1951: June UFO|UAP & Entity Sightings Archive

June 1951 splits in two. Five entries rest on government files: a Niagara Falls weather-station saucer that Blue Book left Unidentified, a silent aluminum disk reported to the U.S. Air Attaché in Helsinki, two contrails over Thule, an unevaluated object over Surrey and a falling cylinder at Los Alamos. The rest of this June 1951 UFO sightings archive is mostly entity accounts told years afterward, from Sønderborg, Denmark, where a mechanic described a landed craft and its repair crew, to figures in Siena, Beausoleil, Brandon, Vacha and County Wicklow. The month also carries the final report of Britain’s Flying Saucer Working Party and an unverifiable crash claim from Mexico.

Date: Summer 1951
Location: Siena, Italy
Time: Unknown
Summary: Young Luciano Bichi was playing in a patio area behind some houses when a beautiful, elegant female figure approached from a nearby path, encased in a bluish glow that seemed to come from the sky. She had olive skin, full pink lips and large, oriental-shaped eyes, and wore a large, broad-brimmed hat adorned with what appeared to be ripened wheat stalks. She moved swiftly, seeming to float just above the ground, and glanced briefly at the witness with a dark, penetrating stare before continuing on without speaking. The witness suffered a period of general malaise following the encounter.
Source: Unknown

Source Status: No publication or catalogue reference has been located for this account, and no date more precise than summer 1951 is given.

Date: Summer 1951
Location: San Diego, California
Time: Afternoon
Summary: Norma Jeffries was ironing in her living room with the radio on when the music suddenly stopped and the room began to darken, turning a dark gray. As her eyes adjusted, she saw what appeared to be a large rock in the center of the room, radiating a bluish glow. A woman then appeared standing atop the rock, wearing a flowing white and blue dress, barefoot, with a serene expression; the witness was filled with an overwhelming sense of peace, dropped to her knees and said “Ave Maria.” The woman smiled and extended her palm downward, saying “Dominus Vobiscum.” Jeffries responded with further Latin phrases and felt a wave of warmth; when she looked up again, the woman and the rock had vanished, the room had returned to normal light, and the radio resumed playing.
Source: Corrine Kenner & Craig Miller, Strange But True

Source Status: A single published account of a private experience. It reads as a religious apparition, and no craft is described.

Date: Summer 1951
Location: Yertarskiy, Tugulym area, Sverdlovsk region, Ural, Russia
Time: 18:30-19:00
Summary: Five-year-old Nikolay Alekseyevich Smyshlyaev was playing with other boys on the village outskirts when it suddenly grew dark and a strong wind arose, resembling the approach of a powerful thunderstorm; the boys ran for shelter, and Nikolay was sent running home ahead of the storm. Amid clouds of wind-raised dust, he saw a black, boat-shaped object floating in the air over the road, perpendicular to the street, with two black-colored “men” seated inside. When Nikolay yelled “Take me with you!” one of the men answered, “We have no time for that. You are too small yet. We are hurrying to our ship!” One figure appeared short, the other taller; the object moved at roughly the speed of a car over sandy ground. Frightened, Nikolay ran inside and told his mother, and together they went back out but saw nothing at first, until over a nearby roof they spotted a small boat-like object swinging back and forth, before the worsening weather sent them back inside.
Source: Mikhail Gershtein, Saint Petersburg, Russia

Source Status: A single account by a witness who was five years old at the time, passed on by Gershtein; his mother is mentioned but not quoted.

