Three of February 1955's most documented UFO cases: Broadlands, England; Fort Wayne, Indiana; and Green City, Missouri.
1955: February UFO|UAP & Entity Sightings Archive
February 1955 produced one of the decade’s most extraordinary case files: a bricklayer on Lord Mountbatten’s own Hampshire estate reporting a hovering saucer and a descending humanoid, investigated personally by Mountbatten himself, who took a signed statement and searched the ground for evidence. The same month, an American Airlines crew over Fort Wayne, Indiana logged five stationary star-like objects that departed at extraordinary speed, and a Missouri motorist’s brief roadside glimpse of a windowed disc was waved off from investigation for its own brevity. Between these anchor cases sits a full month’s worth of the era’s stranger corners — a bearded castle apparition in Germany, a Venus-bound contactee in the Missouri Ozarks, and a Connecticut childhood memory that would not surface for over three decades.
Date: February 1955
Location: Near Heilbronn, Germany
Time: Night
Summary: At the fifteenth-century Wildenstein Castle, Maximilian, Baron Hofer von Lobenstein, had gone out one night to let the dogs out when he saw, about ten feet away and lit from behind by a small blue flame, a bearded little man. The figure hopped around the Baron before suddenly vanishing in plain sight. The Baroness reportedly saw the little man too, on a separate occasion, around noon, when a two-foot-tall figure in a yellow vest and peaked cap turned a somersault in one of the castle rooms.
Source: Janet Bord, Fairies, Real Encounters with the Little People
Date: February 1, 1955
Location: Mountain View, Missouri
Time: Noon
Summary: Three saucers contactee Buck Nelson had previously reported seeing returned; one circled low over his house and spoke to him in English through a PA system. He asked questions by telepathy and answered theirs by gesture. After assuring them of his friendliness, he was told they would land in the future and take him to their home planet, Venus. He described the occupants he could see aboard the craft as big-boned and muscular.
Source: FSR Vol. 1 #2
Date: February 1955
Location: Ocean Beach, near San Diego, California
Time: Around noon
Summary: A witness walking toward the beach near a rocky breakwater saw a huge geyser of water erupt with what looked like the rear end of a spacecraft protruding from the top. As the geyser subsided, a ring of woolly-looking clouds remained near the breakwater, oddly motionless despite a strong wind. After watching for 20 minutes with no further activity, the witness left, still puzzled by what he had seen.
Source: Unknown
Date: February 1, 1955 (BBU 3414)
Location: 20 miles E of Cochise, New Mexico
Time: 6:55 PM
Summary: Instructor Capt. D. F. Ritzdorf and aviation cadet F. W. Miller, flying a TB-25 bomber/trainer (s/n 44-86894) at 13,000 ft and 238 mph, saw a very bright round object with red and white hues approach and hover off the left wing for about 5 minutes, roughly 5° above the horizon. The object then climbed rapidly on a parallel track, disappearing after about 3 minutes. Cross-referenced to the January 1, 1955 Cochise, New Mexico incident (BBU 3382) — the same instructor/cadet crew.
Source: Berliner; NARCAP
Date: February 2, 1955 (BBU 3416)
Location: Miramar Naval Air Station, California
Time: 11:50 AM
Summary: USN Cdr. J. L. Ingersoll saw a highly polished sphere with a reddish-brown coloring fall, then instantly accelerate to a speed of 1,000-1,500 mph.
Source: Berliner
Date: February 2, 1955
Location: Valera (near Merida), Venezuela
Time: Unknown
Summary: An Aeropostal Airlines pilot was approached by a top-shaped object with “portholes” and a central ring. Radio contact went dead at both Valera and Barquisimeto as the pilot began to report the sighting.
Source: UFOE, X
Date: February 4, 1955
Location: Near Ceret, Pyrenees-Orientales, France
Time: 7:25 PM
Summary: Mme Porta, returning home from work on a moped, saw four blue-green lights of horizontal rectangular shape with rounded corners, arranged in an arc about 5 ft above the ground in a roadside vineyard. About 50 yards farther on, two fairly tall men stood motionless in a roadside ditch; she could make out no further details.
Source: R. Vidal, LDLN #100
Date: February 7, 1955 (BBU)
Location: Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
Time: 10:18 AM
Summary: A Flying Tiger Line pilot saw a brilliant object flash off to the south.
Source: Project 1947
Date: February 7, 1955
Location: Knights Landing, California
Time: 4:30 PM local
Summary: While observing conventional jet aircraft, a witness reported a winged object performing a vertical climb followed by a steep dive. This account surfaced in an OSI document sent to the FBI, found in the Blue Book file collection; if accurate, it would be a distant but notable encounter.
Source: Dan Wilson, BB files
Date: February 7, 1955 (BBU)
Location: Fort Wayne, Indiana
Time: 7:55 PM EST
Summary: American Airlines pilots of Flight 266, flying over Fort Wayne, observed 5 star-like stationary objects due north at an estimated altitude of 30,000 to 40,000 feet. The objects then departed at terrific speed. [Full Report]
Source: Unknown
Date: February 9, 1955
Location: Adelaide, Australia
Time: Unknown
Summary: A 10-year-old witness undergoing hypnosis for an unrelated purpose found herself suddenly recalling being inside a flying saucer. Three men lay on gravity couches as the craft approached a planet, entered a hole in a mountain, and approached a city. She explored buildings and reportedly saw where saucers were made and where the beings ate. The sun was described as smaller than Earth’s, the moon larger, with the same constellations. She wore a helmet to go outside since the air was unbreathable; the craft had three globes beneath it, and the male and female beings had black hair, wore overalls or short dresses, and communicated with her by telepathy. Possible duplicate of an entry on the site’s “1955: Unknown Date” page, dated there only “1955” — not yet reconciled.
