3 was left UNIDENTIFIED. At Selfridge the radar case is the exception worth reading: the Continental Air Command wrote that its two radars’ different frequencies almost ruled out anomalous propagation, and Air Force headquarters answered in April that such reports merely confirmed the case for ending special treatment.
The same days produced Ray Dimmick’s secondhand Mexico City crash story, which ran on March 9 and 10, and a Los Angeles newspaper report that one local “saucer” was Roy Wolford’s string-flown kite. Holloman officers drove to Vaughn on March 2 to check the town’s reports, which led to the instrumentation program there, and the Vaughn sighting of March 5 is on this page.
“…ice-crystal clouds which reflected sunlight and registered on radar scopes.”
From the Air Materiel Command Daily Intelligence Brief of March 9, 1950, on the Wright-Patterson and Vandalia sightings.