Date: Summer 1951
Location: Beausoleil, Alpes-Maritimes, France
Time: 21:00
Summary: Still daylight, Mrs. X (40), her husband (49) and a police officer friend, Mr. Z (50), were walking to a small square where an outdoor theatrical performance was underway. Above the square, roughly 60 meters away and hovering motionless 7 meters off the ground, they spotted a transparent, ovoid object tilted in their direction; the audience, backs turned, had not noticed it. Approaching quietly to within 15 meters, the witnesses saw, in profile, an elderly, fragile-looking “pilot” with a long white beard, bareheaded, wearing a light-colored one-piece suit, leaning forward and apparently absorbed in watching the play; a second, less visible figure sat beside him. Mrs. X estimated the object at 4-5 meters long; no interior detail beyond the two figures could be made out. When the witnesses alerted the audience, the object departed rapidly with a gentle whistling sound, vanishing north-northeast behind a building; the audience members, who had not seen it, were reportedly annoyed at the interruption. The full observation lasted about thirty seconds.
Source: Anne Marie & Philippe Maissa; Thierry Leplat; Eric Zurcher

Source Status: The witnesses are identified only as Mrs. X, her husband and Mr. Z; no contemporary report has been located.

Date: Summer 1951 (claimed; unverifiable)
Location: Valle de la Sierra Madre, Cuernavaca, Mexico
Time: Unknown
Summary: Two anonymous engineers reportedly described a UFO crash in the area, with numerous dead, apparently carbonized humanoid occupants found inside, described without further detail as having “beautiful features” and very delicate hands. The remains of the craft and its occupants were said to have been flown to the United States.
Source: J. González Sánchez, Flying Saucer Review; Project Bécassine

Source Status: No named witness, investigating body or corroborating document survives; the entry records the existence of the claim, not a verified event.

Date: June 1951
Location: Mount Pinos, Los Padres National Forest, California
Time: 02:00
Summary: The reporting witness and family were camping on Mt. Pinos, at roughly 8,600 feet elevation past the usual ski parking area, and found 40-50 people already sleeping in bags without tents despite the cold. Around 2 a.m., the witness’s mother woke him, unsettled by the sound of many people walking around outside. In the morning, the tented campers remained but everyone who had been sleeping in bags was gone. The witness’s aunt, who had slept in the car, reported feeling unusually safe because two silent, multicolored-light-equipped “helicopters” had hovered overhead for several hours, shining lights down on the camp. Days later, the witness’s father learned from two friends irrigating alfalfa fields near Quail Lake at night that they had seen two UFOs fly in from the east and depart the same way a few hours later.
Source: NUFORC

Source Status: A single NUFORC report; the aunt’s and the irrigators’ sightings are secondhand, and no one else is known to have confirmed the missing campers.

Date: June 1951
Location: Surrey, England
Time: Unknown (observed for minutes)
Summary: A witness reported a silvery, zinc-colored object that was not bright and stayed in one position above a river for several minutes, with low puffy clouds off to one side. Its apparent size was that of an average parachute.
Source: Foreign Technology Division retrospective record card (FTD Form 329) and 1964 correspondence

Source Status: Evaluated Insufficient Data. The card comments that a sun dog is possible but that time and position were not reported. A questionnaire was sent but not returned, and in July 1964 the Air Force told the witness it was not possible to evaluate the sighting.

Date: June 1951
Location: United Kingdom
Time: Not applicable
Summary: The Flying Saucer Working Party, a five-member group of technical-intelligence officers from the Air Ministry, Admiralty, War Office and Ministry of Defence, set up at the urging of Sir Henry Tizard and first meeting in October 1950, delivered its final report (DSI/JTIC Report No. 7) in June 1951. It concluded that all the reports it had studied could be explained as astronomical or meteorological phenomena, misidentified aircraft, balloons or birds, optical illusions or delusions, or hoaxes, and it recommended that no further investigation be undertaken unless material evidence emerged. A CIA history describes the scientist R. V. Jones as heading a standing British committee created in June 1951, whose conclusions resembled those of American officials.
Source: UK Ministry of Defence, DSI/JTIC Report No. 7 (released 2001); Gerald K. Haines, CIA, “The CIA’s Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90”

Source Status: The CIA article names Jones as head of the committee; the UK accounts I found describe the working party and its report but do not name him. The CIA article also says British RAF pilots and senior officials had seen a “perfect flying saucer” at a recent air show; that remark is in its discussion of late 1952 and no date is given for the air show.

