July 8th-14th, 1952 UFO & Entity Sightings Archive
1952: July 8th-14th
UFO|UAP & Entity Sightings Archive
The second week of July 1952 marks the moment the Cold War’s summer UFO wave truly caught fire. A packed evening of radar activity over Illinois and Wisconsin on July 12th produced timestamped tracks, a scrambled interceptor, and a visually confirmed reddish-orange fireball that made the front page of a local newspaper within days. A Canadian destroyer tracked discs on radar off Korea. A Belgian child’s Marian apparition and a German entity encounter both entered the record. And the week closes with the Nash-Fortenberry sighting on July 14th — eight objects in tight echelon formation over Chesapeake Bay, witnessed by two commercial pilots and corroborated by independent ground observers, one of the most analytically significant cases Project Blue Book ever logged as a genuine unknown.
Date: July 1952
Location: Evergreen, Colorado
Time: Unknown
Summary: A child abduction case tied to Evergreen, Colorado. See the full report for complete case detail. [Full Report]
Source: See full report
Date: July 9, 1952
Location: Hasselbach, Germany
Time: Unknown
Summary: A UFO with occupants was encountered in Hasselbach, Germany. See the full report for complete case detail. [Full Report]
Source: See full report
Date: July 9, 1952 (BBU)
Location: Rapid City AFB, South Dakota
Time: 3:30-3:35 p.m.
Summary: A sergeant and three airmen of the 717th Strategic Reconnaissance Squadron, 28th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing, lying on their backs off the edge of the East-West runway, reported three milky white discs between 30,000 and 40,000 ft, appearing 3-4 inches in diameter at arm’s length, moving faster than any jet they’d seen. Direction of travel was northerly, objects seen one at a time roughly a minute apart, each visible about 5 seconds. This followed a similar object seen minutes earlier by other airmen at the station. At 3:30 p.m., two more airmen at the east end of the runway reported an object at 20,000+ ft, disc-shaped, grayish-white, 3-4 inches at arm’s length, crossing the northwest corner of the airfield from the southwest, stopping to hover, losing and regaining altitude.
Source: FUFOR Index
Date: July 10, 1952
Location: Gerpinnes, Belgium
Time: Unknown
Summary: An entity, interpreted by the 7-year-old witness (Rosette Colmet) to have been the Virgin Mary or “the Madonna,” appeared to her, wearing a white dress decorated with red and blue hearts. See the full report for complete case detail. [Full Report]
Source: Erich Von Daniken, Miracle of the Gods?
Date: July 10, 1952 (BBU)
Location: Near Quantico, Virginia
Time: 8:18 p.m.
Summary: The pilot of National Airlines Flight 42, a C-60 aircraft, saw a very bright amber glow, stationary, then climbing slowly until it disappeared.
Source: Project 1947
Date: July 10, 1952
Location: Near Korea
Time: Unknown
Summary: The crew of the Canadian destroyer HMCS Crusader saw two shiny discs and tracked them on radar.
Source: Unknown
Date: July 12, 1952 (BBU 1431)
Location: Annapolis, Maryland
Time: 3:30 p.m.
Summary: Insurance company president William Washburn saw 4 large, elliptical-shaped objects fly very fast, stop, turn 90°, and fly away. 7-8 seconds.
Source: Berliner
Date: July 12, 1952
Location: Northern Illinois / Williams Bay, Wisconsin
Time: 8:05-8:30 p.m.
Summary: An Air Intelligence Information Report from the 755th AC&W Squadron, Williams Bay, Wisconsin, combined civilian visual reports with multi-radar detection. In Chicago, four named civilian witnesses — Mr. J. M. Stark, Mr. L. Matheis, Mr. L. Schrenk, and Mr. A. Cressy — independently reported objects: a greenish object that came to a standstill then moved off at high speed; a yellowish object that turned westward; a reddish object weaving at low altitude; and a fourth, non-jet-type object. Through the 31st Air Division and ADCC, three separate ground radars — Mastiff (AN/FPS-3), Origin (FPS-10), and Cousin (AN/GPS-6B) — picked up strange objects heading west and north at 3,000+ mph across several areas at differing altitudes. Originally logged on this page as two separate entries (one framed around the Chicago civilian sightings, one around the multi-radar detection); merged here as the same underlying report.
Source: Dan Wilson
Date: July 12, 1952 (BBU)
Location: Belleville, Illinois
Time: 8:30-9:20 p.m.
Summary: The 798th AC&W Squadron logged 5 separate radar contacts over roughly 50 minutes, with speeds up to 1,700 knots. At 2110Z (9:10 p.m.), three airmen visually observed a large, intensely reddish-orange, round object flying a straight, horizontal course faster than any known aircraft, for about 20 seconds; one aircraft was scrambled to observe. Around 9:00 p.m., a large fireball-type object was independently seen by many witnesses across the wider Belleville/St. Louis area, making the front page of the Edwardsville Intelligencer two days later. [Full Report]
Source: Edwardsville Intelligencer, Illinois, July 14, 1952, page 1
Date: July 12 (or 13), 1952 (BBU 1436)
Location: Kirksville, Missouri
Time: 9:00 p.m.
Summary: Several radar controllers, all military officers, saw several large radar blips tracked at 1,500 knots (1,700 mph). No visual sighting was made.
Source: Berliner
Date: July 12, 1952 (BBU)
Location: Arlington, Illinois
Time: 9:04 p.m.
