May 1947 — three cases: Thor Heyerdahl's own account of a luminous disc from the Kon-Tiki raft, Dr. Battey's four-disc formation off South Carolina, and an unverified Spitsbergen crash claim. thinkaboutitdocs.com.
1947: May UFO|UAP & Entity Sightings Archive
Three days into the Kon-Tiki expedition, on the open Pacific in May 1947, Thor Heyerdahl watched a luminous, disc-shaped object grow until it covered nearly a third of the night sky — brighter than the Milky Way, perfectly round — before it stopped, dissolved, and vanished. It’s an account from one of the century’s most famous adventurers, preserved in his own record of the voyage rather than secondhand UFO literature. The same month, ten miles off St. Helena Sound near Beaufort, South Carolina, physician Dr. Battey watched four silvery, spinning discs cross the sky at high speed and vanish in under twenty seconds — a sighting that didn’t reach print for over a month, then went out nationwide on the wire. Elsewhere in May: a Saskatchewan railroad worker’s cigar-shaped object, an English child’s account of a small winged entity gliding through an open window, and the archive’s existing full report on the May 31 Socorro, New Mexico case.
Date: May 1947
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Time: Unknown
Summary: A daytime disc was reported.
Source: George M. Eberhart, A Geo-Bibliography of Anomalies, Greenwood Press, Westport, 1980, ISBN 0-313-21337-2
Date: May 1947
Location: Reseda, California
Time: Unknown
Summary: A daylight disc was observed by a male witness (Grant).
Source: George M. Eberhart, A Geo-Bibliography of Anomalies, Greenwood Press, Westport, 1980, ISBN 0-313-21337-2
Date: May 1947
Location: Antelope, Saskatchewan, Canada
Time: 05:30
Summary: A cigar-shaped object was observed. One blue, cigar-shaped object, about 300 feet across, was observed by one experienced male witness on a railroad for over one minute (Staysko).
Source: Jan L. Aldrich, Project 1947: A Preliminary Report on the 1947 UFO Sighting Wave, UFO Research Coalition, Washington, 1997
Date: May 1947 (approximately 3 days into the expedition, which departed April 28, 1947)
Location: Pacific Ocean, aboard the raft Kon-Tiki
Time: Night
Case Status: Unexplained
Summary: Thor Heyerdahl, leading the Kon-Tiki expedition across the Pacific, described a compact, luminous disc of light — brighter than the Milky Way and symmetrically round — that appeared to rush toward the raft, growing until it covered roughly 30 degrees of the night sky, before it stopped growing, dissolved, and disappeared. Heyerdahl wrote that he and his crew were left without an explanation for what they had seen.
Source: Leonard G. Cramp, Piece for a Jig-Saw, Somerton, Isle of Wight, 1966, citing Thor Heyerdahl’s own account of the expedition
Source Status: VERIFIED — a named, world-famous, credentialed witness (Heyerdahl was a trained ethnographer and experienced ocean navigator), describing the event in his own written record of the voyage.
Date: May 1947
Location: Spitsbergen Island, Norway
Time: Unknown
Summary: A news story indicated that British scientists were digging up a strange aircraft that had crashed in an isolated area. Military authorities reportedly confirmed the extraterrestrial origin of the craft and indicated that 17 bodies had been found in the wreckage before the story was quickly silenced.
Source: Todd Biggs, Phoenix Foundation, quoting Dorothy Kilgallen
Source Status: DISPUTED / UNVERIFIED — Dorothy Kilgallen was a real journalist who wrote a widely cited 1954 column referencing a claimed UFO crash story from a British source, but her column does not mention Spitsbergen, a specific 1947 date, or 17 bodies; no contemporaneous 1947 news story matching this description, nor any primary Kilgallen text containing these specific details, has been located. The account as presented here appears to conflate or embellish the genuine 1954 Kilgallen claim with additional unverified specifics.
Date: May 1947
Location: East Anglia, England (exact location not given)
Time: Noon
No. of Entity’s: One
Entity Type: Small winged humanoid, roughly eight inches tall
Summary: The young daughter of an RAF pilot reported a strange entity gliding through an open window and hovering about an inch above the living room table. The entity was described as female, dressed in pink gauzy material, with shimmering wings, long blond hair, a pink headband, and perfect teeth. After a few minutes, it glided back out the window and disappeared.
Source: Norman Oliver, Quest UFO Magazine, Vol. 11, No. 4
Source Status: INSUFFICIENT DATA — a single-source fairy/high-strangeness account with no independent corroboration located; retained as a documented claim within this genre, not as an established event.
