Near Larson AFB, Moses Lake, Washington, December 22, 1952 — the object's final position beside Jupiter.
THINK ABOUTIT UFO|UAP SIGHTINGS REPORT
1952: The Larson AFB, Washington Sighting — Battelle Unknown No. 6
Driving toward Larson AFB on a December evening, an instrument technician pulled his car over to watch something climb toward the zenith in odd right-left spurts — then level off at high speed, rolling to show a red side before it settled into a stationary spot beside the planet Jupiter, jittering back and forth for a quarter of an hour before he simply stopped watching.
The case earned a place among the small number of sightings the Air Force’s own 1955 Battelle Institute statistical study formally retained as a genuine Unknown — Battelle Unknown No. 6 — giving it more institutional weight than most single-witness 1952 reports carry.
Date: December 22, 1952
Sighting Time: 1930 (7:30 p.m.)
Day/Night: Night
Location: Near Larson AFB, Moses Lake, Washington
Urban or Rural: Rural, en route to an Air Force base
Hynek Classification: NL (Nocturnal Light) — point or extended luminous source observed at night
Duration: 15 minutes
No. of Object(s): 1
Size of Object(s): Not recorded
Distance to Object(s): Not recorded
Shape of Object(s): Described in this archive’s primary source simply as a disc; Brad Sparks’ independently cited catalog entry for the same case describes it more specifically as “hat-shaped” — both descriptions are preserved here rather than one discarded
Color of Object(s): White most of the time; showed a red side while apparently rolling, and briefly no light at all partway through a roll
Number of Witnesses: 1 (an unnamed instrument technician)
Special Features/Characteristics: The object rose toward the zenith in odd spurts, alternating right and left, at roughly a 45° angle, then leveled off in fast, straight flight. During this maneuver it appeared to roll three times, showing a red side and, briefly mid-roll, no visible light at all. It ultimately came to a stationary position south of the planet Jupiter (per Sparks’ catalog, Jupiter was positioned at roughly 151° azimuth and 53° elevation at the time), where it moved in small, jumpy left-right motions for the remainder of the sighting.
Case Status: Unexplained — formally designated Battelle Unknown No. 6 in the U.S. Air Force’s 1955 Project Blue Book Special Report #14 (Battelle Memorial Institute statistical study), one of a small minority of cases that survived that deliberately skeptical review as a genuine Unknown
Source: U.S. Air Force Project Blue Book Special Report #14 (Battelle Institute Study, 1955); Brad Sparks, “Catalog of 1,500 Project Blue Book Unknowns”
Summary/Description: On the evening of December 22, 1952, an instrument technician driving from a large city toward Larson AFB near Moses Lake, Washington, saw an object at 7:30 p.m. and stopped his car to watch it. It rose toward the zenith in odd spurts, moving right and left at roughly a 45° angle, then leveled off in fast, straight flight, during which it appeared to roll three times, showing a red side and briefly no light at all. It finally came to rest in a stationary position south of the planet Jupiter, jittering back and forth in small left-right movements. The witness watched for 15 minutes before he simply stopped observing it.
Related Cases: Not Applicable
Detailed Report
The Larson AFB case survives through two independent secondary sources that largely agree on the core sequence of events but diverge on one physical detail. This archive’s primary sourcing, drawn from the 1955 Battelle statistical study, describes the object simply as a disc. Brad Sparks’ separately compiled catalog of Project Blue Book Unknowns, describing the same case by date, location, and event sequence, instead calls it “hat-shaped” — a more specific and unusual descriptor that isn’t obviously interchangeable with a plain disc. Rather than assume one source made an error, this archive preserves both descriptions.
What both sources agree on is more distinctive than the shape question alone: an unusual ascent pattern (spurting rather than smooth), a roll sequence during which the object’s lighting visibly changed (white, then a red side, then briefly dark), and a final stationary position referenced specifically against Jupiter’s location in the sky — precise enough that Sparks’ catalog entry gives Jupiter’s exact azimuth and elevation at the time, allowing the object’s final position to be reconstructed with real astronomical precision even seven decades later.