Date: June 1951
Location: Brandon, Manitoba, Canada
Time: 07:00
Summary: The witness saw a hovering, disc-shaped craft with a square black box centered beneath its canopy descend and hover about 30 feet above him, then move over some nearby power lines, wobble and ascend into the clouds. Later that morning he was woken by a sound like buzzing bees and noticed small, dust-like particles swarming at the foot of his bed, which converged into the translucent, ghost-like image of a man in black clothing with white hair styled in a pompadour. The silent figure raised its right arm slowly in a gesture of greeting, emitting a whitish-blue glow; the terrified witness hid under the covers and fell asleep, and the figure was gone upon waking.
Source: NUFORC

Source Status: A single NUFORC report; the figure was seen in a bedroom on waking, and no other witness is mentioned.

Date: June 1951
Location: County Wicklow, Ireland
Time: 21:45
Summary: Two girls walking in a lane saw a small figure, two to three feet tall, standing in the road, dressed entirely in black with a black cap and a “youngish” appearance. They fled through a gate into a field; looking back, the figure was gone, but they instead saw “something about the size and shape of a common tin kitchen clock” balanced on top of the gate.
Source: Diarmuid McManus, Irish Earth Folk

Source Status: A single published account; no craft is described.

Date: June 1, 1951
Location: Dayton, Ohio
Time: Unknown
Summary: A Wright-Patterson AFB official watched a disc-shaped object make a sharp turn.
Source: Unknown

Source Status: No document or catalogue entry has been located for this report.

Date: June 1, 1951
Location: Niagara Falls, New York (Niagara Falls Municipal Airport)
Time: 4:20 a.m. (0420E)
Summary: A master sergeant leaving the 12th Weather Squadron station at Niagara Falls Airport saw a saucer-type object about 20 degrees above the horizon at a bearing of 080 degrees and tapped on the window to bring the two airmen on duty outside. The center was larger and brighter than the arc-shaped wings protruding from it, and both were a glowing yellow-orange. It moved vertically and eastward with an oscillating, counterclockwise gyro-like rotation, without sound, propulsion or trail, and vanished into the overcast after 30 to 40 seconds. See the Full Report.
Source: BBU; Project Blue Book record card; 136th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron report of June 4, 1951

Source Status: Blue Book evaluation: Other (Unidentified). The three witnesses are redacted in the released file. The card gives May 31 and 0420Z, which would be 11:20 p.m. the night before; the squadron report gives 0420E on June 1, and Don Berliner’s list gives 4:20 a.m.

Date: June 5, 1951
Location: Vacha, Germany
Time: 23:00
Summary: A local militia member standing watch saw a very bright light on a nearby hill, with two or three small figures dressed in shiny suits standing beside it; a power failure occurred in the area at the same time. The witness was convinced he had seen “angels.”
Source: Ulrich Magin

Source Status: A single account relayed by Magin; the original source has not been located.

Date: June 7, 1951
Location: Los Alamos, New Mexico
Time: 11:10 a.m.
Summary: A Los Alamos employee reported a pointed cylinder in a vertical position, of cloth-like construction, that fell into a canyon. A search party was unable to find the object or any remains.
Source: Project Blue Book file (listing filed with the Niagara Falls report)

Source Status: Evaluated Insufficient Data. The employee is not named and no further record has been located.

Date: June 9, 1951
Location: Near Mikkeli, Finland
Time: 8:05 p.m. (2005)
Summary: A Finnish engineer and businessman, a former envoy abroad, driving north of Mikkeli with his wife, stopped the car after she pointed out a perfect disk of aluminum color with no visible windows, about 25 meters across by his estimate, flying at about 10,000 feet from the northwest toward the southeast at about 800 mph. It made no sound, and it passed out of sight into cloud through a large opening in the broken overcast. See the Full Report.
Source: Project Blue Book record card; Air Intelligence Information Report IR-179-51, Office of the Air Attaché, Helsinki, September 21, 1951

Source Status: Blue Book comment: probable aircraft. The card gives the disk as 2 meters across, the report 25. The sighting was first reported more than three months later, and the witness’s name is redacted in the released file.

