May 1956: an Air Force crew passes a ribbed elliptical object at 225 feet over Louisiana, and radar tracks seven objects over Pennsylvania.
1956: May UFO|UAP & Entity Sightings Archive
At 11:05 p.m. on May 22, 1956, a T-33 jet flying at 18,000 feet over Louisiana encountered something that came straight at it from the southeast at high speed and passed 225 feet in front of the canopy. USAF officer Earl Holwadel and his back-seater could see it in detail: elliptical, about 30 to 40 feet long, with ribbed steel-colored undersides, stubby protrusions instead of wings, and a single steady red running light at its center. As it passed the cockpit, its forward “greenhouse-shaped dome” flashed an intensely bright white light that lit up their canopy. Then it came back for a second pass.
The Monroe, Louisiana near-collision is the anchor of the May 1956 sightings archive and one of the most detailed military pilot encounters of the decade. At the other end of the month stands a twelve-year-old girl in a Belgian kitchen garden who watched a transparent craft drift over the oak trees with two beings visible inside it smiling and waving. A week later the same girl found a flat-domed grey disc sitting on the ground in the next field and watched two men in gray coveralls bend over the soil before the craft rose and shot away. In between: seven silver objects tracked by radar over Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, a glowing object over Pine Castle AFB in Florida, two witnesses at a Jacksonville bus stop who ran from pulsating lights that dove toward them, and a hairy figure in the Argentine mountains.
Date: May 1956
Location: Rengo Valley, Argentina (isolated mountainous area)
Time: Unknown
Summary: Independent witnesses reported encountering in an isolated mountainous area a tall, hairy, man-like figure that attacked them. A local farmer, P. Espinoza, was confronted by a tall hairy figure with long arms wearing what appeared to be a leather loincloth. The figure ran into the woods when the witness resisted.
Source: Fabio Picasso
Source Status: Single-investigator account. The figure’s description matches the class of South American humanoid/Bigfoot-type reports collected by Picasso; no independent documentation has been located.
Date: May 1, 1956
Location: Ada, Oklahoma
Time: Unknown
Summary: A circular object was observed for about 20 seconds.
Source: NUFORC
Source Status: No further details on file.
Date: May 1, 1956
Location: Tokyo, Japan
Time: Unknown
Summary: An unidentified object caused television signal distortion.
Source: NICAP (1960)
Source Status: NICAP index entry only; no witness description or duration on file.
Date: May 8, 1956
Location: Aliquippa, Pennsylvania
Time: 9:48 a.m. (EST)
Summary: A flight of seven silver objects, appearing the size of a baseball held at arm’s length, were observed moving south at an estimated altitude of 5,000 to 15,000 feet and a speed of about 36 mph. The sighting was visual and confirmed by a TPS-1D radar set. An F-86D fighter was scrambled but made no contact. The observation lasted about 10 minutes.
Source: McDonald list; Brad Sparks; Dan Wilson; BBU Files (BBU)
Date: May 9, 1956
Location: Jacksonville, Florida
Time: 11:00 p.m.
Summary: Joan Frost and Gertie Wynn, waiting for a bus, saw two pulsating lights flying horizontally and disappearing. About 15 minutes later the lights appeared again, stopped at the zenith, merged, and dove toward them to about 50 meters altitude. As the bus arrived, it seemed the objects had separated and were approaching the witnesses, who ran to the bus in terror.
Source: Jacques Vallée, Passport to Magonia, case 382; APRO Bulletin, March 1959
Date: May 15, 1956
Location: Pine Castle AFB, Florida
Time: Unknown
Summary: A large white light was seen traveling slowly, then accelerating to great altitude in seconds. No sound. Duration about 45 minutes.
Source: NUFORC
Source Status: No additional details on file. The location is the Air Force’s electronic warfare test base in Florida, later renamed McCoy AFB.
Date: May 17, 1956
Location: Canton, Ohio
Time: Unknown
Summary: A silver disc was stationary at first, then moved across the sky so rapidly the witness concluded it could not be man-made. Duration about 2 minutes.
Source: NUFORC
Source Status: Single-witness account from a general reporting database; no period documentation.