The case’s classification as a Battelle Unknown carries real institutional weight: Special Report #14 was a large-scale statistical review of Blue Book’s case files explicitly designed to sort credible unknowns from explainable reports, and only a small fraction of the thousands of cases reviewed were retained as genuine Unknowns. That this single-witness sighting survived that filtering process is a meaningful data point in the case’s favor, even without any additional corroborating witness.
RESEARCHER’S NOTES
Larson AFB, Washington — 1952 and a Battelle Unknown’s Weight
- Institutional retention matters: Being formally classified as a Battelle Unknown out of thousands of reviewed cases gives this sighting more evidentiary standing than an uncatalogued single-witness account would carry on its own.
- A genuine, unresolved shape discrepancy: “Disc” and “hat-shaped” aren’t clearly the same description, and this archive treats the gap as an honest sourcing discrepancy between two independent citations of the same case rather than silently picking one.
- Precise astronomical anchor point: The object’s final position, referenced against Jupiter’s specific azimuth and elevation, is an unusually concrete detail for a nocturnal-light case, and gives later researchers something exact to work with rather than a vague “in the southern sky.”
- Single, unnamed witness: Despite the strong institutional classification, the case still rests on one unnamed technician’s account, with no second observer on record.
Seven decades later, the disc — or hat, depending on which catalog you trust — that came to rest beside Jupiter that December evening remains exactly where the Air Force’s own statistical reviewers left it: officially unexplained.
“It finally assumed a position to the south of the planet Jupiter… at which position it darted back and forth, left and right alternately.”
— U.S. Air Force Project Blue Book Special Report #14, on the Larson AFB sighting
SEO METADATA
Focus Keyword: Larson AFB Moses Lake Washington UFO
SEO Title: 1952: The Larson AFB, Washington Sighting — Battelle Unknown No. 6
Meta Description: An instrument technician near Larson AFB watched an object spurt skyward, roll through red and dark phases, then hover beside Jupiter for 15 minutes in 1952 — a case the Air Force’s own study never explained.
Additional Keywords: Battelle Unknown No. 6, Larson AFB Moses Lake, Project Blue Book Special Report 14, Brad Sparks catalog, Nocturnal Light 1952
Tags: Washington, Moses Lake, Larson AFB, 1952, Nocturnal Light, Project Blue Book, Battelle Unknown
IMAGE PROMPT
A tactical-HUD archival illustration of a dark rural Washington highway at night, December 1952. A car is pulled over on the shoulder, its driver standing beside it looking up. High in the night sky near a bright point of light representing Jupiter, a hat-shaped or disc-shaped object glows white with one red-lit side, appearing to jitter left and right in place. Faint red targeting-reticle overlays and case-file annotation marks in the tactical-archive style, deep night-blue tones with a soft white-and-red glow on the object, credit-stamp text at bottom reading “thinkaboutitdocs.com — UAP/Entity Archive by Date.” Location: Larson AFB, Moses Lake, Washington. Date: December 22, 1952. Time: 7:30 p.m. Number of Witnesses: 1.
SEO IMAGE METADATA
Image Title: Larson AFB Moses Lake Washington 1952 UFO Sighting
Alt Text: Archival-style illustration of the 1952 Larson AFB, Washington UFO case, showing a hat-shaped object hovering near Jupiter in the night sky
Caption: Near Larson AFB, Moses Lake, Washington, December 22, 1952 — the object’s final position beside Jupiter.
Description: A tactical-archive-style illustration representing the 1952 Larson AFB, Washington case: a hat- or disc-shaped object, glowing white with a red side, hovers and jitters in place near the planet Jupiter, watched by a lone instrument technician who pulled his car over on a rural highway.
