1955: May UFO|UAP & Entity Sightings Archive

May 1955 delivers one of the archive’s strongest documented intercepts, when an Air Defense Command F-89D crew out of Duluth, Minnesota radar-locked a target that closed to 6,000 yards, stopped dead, then departed faster than it arrived. The month also brings the “Michelin Man” entities of Dinan, France — two bulky, helmeted figures beside a domed disc, witnessed by a professor struck by a dazzling beam — and a Queensland fireball that touched down and lifted off four separate times as it approached a group of farmers near Cairns. A Naval Proving Ground-adjacent radar case in Iceland, an F-89 crew’s near-supersonic contact, and reports spanning England, Wyoming, and rural France round out a month with an unusually high concentration of well-documented military cases.

Date: May 4, 1955 (BBU 3523)
Location: Keflavik Airport, Iceland
Time: 12:38 p.m.
Summary: USAF Lt. Col. E. J. Stealy and 1st Lt. J. W. Burt saw about 10 round, white objects, one leaving a brief smoke trail, flying in an irregular formation, some making erratic movements.
Source: Berliner; FUFOR Index

Date: May 11, 1955 (BBU)
Location: Thurmon, Colorado
Time: 6:06 p.m. MST
Summary: The crew of an American Airlines DC-7 saw an object flying on a southeasterly course at 20,000 ft.
Source: Project 1947; FUFOR Index

Date: May 13, 1955 (BBU)
Location: Duluth, Minnesota
Time: 8:30 p.m. CST
Summary: Two airmen flying an F-89D on an air intercept mission at 26,000 ft locked an object on radar at 8 miles, closing to 6 miles, then to within 6,000 yards, where it stopped dead. It then departed faster than it arrived, at a scope-estimated speed over 1,000 knots. Crew: 1/Lt. Charles M. Middleton (pilot) and 2/Lt. Donald G. Fisher (radar observer), 11th FIS, both rated completely reliable. [Full Report]
Source: Blue Book files, Dan Wilson; McDonald list

Date: May 14, 1955
Location: Dinan, France
Time: 12:15 a.m.
Summary: On closing the gate to the courtyard of a girls’ college, M. Droguet was struck by a dazzling blue-green beam and temporarily blinded and paralyzed. He then saw an enormous, 40-ft domed disc hovering 5 ft above the courtyard. Near it were two short entities in metallic gray one-piece overalls and bulky helmets, resembling the Michelin “tire man,” with black boxes on their abdomens. One appeared to be collecting pebbles. They walked with difficulty, entered the craft via a ladder, and it rose vertically without sound, its outer part rotating, its light extinguishing. Reported to researchers roughly 15 years after the event. [Full Report]
Source: Jacques Cresson, FSR Case Histories, Supplement #1, October 1970

Date: May 17, 1955 (BB)
Location: Mojave, California
Time: 8:15 p.m. PST
Summary: Two independent observers saw 9 round, red, grapefruit-sized objects arranged in a 2-3-2-2 pattern moving overhead. Television interference (lost voice and picture) was noted. Six objects faded out, one flared, and two disappeared, over a 10-15 minute observation. Project Blue Book’s official evaluation was “Aircraft.”
Source: Dan Wilson, BB files

Date: May 18, 1955 (BB)
Location: Niagara Falls AFB, New York
Time: 8:40 p.m.
Summary: The pilot of an F-86D jet flying over Niagara Falls AFB observed one spherical, white object approximately 10 ft in diameter for about 2-3 seconds.
Source: Dan Wilson

Date: May 20, 1955 (BB)
Location: Between Tokyo Radio and Daigo Homer, Japan
Time: 4:45 p.m.
Summary: A military pilot, described as very experienced, made an air-visual sighting of a swept-wing object at approximately 60,000 ft. It was observed for about 14 minutes before disappearing, leaving puffs of smoke behind.
Source: Blue Book files, Dan Wilson

Date: May 23-24, 1955 (BBU 3565)
Location: Cheyenne, Wyoming
Time: Midnight
Summary: USAF Airman/Basic I. J. Shapiro and E. C. Ingber saw two slender, vertical rectangles low on the horizon, and two dark, dark-blue-illuminated ovals with tops, which flew higher.
Source: Berliner; FUFOR Index

Date: May 25, 1955
Location: Alexandra Park, London, England
Time: Unknown
Summary: A circular, luminous object approached a B-47, then quickly reversed direction and departed at speed. Original entry text was garbled/truncated in the source archive; reconstructed here to the fullest extent recoverable.
Source: UFOE, II

Date: March 1955 (also carried on this page as “May 25, 1955”)
Location: Branch Hill, Ohio
Time: 3:30-4:00 a.m.
Summary: This is the same Robert Hunicutt entity encounter already documented in full on the March 1955 archive page and its standalone report — three short gray figures beside a road, one with a sparking rod. The site’s own records disagree on the date (March 1955 vs. May 25, 1955) across two different source citations; both are noted here rather than silently picking one. See the March 1955 archive and full report for complete case details. [Full Report]
Source: Ted Bloecher & Leonard Stringfield (this page); Stringfield, FS May 1961, Sanderson 147, Magonia 361 (March 1955 page)

Date: May 29, 1955 (approximate)
Location: Smithfield, near Cairns, Australia
Time: 7:20 p.m.
Summary: Three farmers, including Thomas Robinson, watched a light grow in size for 2 minutes as it flew between them and Mt. Williams. Resembling “a light airplane on fire,” it lost altitude, trailed flames, touched ground lighting up the area, and rose again — repeating this four times as it “felt its way” along a cane field/swamp boundary toward their house. Dogs ran out barking as it landed within 100m of the witnesses before departing. [Full Report]
Source: Magonia 363

Date: May 31, 1955
Location: Puy-Saint-Gulmier, France
Time: 11:10 a.m.
Summary: 74-year-old farmer J. B. Collange, watching his cows on a clear, calm morning, observed a vertical circular object about 3 m away, its bottom edge 30 cm from the ground. It measured about 1.10 m in diameter, very luminous white but not blinding, with many colored filaments radiating outward between 0.5 and 2 m in length. The object rose over a hedge and was lost behind some woods.
Source: Magonia 364

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

A Month of Strong Military Radar Cases and One Persistent Entity Archetype

May 1955 is anchored by the Duluth, Minnesota case, one of the strongest radar intercepts in this archive’s entire 1955 run: a named, Air-Force-vetted F-89D crew watched a target close to 6,000 yards, stop dead, and depart at over 1,000 knots, all tracked on live fire-control radar. The Dinan, France encounter offers a rarer kind of documentation — a direct, quoted witness account of two “Michelin Man” entities, corrected here to its proper date of May 14 with substantially richer detail recovered through further research. Smithfield, Australia rounds out the month’s standouts with an unusual four-landing sequence witnessed by three farmers.

Two structural issues were corrected on this page: a duplicated Duluth entry (one detailed, one a blank stub) has been merged into the single entry above, and the “Branch Hill, Ohio, May 25” entry — identical to the Robert Hunicutt case already fully documented on the March 1955 page — is cross-referenced here rather than treated as a separate incident, with the date discrepancy between the two pages’ source citations noted rather than silently resolved. The Alexandra Park, London entry’s source text was garbled in the original archive and has been reconstructed to the fullest extent the surviving fragment allows.

“The object immediately began going out in range faster than it came in.”
— Blue Book case file, on the May 13, 1955 Duluth, Minnesota radar intercept