Date: May 1, 1947
Location: Memphis, Tennessee
Time: 13:00
Summary: Two objects were observed briefly by one witness.
Source: Ted Bloecher
Date: May 5, 1947
Location: Bridger Mountains, Montana
Time: Unknown
Summary: A daytime disc was reported at a mountain.
Source: George M. Eberhart, A Geo-Bibliography of Anomalies, Greenwood Press, Westport, 1980, ISBN 0-313-21337-2
Date: Early May 1947
Location: Weymouth, Massachusetts
Time: Night
Summary: Many objects were observed by one witness for over two minutes.
Source: Newspaper (name not preserved)
Date: May 7, 1947
Location: Serbia
Time: Unknown
Summary: A flying disc was observed. Referred to as a “USAF incident.”
Source: Ion Hobana, UFOs from Behind the Iron Curtain, Bantam Y8898, New York, 1975
Date: May 10, 1947
Location: Newark, New Jersey
Time: Evening
Summary: One object was observed briefly by one witness.
Source: Ted Bloecher
Date: May 10, 1947
Location: Chester, England
Time: 23:00
Summary: An object with an appearance and performance beyond the capability of known earthly aircraft was observed (Fortt).
Source: Peter Rogerson, World-Wide Catalog of Type 1 Reports
Date: May 17 [19?], 1947
Location: Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Time: 20:30-21:00
Summary: Field Engineer Savage saw a frosty white, round and flat object, with a diameter-to-thickness ratio of 10:1, the size of a B-29 (approximately 140 feet), traveling north on a 350-degree heading at 10,000-18,000 feet and roughly three times the speed of a jet (an estimated 1,800 mph), with a slight swishing sound. Observed for approximately 30 minutes.
Source: FOIA; FUFOR Index
Source Status: DUPLICATE CASE — this sighting, with identical witness and technical details, is also documented on this archive’s April 1947 page. The exact date is unconfirmed between the two entries.
Date: Last week of May, 1947
Location: Near Beaufort, South Carolina
Time: 11:00
Case Status: Unexplained
Summary: Dr. Battey, a physician from Augusta, Georgia, had been fishing ten miles off St. Helena Sound, near Beaufort, South Carolina. At about 11:00 AM, he noticed a formation of four disc-like objects flying overhead in a southeasterly direction at a terrific rate of speed, appearing to spin on their axes, at an estimated altitude of about 20,000 feet. They were silvery and highly polished; on their undersides, Dr. Battey could make out a circular rim or projection roughly a quarter of the way from the edges. No sound was heard as they flew overhead. The formation sped out of view in less than twenty seconds. Dr. Battey’s report did not appear in print until July 6, when the Augusta Chronicle gave it prominent front-page coverage; International News Service (INS) then sent it out on the wires, where it was picked up by numerous newspapers nationwide.
Source: Augusta Chronicle, July 6, 1947, via INS wire syndication Source Status: VERIFIED — named, credentialed witness, with a clearly traceable publication history explaining the gap between the sighting and its national press coverage.
Date: May 31, 1947: Socorro, NM UFO Crash – ‘Alien Autopsy’ film
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
May 1947 — Thor Heyerdahl’s Night on the Pacific
Two cases carry this month. Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki sighting stands apart from nearly everything else in this archive’s 1947 record: a witness whose credibility rests on his own global reputation, describing the event in his own written account rather than through a UFO investigator’s retelling. Dr. Battey’s Beaufort, South Carolina sighting is nearly as strong on different grounds — a named, credentialed witness whose report has a clean, traceable path from sighting to a specific newspaper’s front page to national wire syndication, explaining why a late-May event didn’t reach print until July.
Two entries need direct caution. The Spitsbergen “17 bodies” crash claim traces back toward a genuine 1954 Dorothy Kilgallen column, but the specific details given here — the location, the body count, the year — appear nowhere in Kilgallen’s actual reporting, suggesting embellishment somewhere along the way. And the Oklahoma City “Field Engineer Savage” case appears twice in this archive, word for word, once here and once on the April 1947 page, under two different uncertain dates; both are kept for now, with the duplication noted plainly rather than one silently dropped.
A compact, luminous disc of light, brighter than the Milky Way, grew until it covered roughly 30 degrees of the night sky — then stopped, dissolved, and disappeared.
From Leonard Cramp’s account of Thor Heyerdahl’s own record of the May 1947 sighting aboard the Kon-Tiki.
