Near Northampton, Massachusetts, March 26, 1956: Captain Edwards' landing lights found a 100-150 ft silver disc with stepped terraces and a green rim glow. His wing cameras were running. The photographs have never been released.
THINK ABOUTIT UFO|UAP SIGHTINGS REPORT
1956: Westover AFB, Massachusetts:
Captain Edwards Illuminates a Disc and Loses It at 30,000 Feet
On the evening of Monday, March 26, 1956, the radar at Westover Air Force Base — a Strategic Air Command installation in western Massachusetts — picked up an unidentified blip moving rapidly toward them from the direction of Fitchburg. Sixteen jets were scrambled. With radar guidance from the tower, they were vectored on a collision course with the object. One pilot, Captain F.E. Edwards flying the lead aircraft, sighted it near Northampton and gave chase. He closed until he was able to illuminate the object with his landing lights. What they showed him was a large, silver, disc-shaped device approximately 100 to 150 feet in diameter and 8 to 12 feet thick, with a circular top surface built in stepped terraces and a flat bottom. A green fluorescent glow ran around its outer edge. No openings or portholes were visible.
Shortly after Edwards’ lights found the object, it tipped up on its edge at a 45-degree angle and climbed at what the pilot estimated was 900 mph. He lost it at 30,000 feet. All planes were back on the ground by 9:48 p.m. The tower daily report — classified at the time — was signed by Captain Edwards as reporting officer. The Greenfield, Massachusetts newspaper noted the scramble the next day: “sky full of them.” What the papers didn’t know was that one pilot had gotten close enough to photograph it.
Date: March 26, 1956 (last Monday of March 1956; confirmed by tower daily report dated 26/3/56)
Sighting Time: 9:17 p.m. (first contact established per tower daily report); intercept and visual contact approximately 9:17–9:48 p.m.
Day/Night: Night
Location: Westover Air Force Base (SAC), Chicopee, Massachusetts; radar contact from direction of Fitchburg, Mass.; visual contact near Northampton, Mass.
Urban or Rural: Military air base / rural western Massachusetts
No. of Entity(‘s): Not Applicable
Entity Type: Not Applicable
Entity Description: Not Applicable
Hynek Classification: DD (Daylight Disc — disc shape confirmed visually at night under landing lights; CE-I level by proximity but no physical effects on aircraft recorded)
Duration: Radar contact from approximately 9:17 p.m.; all planes returned 9:48 p.m.; total engagement approximately 31 minutes
No. of Object(s): 1
Description of the Object(s): Large, silver disc-like device approximately 100–150 feet in diameter and 8–12 feet thick. Circular top surface built in stepped terraces (described as “dropping off from center to rim in a series of terraces”). Bottom flat or generally so. Green fluorescent (neon) glow around outer edge. No openings or portholes visible. No sound reported.
Shape/Size/Color of Object(s): Disc; 100–150 ft diameter; 8–12 ft thick; silver; green fluorescent rim glow; stepped top surface; flat bottom
Distance to Object(s): Close enough for Captain Edwards to illuminate with aircraft landing lights and for wing cameras to secure photographs
Height & Speed: Initial approach from direction of Fitchburg at high speed; visual contact near Northampton. Object tipped to 45 degrees and climbed; lost at 30,000 feet. Estimated escape speed approximately 900 mph (pilot’s own estimate per tower report chain). Object was “approaching at 700 mph” initially per some accounts.
Number of Witnesses: Multiple. Tower radar observers: Paul Clark (civilian tower operator) and James Bull (Sgt. 1/c, tower wireman). Airborne: Captain F.E. Edwards (lead ship) and pilots of the other scrambled aircraft. 16 jets total scrambled from Westover SAC and ANG Westfield.
Special Features/Characteristics: Radar tracking from initial contact through intercept. Captain Edwards closed to landing-light illumination distance and described the object in detail. Wing-camera photographs reportedly secured. Object departed by tipping to 45 degrees and climbing steeply to 30,000 feet. All sprint (afterburner) was authorized. No sound from object at any point.
