July 1952: the reports history never gave a day.
1952: July Unknown Dates
UFO|UAP & Entity Sightings Archive
July 1952 is the most documented month of the Cold War UFO wave, with radar-visual intercepts, Blue Book record cards and front-page headlines pinning most cases to a day and an hour. A handful of reports never made it into that paper trail with a date attached. A witness in Schenectady, New York watched a “daylight moon” lower itself through the haze, then saw an oblong object hovering over the Alco Company with a gondola descending beneath it and figures in Navy white hats and large dark glasses rushing to the windows. Others surface only as “July 1952” in the record: an alleged abduction at Point Defiance Park, Washington, a child abduction in Evergreen, Colorado, and a sighting from the island of Borneo.
These are the July 1952 UFO sightings, entity encounters and abduction reports whose exact day was never recorded. They sit just outside the daily chronology of the Washington, D.C. flap, yet they belong to the same summer, when a nation watching its skies was suddenly willing to report what it saw. Five Blue Book record cards with unreadable dates (Denver, San Antonio, Lakeland, Rapid City and a beach sighting) are included, so no case from that month is lost simply because its calendar page was.
Date: July 1952
Location: Schenectady, New York
Time: Unknown
Summary: An anonymous witness, his attention drawn skyward by a woman nearby, saw “what looked like a daylight moon lowering itself through the haze.” It hovered for 30 seconds, then rose and disappeared. Minutes later, from a car window, he saw it again, now oblong, hovering over the Alco Company. A gondola appeared to lower from the object, and he could see what looked like “a bunch of Navy officers in Navy white hats,” all wearing large dark glasses, rushing to the windows. [Full Report]
Source: See full report
Date: July 1952
Location: Point Defiance Park, Tacoma, Washington
Time: Unknown
Summary: An alleged abduction case tied to Point Defiance Park. Witness details and the sequence of events are given in the full report. [Full Report]
Source: See full report
Date: July 1952
Location: Evergreen, Colorado
Time: Unknown
Summary: A child abduction case tied to Evergreen, Colorado. See the full report for complete case detail. [Full Report]
Source: See full report
Date: July 1952
Location: Borneo, Indonesia
Time: Unknown
Summary: A UFO sighting from Borneo, Indonesia. See the full report for complete case detail. [Full Report]
Source: See full report
Date: July 1952
Location: Washington, D.C. area (general)
Time: Unknown
Summary: Wilbert Smith of Canada’s Project Magnet confirmed that fragments recovered from UFOs had been analyzed by his research group, including a fragment reportedly shot down by a USAF jet from a disc near Washington. Smith stated he was told the disc was about 2 feet in diameter and glowing; a glowing chunk broke off and the pilot watched it glow all the way to the ground, where a ground party recovered it roughly an hour later, still glowing.
Source: Need to Know: UFOs, the Military, and Intelligence, Timothy Good. Source Status: Second-hand claim relayed by Smith. The same claim carries a specific date and time (July 23, 1952, 9:00 p.m.) on the July 22nd-25th page of this archive, where it is cross-referenced to the Alvin Moore fragment.
Date: July 1952
Location: Denver, Colorado
Time: Unknown
Summary: About 25 oval objects were observed over Denver for roughly 40 minutes, according to the record card.
Source: Project Blue Book record card
Source Status: The day digit of the card’s date is unreadable in the scan, so the report cannot be placed on a calendar day. It may or may not be related to the July 18 Denver entry on the 15th-21st page.
Date: July 1952
Location: San Antonio, Texas
Time: Unknown
Summary: A civilian woman watched a disc-shaped object with a pendulum-like extension pointing downward perform flipping maneuvers and emit balls of fire. The object was very high and distant, moving north, and the sighting lasted about 30 minutes.
Source: Project Blue Book record card
Source Status: The card date reads “1? Jul 52” and the time group is illegible. It is separate from the July 30 San Antonio entry (BBU 1758) on the 26th-31st page unless the card proves otherwise.
Date: July 1952
Location: Lakeland, Georgia (near Moody AFB)
Time: Unknown
Summary: An airman, a member of the base band, watched three lights that changed color and maneuvered erratically for about 70 minutes.
Source: Project Blue Book record card
Source Status: The card date reads “2? Jul 52”; the second digit could not be resolved.
Date: July 1952
Location: Rapid City, South Dakota
Time: Unknown
Summary: Several civilians near Rapid City AFB reported flashes of light and shiny objects. The card’s comment states that Rapid City AFB was conducting flash bomb operations in the area at that time.
Source: Project Blue Book record card
Source Status: The card date reads “2x Jul 52”. The evaluation comment points to the flash bomb operations as the source of the reports.
Date: July 1952
Location: Unknown (beach location illegible)
Time: Unknown
Summary: Five civilians and five airmen watched a round, spinning, polished-silver object over a beach for about seven minutes. The object moved south.
Source: Project Blue Book case file (record card)
Source Status: The location and date are illegible in the scan.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The July 1952 Reports That History Left Undated
Ten July 1952 reports resist a calendar day. Five come from the date pages and five from Blue Book record cards whose dates are partly or wholly illegible. The Schenectady encounter is the richest: a single witness, two separate looks at the same object, and a description that moves from a hovering “daylight moon” to an oblong craft with a gondola and uniformed figures behind large dark glasses. Point Defiance Park and Evergreen are abduction-genre reports, and Borneo is a sighting from far outside the American wave, a reminder that the summer of 1952 was not only an American story.
The Wilbert Smith fragment claim rounds out the page. Relayed by Wilbert Smith of Canada’s Project Magnet, it ties the Washington flap to a recovered, still-glowing piece of a disc shot from the sky by a USAF jet. It appears here at its general date and, with a specific date and time, on the July 22nd-25th page.
“What looked like a daylight moon lowering itself through the haze.”
— Anonymous witness, Schenectady, New York, July 1952