Date: May 22, 1956
Location: About 58 miles northwest of Monroe, Louisiana
Time: 11:05 p.m. (CST); second encounter at 11:15 p.m.
Summary: USAF officer Earl D. Holwadel was piloting a T-33 jet with an unnamed back-seater on a night flight at 18,000 feet on a heading of 50 degrees. At 11:05 p.m. he saw a bright light to the east, then spotted it again at 11:15 p.m., this time to the southeast at great distance. He banked right, and the object suddenly reversed and came directly at them at high speed. It passed in front of the T-33 at an estimated 225 feet, on a heading of 330 degrees. As it crossed the nose, the object’s forward structure — described as a greenhouse-shaped dome or cockpit window — flashed an intensely bright white light that lit up the T-33’s entire canopy. The crew described the object as elliptical and about 30 to 40 feet long, shorter than a C-47 but wider, with a single small steady red running light at its center and no wings — only stubby protrusions about 3 to 4 feet long and 25 feet across on each side. Its bottom surface appeared to be steel with ribs extending 2 to 4 feet down in a wave-like pattern. After the first pass the object moved away, then returned at high speed on a westward course, demonstrating what the crew described as fantastic maneuverability without ever changing its flight attitude.
Source: NARCAP; McDonald list; Hynek-CUFOS files (BBU)
Date: May or June 1956
Location: East Flanders, Belgium
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Summary: A 12-year-old girl was in the kitchen garden behind her family home. A circular object appeared above the northwestern wall and flew from north to south, passing over the western corner where tall trees and a large oak grew. As the object was above the treetops, she could see two beings of human appearance through its apparently translucent surface. They were smiling and waving their arms. The object disappeared to the south before she could call anyone.
Source: Bulletin du GESAG, No. 109, March 2003
Source Status: Single witness, reported to investigators decades later. The two East Flanders Belgium encounters are from the same witness; see the following entry.
Date: Late May 1956
Location: East Flanders, Belgium (same area as above)
Time: Afternoon
Summary: The same 12-year-old girl from the previous incident had climbed over a wall into a field near her property. There she encountered a dark gray circular object sitting on the ground, with a flat dome on top no higher than a car. Two men in gray coveralls appeared near the object without any transition she could identify; they were bending over the ground as if searching for something. They disappeared just as suddenly, and the craft rose vertically several meters before rapidly flying north. Duration: one to two minutes.
Source: Bulletin du GESAG, No. 109, March 2003; Godelieve Van Overmeire
Source Status: Same single witness as the previous entry; retrospective account collected by researcher Godelieve Van Overmeire. Both encounters come from one late-reported source.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
A Near-Collision Over Louisiana and a Belgian Girl’s Two Encounters
May 1956 is anchored by the Monroe, Louisiana T-33 encounter, the most detail-rich military pilot case in the first half of 1956. Earl Holwadel and his back-seater had an object come at them head-on at 225 feet, close enough to make out its ribbed steel underside and stubby protrusions, and then had it return for a second pass. The case is in the McDonald list, the NARCAP database and the Hynek-CUFOS files. The Aliquippa, Pennsylvania formation, tracked simultaneously on a TPS-1D ground radar and seen by multiple observers for 10 minutes with an F-86D scramble, is the month’s other solid Blue Book case.
The ground-level record spans a wider range. A Belgian girl, about 12 years old, had two encounters within weeks: a transparent craft drifting over her garden with two beings visible and waving, and a landed grey disc with two men in gray coveralls bending over the soil. Both are retrospective accounts from a single late-reported source. Argentina contributes a hairy figure in the mountain valleys, Jacksonville two bus-stop witnesses who ran from diving lights, and Pine Castle AFB a long-duration white light. The month’s tags suggest several cases that were once in an earlier version of this page — Athens, Bermejo River, Angoon, Barter Island, Punta del Este, Bolivia, Bermuda — but no source details for them have been located. Those are flagged for research below.
“The object passed in front of us at about 225 feet.”
USAF officer Earl D. Holwadel, T-33, Monroe, Louisiana, May 22, 1956 (NARCAP / McDonald list)