Case Status: Not submitted to Project Blue Book (no BBU case number identified). Documented in the Westover AFB Control Tower Daily Report (Classified 56-51-059, date 26/3/56, reporting officer Capt. F.E. Edwards, USAF). Source chain: tower daily report → tower operator informant → Rev. Albert H. Baller → Len Stringfield / Barry Greenwood archive.
Source: Westover AFB Control Tower Daily Report, 26 March 1956, Classified 56-51-059, signed Capt. F.E. Edwards USAF; Notes from tape of Rev. Albert H. Baller, ca. January 1957, #2459 (Barry Greenwood archive); Rev. Baller letter to [recipient], ca. January 1957 (Barry Greenwood archive, pages 12–15)
Summary/Description: Westover AFB SAC radar tracked an object approaching from Fitchburg. 16 jets scrambled; Capt. F.E. Edwards sighted the object near Northampton, illuminated it with landing lights, and described a 100–150 ft silver disc with stepped top surface and green fluorescent rim. It tipped to 45° and climbed to 30,000 ft. Wing-camera photographs reportedly taken. No Blue Book case number.
Related Cases: 1956: March UFO|UAP & Entity Sightings Archive; 1956: Westover AFB July 17 CPN-18A Radar (separate case)
Detailed Report
Westover Air Force Base in Chicopee, Massachusetts was in 1956 one of the most significant Strategic Air Command installations on the eastern seaboard, hosting heavy bombers and the radar infrastructure required to defend the northeast corridor. On the evening of Monday, March 26, 1956, the Westover control tower radar — operating equipment designated HAL-B4992 with an ALD VR 445 height finder — picked up an unidentified contact at 9:17 p.m. approaching rapidly from the direction of Fitchburg, Massachusetts.
The tower team scrambled aircraft immediately. Sixteen jets were launched — from Westover SAC and ANG Westfield (scrambled at 9:25 p.m.) — and were vectored by radar on a collision course with the object. Tower civilian operator Paul Clark and tower wireman Sgt. James Bull tracked the contact on scope. The daily report names the incident subject simply as “V.F.O.”
Captain F.E. Edwards, flying the lead ship, acquired the object visually near Northampton and gave chase. He closed to the distance required to illuminate it with his aircraft’s landing lights. In the beam, he saw a large, silver, disc-shaped device. He described it as approximately 100 to 150 feet in diameter and 8 to 12 feet thick. Its top surface was circular, built in stepped terraces — dropping from the center to the rim progressively like a series of concentric platforms. The bottom was flat, or nearly so. Around the outer edge ran a green fluorescent glow. There were no openings, portholes or protrusions of any kind. The object made no sound. Edwards also activated his wing cameras and secured photographs.
Shortly after the landing lights found the object, it tipped up on its edge at a 45-degree angle and climbed steeply. Edwards estimated its departure speed at approximately 900 mph. He lost it at 30,000 feet. Afterburner — “all sprint” — had been authorized for all aircraft. All 16 planes were back on the ground at 9:48 p.m. All secure was reported at 9:50 p.m.
The following day, the Greenfield, Massachusetts newspaper noted the scramble — reporting the sky had been “full of” jets. A smaller nearby paper carried the same story. Neither mentioned the visual contact or the photographs.
The tower daily report, classified at the time as document 56-51-059, was signed by Captain F.E. Edwards as reporting officer. The tower man — identified in the source chain as the civilian operator who witnessed the radar tracking — subsequently contacted the Reverend Albert H. Baller, a Massachusetts UFO researcher who had developed a reputation in local circles as someone interested in “flying saucers.” The tower man met Baller the following day at a Greenfield restaurant, described the incident, and provided Baller with a copy of Edwards’ pilot UFO report. Baller in turn sent it to Len Stringfield, the Cincinnati-based UFO researcher and CRIFO editor, and the case entered the private researcher network. Barry Greenwood later obtained the documents, which are the primary sources for this account.
