1950: September

UFO|UAP & Entity Sightings Archive

A shorter month, September 1950 is anchored by the Provincetown, Massachusetts radar case — an MIT-tracked object making a violent, high-g turn in front of two Air Force jet fighters — alongside an Ohio State Prison sighting with reported occupants and a scattering of military visual reports across Alaska, Newfoundland, and Colorado. The month also includes a case worth noting for the opposite reason: an oft-repeated but entirely unsourced “Albuquerque crash” claim, traced here to its likely origin in the debunked Aztec hoax.

Date: September 1950
Location: Near Columbus, Ohio
Time: 03:00
Summary: Guards at the Ohio State Prison, including Roy Beck, watched a huge, luminous, disc-shaped craft glide silently just above the compound walls. The object’s center appeared to rotate, and it seemed to have antennas on its upper section. At one point it became somewhat translucent, and the guards reported seeing several man-like figures moving inside; the terrified guards attempted to fire on the object but were stopped by a superior officer.
Source: UFO Notebook #12

Date: September 1, 1950
Location: Mekoryuk, Nunivak Island, Alaska (BBU)
Time: 7:30-7:35 p.m.
Summary: Nunivak Island CAA Airways Observer Timothy J. Kenick, George Williams, and others saw a deep red ball of fire near the horizon to the north toward Siberia, “hundreds of feet” up, which slowly faded. It was followed by the sudden appearance of another round, red ball of fire above the first, also slowly fading, repeated two or three more times while gradually becoming oval-shaped and moving toward Siberia, finally disappearing behind clouds.
Source: Jan Aldrich

Date: September 2, 1950
Location: Harmon Air Force Base, Newfoundland, Canada
Time: Evening
Summary: Military personnel observed the figure of a man standing between the beach area and the end of the runway. When the witness approached to investigate, there was a flash of light and he felt a sharp burning pain in his left hand; looking again, the figure had vanished.
Source: John Brent Musgrave, UFO Occupants & Critters

Date: September 3, 1950
Location: Spokane, Washington (BBU 797)
Time: 2:00 p.m.
Summary: Major R. J. Gardiner saw three metallic, bronze-colored discs, 20-30 feet long and 2-6 feet thick, moving independently and erratically for about five minutes; his wife and a neighbor saw one object.
Source: Berliner; FUFOR Index

Date: September 8, 1950
Location: Germany (BBU)
Time: Unknown
Summary: No further detail on this sighting survives in the available source beyond its listing as a Blue Book Unknown case.
Source: McDonald list

Date: September 10, 1950 (claimed; unverifiable)
Location: Near Albuquerque, New Mexico
Time: Unknown
Summary: No documented crash exists at this date and location. The claim — that three alien bodies were “recovered from a crash” near Albuquerque — traces to an unsourced line on a 1990s undifferentiated “crashed object” list, with no named witness, no investigation, and no time or craft description of any kind. Its “three small bodies in New Mexico, 1950” signature most closely matches the FBI’s Guy Hottel memo of March 22, 1950 (itself an uninvestigated, secondhand claim the Bureau never verified), which in turn echoes the Aztec, New Mexico crashed-saucer story later exposed as a deliberate hoax by con men Silas Newton and Leo Gebauer. This entry is preserved to document the claim’s lack of foundation, not as a real event. See the Full Report.
Source: Unsourced 1990s list compilation

Date: September 13, 1950
Location: 5 miles southwest of Effingham, Illinois (BBU)
Time: 7:30 p.m. CST
Summary: Private-plane pilot Frye saw three dull red lights in triangle formation on a collision course with his aircraft.
Source: Project 1947; FUFOR Index

Date: September 18, 1950
Location: Poplar, Montana (source uncertain whether this refers to Poplar, Montana or possibly Poplar Bluff)
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Summary: Air National Guard pilot James and another pilot, flying F-51s, along with CAA tower personnel and other ground witnesses, saw a round object moving erratically at high speed before hovering.
Source: Project 1947; FUFOR Index

Date: September 19 or 20, 1950 (source gives both)
Location: Kit Carson, Colorado, possibly 10 miles south of Akron (BBU 807)
Time: Approximately 10:45-10:49 a.m. MST
Summary: A USAF B-25 crew with the 3416th Training Squadron saw a brilliant, white, star-like object accelerate and decelerate while emitting sparks. A separate account describes two large, round, glowing objects and three smaller, internally lit objects; the two larger objects hovered for about a minute, then moved as the three smaller objects emerged from behind or within them, and all sped upward and away together.
Source: Berliner; cf. Project 1947

Date: September 21, 1950
Location: Provincetown, Massachusetts (BBU 809)
Time: 9:53-9:55 a.m. EST
Summary: MIT research associate and Air National Guard Major Myron Herbert Ligda, along with Joseph V. Connelly and another witness, were operating SCR-615B radar as part of the MIT Weather Radar Research Group’s tracking of two Otis AFB F-84 jet fighters flying a straight, level course at roughly 400 mph. At 9:53 a.m. they detected an unidentified object on a nearly intersecting course; the F-84 pilots were warned by radio but could not see it due to haze. Ground radar plotted the object crossing roughly a mile to a mile and a half ahead of the jets, moving at an estimated 1,500 mph, before it made a sharp right turn and a roughly 270-degree loop at an estimated 15 g’s of centripetal acceleration, heading back to the west. The full tracking lasted about two minutes.
Source: Jan Aldrich; Hynek, UFO Report, pp. 139-141

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

A Radar-Confirmed Loop Over Cape Cod

September 1950’s standout case is the Provincetown, Massachusetts radar tracking, in which an MIT-operated weather radar recorded an unidentified object making a sudden, extremely high-g turn directly in front of two Air Force jets that never managed to see it through the haze — one of the more precisely instrumented sightings of the year, and a useful reminder that radar and visual evidence do not always arrive together even in well-equipped, professionally staffed cases. The month also serves as a case study in how unverified claims propagate: the “Albuquerque crash” entry is retained specifically to document its lack of any real foundation, tracing its likely origin through the FBI’s uninvestigated Hottel memo back to the exposed Aztec hoax.

“Sharp right turn and loop of about 270° at about 15 g’s centripetal acceleration.”

— MIT Weather Radar Research Group, on the September 21, 1950 Provincetown, Massachusetts tracking