Date: June 9-10, 1951
Location: Approaching Thule, Greenland
Time: 0100Z on June 10
Summary: The crew of a MATS C-54 on a routine Arctic project flight reported two objects they took for contrails while approaching Thule. The aircraft was about 60 miles south of the base at 8,000 feet when the first was seen and nearly over the base at about 4,000 feet during the visual let-down when the second appeared. The crew, unfamiliar with Arctic weather phenomena, estimated the trails at 30,000 to 40,000 feet. The report gives a surface temperature of 34°F with a dew point of 29°F and a slight inversion, light broken cumulus at 3,000 feet and thin high stratus at 14,000 feet.
Source: Project Blue Book record card; 1600th Air Transport Wing (Westover AFB) intelligence spot report of June 27, 1951

Source Status: Blue Book comment: contrails, with “possible weather phenomenon” checked. The crew’s names are redacted in the released file.

Date: June 17, 1951
Location: Michigan (exact location not given)
Time: Night
Summary: The witness, sixteen at the time, had previously seen unexplained brilliant lights outside his window on other occasions. Waking to a noise this night, he was shocked to see a tall, glowing human form walk directly through the wall from his brother’s room, cross the room and stop in the opposite corner, turning to look at him. As it turned toward him, the witness felt himself falling backward into sleep. He did not tell anyone for a week; when he finally told his mother, she revealed she had seen the same figure and had already told their pastor about it.
Source: mufoncms.com

Source Status: A single recalled account; the mother’s sighting is reported only through the witness.

Date: June 19, 1951
Location: Sønderborg, Denmark
Time: 12:00
Summary: Josef Maliszewski, a mechanic, heard a whistling sound and found a large craft in a meadow. Approaching within 50 meters, he was paralyzed; birds stopped singing and cattle in the field appeared similarly frozen. Four handsome, brown-skinned men in black shiny suits and translucent helmets emerged, while eight smaller objects hovered above and crew members carried out apparent repairs. Once finished, the craft climbed to 100 meters and ascended rapidly, at which point the paralysis subsided; Maliszewski reported a battery-acid taste in his mouth and later diarrhea, and clear landing traces were documented at the site. See the Full Report.
Source: Jacques Vallée, Passport to Magonia

Source Status: A catalogue review traces the June 19 date and noon hour to a 1959 German bulletin, UFO Nachrichten, eight years after the event; Vallée’s is the first catalogue record. One catalogue gives June 9, and the witness’s name is spelled several ways. Later versions add telepathic messages that Vallée omitted.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Five Files, One Unidentified, and a Crowd of Late-Told Encounters

June 1951 holds eighteen entries. Five come with government paperwork, and only one carries a Blue Book Unidentified evaluation: the Niagara Falls saucer, seen at 4:20 a.m. by three weather-station personnel. The Mikkeli disk was reported to the U.S. Air Attaché in Helsinki by an engineer and former envoy whom the attaché called “anything but a crackpot”, yet Blue Book commented probable aircraft; the Thule crew’s two objects were judged contrails; Surrey and Los Alamos were filed as Insufficient Data. The Dayton entry has no document behind it.

Ten entries describe figures or occupants, and almost all rest on a single account recalled long afterward. Sønderborg, the best known, traces to a 1959 German bulletin whose date and detail later catalogues repeated, and one catalogue gives a different day. The Cuernavaca crash story is anonymous and unverifiable, and the San Diego account reads as a religious apparition. Britain’s Flying Saucer Working Party, which reported in June 1951, found every case it studied explicable; a CIA history ties R. V. Jones to a British committee that month, a link the UK accounts I found do not make.

“Since this man is a graduate engineer (field unknown) and gave the impression of being anything but a crackpot, it is felt that his report warrants some consideration.”

— Lt. Col. Howard T. Van De Car, U.S. Air Attaché, Helsinki, Air Intelligence Information Report IR-179-51, on the June 9, 1951 Mikkeli, Finland sighting