RESEARCHER’S NOTES
A Real Tower Report, A Named Pilot, and Photographs That Have Never Surfaced
- The tower daily report is a primary document: Page 14 is the Westover AFB Control Tower Daily Report for March 26, 1956, bearing classification stamp 56-51-059, date 26/3/56, with named observers (Paul Clark, civilian; James Bull, Sgt. 1/c), named reporting officer (F.E. Edwards, Capt. USAF), time of first contact (21:17), scramble time (21:19), and equipment designations. This is not a summary or a secondary account — it is a contemporaneous official base document. It establishes that the scramble happened, that Edwards was the reporting officer, and that the date, time, and location are as stated.
- The source chain for the description: The detailed visual description of the object comes through the tower man → Baller chain, not directly from the Edwards report. Baller states the tower man gave him “a copy of the pilot’s UFO report” — but what appears in Baller’s notes and letter is the tower man’s verbal account of what Edwards reported, plus whatever written material Baller received. The written material Baller sent to Stringfield has not been independently located. The tower daily report (page 14) confirms the scramble and names Edwards; the visual description rests on Baller’s documentation of the tower man’s account.
- No Blue Book case number: Despite extensive searching, no Project Blue Book case has been identified for this event. This is significant. Westover was a SAC base — the Air Force’s most sensitive strategic command. SAC installations sometimes handled UFO incidents internally rather than routing them through Blue Book, particularly when photography was involved. The classification of the tower daily report as 56-51-059 suggests the incident was processed within the base’s own reporting system. Whether a separate ATIC report exists that has not been indexed is unknown.
- The wing-camera photographs: The Baller letter explicitly states Edwards “secured some pictures with his wing-cameras.” Wing cameras on 1950s jet fighters were standard equipment for gunnery training and combat assessment — they activated automatically during weapons system use or manually by the pilot. If photographs were taken, they would have been processed by the base photo lab and classified. No photographs from this incident have ever been published or declassified. Their existence is asserted through the tower man → Baller chain; no independent confirmation is available.
- Captain F.E. Edwards: Named in both the tower daily report (as reporting officer) and the Baller account (as the lead pilot who made visual contact). The name “F.E. Edwards” appears on the signed tower report. This is not Capt. Thomas F. Edwards or the public figure Frank Edwards — it is a USAF captain assigned to Westover SAC in March 1956. Attempts to identify his full name and subsequent service record have not been made in available research.
- The Keyhoe version: Donald Keyhoe’s account in Flying Saucers: Top Secret (1960) described a similar Westover intercept but with an unnamed pilot identified only as “Captain E______.” Keyhoe’s version differs in several details from the Baller/Greenwood documents. The Baller/Greenwood material — being closer to the source, documented earlier, and containing the primary tower report — takes precedence. The Keyhoe account should be understood as a version of the same event filtered through his sources rather than an independent corroboration.
The March 26, 1956 Westover case is anchored by a real classified base document naming real people at a real SAC installation on a confirmed date. The visual description of the object, the 16-jet scramble, the wing-camera photographs and the departure at 30,000 feet come through a documented source chain that begins with the Westover tower operator and ends in the Barry Greenwood archive. What has never emerged — not in the FOIA era, not in the Blue Book microfilm release, not in any declassified SAC records — are the photographs Captain Edwards reportedly took.
Capt. Edwards was able to get near enough to it to shine his landing lights on it and also to secure some pictures with his wing-cameras. The lights showed a large, silver disc-like device, some 100-150 ft in diameter.
Rev. Albert H. Baller, documenting the account of the Westover AFB tower operator, ca. January 1957 — Barry Greenwood archive, pages 12–13; tower daily report confirmed 26/3/56, Capt. F.E. Edwards USAF, reporting officer