Summary: A USAF pilot in a flight of two F-86s with the 62nd Fighter-Interceptor Squadron, coming out of a right turn, saw (and possibly radar-tracked) an oblong yellowish, lighted object trailing a light, flying a straight course on heading 240°, about 15 miles away at 22,000 ft, traveling 700 knots. The F-86 pursued at maximum speed but the object pulled away. Both pilots heard a strange radio transmission on their restricted comm channel during the pursuit, saying the name of the pursuing pilot, Casey, in an eerie tone. 20 seconds.
Source: Project 1947
Date: July 12, 1952
Location: Unspecified
Time: 9:05 p.m.
Summary: An American Airlines Convair pilot and copilot saw an object paralleling the aircraft, then dropping down.
Source: Project 1947
Date: July 12, 1952
Location: Chicago, Illinois
Time: Unknown
Summary: An Air Force weather officer and many others at Montrose Beach saw a large red object with small white lights on its side reverse course directly overhead.
Source: UFOE, III
Date: July 12, 1952 (BBU)
Location: Dayton, Ohio
Time: 9:13 p.m.
Summary: USAF pilots of two F-86s with the 97th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron saw two brilliant round white lights hovering at 21,000 ft, which then disappeared.
Source: Project 1947
Date: July 13, 1952 (BBU)
Location: 60 miles SW of Washington, D.C.
Time: 4:00 a.m.
Summary: National Airlines Flight 611 pilot Capt. William Bruen, flying north from Jacksonville, Florida, saw a round ball of bluish-white light hovering to the west, then ascending to the airliner’s altitude of 11,000 ft before paralleling the aircraft off the left wing at about 2 miles’ distance. It took off upward at 1,000 mph when Bruen turned on all the aircraft’s lights.
Source: Hynek UFO Report, pp. 90-91; NARCAP
Date: July 13, 1952
Location: Osceola, Wisconsin
Time: Unknown
Summary: The 674th AC&W Squadron tracked eleven unidentified flying objects on radar at speeds of 12,000 to 20,000 knots.
Source: Unknown
Date: July 13, 1952
Location: Fordland, Missouri
Time: Not given
Summary: At the 797th AC&W Squadron, one object was observed on radar, very large at times, varying in size up to 3 degrees in width, at an estimated speed of 180 to 600 mph. It appeared to stop maneuvering for as long as two minutes. The object was tracked from west to east and back west toward Kansas City before fading.
Source: Unknown
Date: July 14, 1952
Location: Near Okinawa (Kadena Air Base)
Time: 10:10 p.m.
Summary: At Kadena Air Base, S/Sgt. Eugene K. Chalmers and 2nd Lt. Phillip Galtieri observed a spherical object to the north of the base. The object was moving straight down, but its course changed immediately, moving to the northeast across the sky. When the course change occurred, the object appeared to slow down and almost stop in midair, then picked up considerable speed and vanished.
Source: Unknown
Date: July 14, 1952 (BBU)
Location: Holloman AFB, New Mexico
Time: 10:20 a.m. MST
Summary: Unidentified objects were observed over the missile test range during a Hughes Aircraft project mission. Two hundred feet of 35mm film was taken of two maneuvering objects at a high elevation angle to the NNE. Two other witnesses watching a B-29 on the mission through 6-power binoculars saw an object cross in front of the B-29, similar in size and apparent speed to the project’s F-86 — but it wasn’t the F-86, which overtook the B-29 shortly afterward. Mr. H. R. Morris and Mr. Floyd Fannon, operating the project’s X-band radar, observed something on their “A” scope resembling a jet going the opposite direction from the B-29. A bright object was also observed passing through the field of vision by an optical tracker using a 20-power monocular scope near the radar site. The radar “pip” was about the size and apparent speed of a jet fighter at 35,000 ft, observed for a few minutes.
Source: Dan Wilson
Date: July 14, 1952 (BB)
Location: 20 miles S of McChord AFB, Washington
Time: 11:50 p.m.
Summary: USAF pilots of two fighters from the 318th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron saw a strange object with red and green lights slowly rolling between the two aircraft.
Source: Project 1947
Date: July 14, 1952
Location: Chesapeake Bay, Virginia
Time: Night
Summary: The Nash-Fortenberry Sighting — two commercial pilots, William B. Nash and William H. Fortenberry, saw eight UFOs flying in a tight echelon formation over Chesapeake Bay. Precise measurements of the objects’ motion and size were possible against known landmarks, and the encounter was corroborated by several independent groups of ground witnesses. Listed by Project Blue Book as an “Unknown.” See the full report for complete case detail. [Full Report]
Source: See full report
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Radar Saturation Across the Midwest, and Two Pilots Over the Chesapeake
The night of July 12, 1952 alone produced radar or visual reports from at least six separate locations across Illinois, Wisconsin, Missouri, and Ohio within a few hours of each other — a level of simultaneous, multi-station activity that makes this one of the most radar-dense single nights in the entire month. The Belleville, Illinois case stands out for a genuinely rare feature: contemporaneous newspaper coverage from just two days after the event, rather than a retrospective compilation appearing decades later. The week closes with the Nash-Fortenberry sighting on July 14 — among the most analytically significant cases Blue Book ever logged, with precise landmark-referenced measurements and independent ground corroboration.
One duplicate was merged this pass: two separate July 12 entries describing Chicago-area civilian sightings and a three-radar Wisconsin/Illinois detection turned out to be drawing from the same underlying Air Intelligence Information Report, and have been combined into a single entry. Four existing standalones (Evergreen CO, Hasselbach Germany, Gerpinnes Belgium, Nash-Fortenberry) are linked here with available summary detail; their full case pages are being separately reviewed for potential rebuild.
“The speed of the object was faster than any known aircraft.”
— Edwardsville Intelligencer, on the July 12, 1952 Belleville, Illinois case