Source: H.S.W. Chibbett, FSR Special Issue #3
Date: February 10, 1955 (BBU 3427)
Location: Bethesda, Maryland
Time: 10:03 PM
Summary: E. J. Stein, a model maker at a U.S. Navy ship design facility, saw an object shaped like a small portion of the bottom of the Moon, radiant yellow in color, hover for about 30 seconds before its bottom changed to a funnel shape.
Source: Berliner
Date: February 11, 1955 (BBU)
Location: Ryukyu Islands, southern Japan
Time: 7:15 PM local
Summary: A USAF MATS crew flying a C-124 transport saw a yellow or amber, jack-o’-lantern-shaped object flying at 25,000 ft and 1,000 mph. Only the Project Record Card survives; the original case file is missing. Given the crew’s reliability and good weather conditions, the sighting was carried as an official Unknown, though duration and other factors are missing and it is listed as insufficient data.
Source: Project 1947
Date: February 11, 1955
Location: Miami to New York (in transit)
Time: Unknown
Summary: A Pan American Airways flight crew saw two reddish-green objects speed past beneath the wing.
Source: UFOE, V
Date: February 14, 1955 (BB)
Location: Green City, Missouri
Time: 5:15 PM CST
Summary: A civilian witness driving a vehicle reported a disc-shaped object, 100 ft in diameter and 12 ft thick, hovering at 500 ft, complete with “windows.” The sighting was reported to the Air Force and logged on a UFOB Index Card, but due to the brief 20-25 second duration and a delay in the preliminary report reaching headquarters, no subsequent investigation was directed. [Full Report]
Source: BB files, Dan Wilson
Date: February 15, 1955
Location: Welwyn Garden City, England
Time: 9:55 PM
Summary: Two orange, fireball-like lights hovered low together for about 10 minutes before one shot off so fast the witness could not believe it.
Source: National UFO Reporting Center
Date: February 17, 1955 (BBU)
Location: Blackstone, Virginia
Time: Unknown
Summary: A USAF pilot in flight saw an extremely large, light-blue object at 35,000 ft.
Source: Project 1947
Date: February 23, 1955
Location: Broadlands, Hampshire, England
Time: 8:30 AM
Summary: Frederick Briggs, a bricklayer employed on Lord Mountbatten’s Broadlands estate, was cycling to work when he saw a large object hovering over a nearby field, shaped like a huge spinning top, silvery metallic, with a row of portholes around its middle. He approached and dismounted his bicycle; a shaft then descended from the object’s center with a humanoid figure standing on a platform at the bottom, wearing a dark overall and close-fitting helmet. A bluish flash from one of the portholes then knocked Briggs to the ground, unable to move. The shaft retracted, the object rose silently and departed at high speed, and Briggs found he could move again, though he felt dizzy afterward. Mountbatten personally interviewed Briggs and took a signed statement. [Full Report]
Source: Timothy Good, Above Top Secret: The Worldwide UFO Cover-Up
Date: February 24, 1955
Location: Broadlands, Hampshire, England
Time: Morning
Summary: Frederick Briggs reported cycling the same lane the following day and encountering the same humanoid figure standing in the road. The figure, wearing a blue coverall, signaled him to stop, took his hand, and by apparent telepathy invited him aboard an object hovering over a nearby field. Inside, Briggs sat in a small compartment with a triangular window; asked if he wanted to take a trip, he said he wanted to see the pyramids of Egypt again, and reported briefly seeing them through the window before being returned to the same field. This episode is a separately-sourced, later retelling (Desmond Leslie/FSR) and is not part of Briggs’s original 1955 statement to Mountbatten. [Full Report]
Source: Desmond Leslie, FSR Vol. 26 #5
Date: February/March 1955
Location: Connecticut (exact location not given)
Time: Late night
Summary: A witness, then 3 years old, recalled sitting on the edge of the bed as a pulsating green glow came through the window. Footsteps approached from the back door; a blond-haired man and woman, both wearing dull-silver one-piece suits, entered the bedroom, addressed the child by name, and told him they were his friends who would visit from time to time “to help him learn big things.” They told him it was time to sleep and left the way they came, and a hum and brief green flash followed before he fell asleep. The witness reported further encounters, with all memories surfacing unexpectedly in 1989.
Source: UFOs in the Gulf Breeze-Pensacola Area: Contact Since 1955
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
A Royal Estate, a Missouri Roadside, and a Month of Global Scattered Reports
February 1955’s standout case is unquestionably Broadlands: a named witness, a signed statement personally taken by Lord Mountbatten, and physical ground evidence Mountbatten himself examined, making it one of the best-investigated close encounters in the entire archive. The Fort Wayne and Green City cases round out the month’s three standalones — the former a clean multi-witness airline sighting, the latter a case whose own file candidly admits it was too brief to warrant investigation.
The remaining eighteen entries range from routine Project 1947 airliner reports to a Missouri contactee’s Venus narrative and a German castle’s bearded apparition — the ordinary texture of a mid-1950s reporting month, preserved here without embellishment or deletion.
“Due to the brevity of sighting… no subsequent investigation was directed.”
— Blue Book files, Green City, Missouri, February 14, 1955
