THINK ABOUTIT UFO|UAP SIGHTINGS REPORT

1951: The Lubbock Lights — Texas Tech Professors, Carl Hart’s Photographs and an Air Force Verdict of Birds

At about 9:10 p.m. on August 25, 1951, three Texas Technological College professors sitting in a backyard in Lubbock watched a semicircle of silent, bluish-green lights cross the sky from northeast to southwest in a few seconds, and a second formation followed minutes later. They timed the lights at about 30 degrees of arc per second. Over the next weeks the same group, and hundreds of other people, saw more flights, and on the night of August 30 a Texas Tech freshman, Carl Hart Jr., photographed one with a Kodak 35.

Capt. Edward J. Ruppelt of the Air Technical Intelligence Center went to Lubbock from November 6 to 9, 1951, and interviewed the professors, the photographer, the editors and a game warden. The Air Force concluded the lights were probably birds, most likely ducks, reflecting the city’s street lights. The professors rejected that, and the Wright-Patterson laboratory said it could neither confirm nor deny that Hart’s negatives recorded unknown objects.

Completed Template

Date: August 25, 1951 (first sighting); the Hart photographs were taken August 30, 1951; sightings continued intermittently to about mid-October 1951

Sighting Time: About 9:10 to 9:20 p.m. CST on August 25; about 11:30 p.m. CST on August 30 (the Hart photographs, 2330 CST)

Day/Night: Night

Location: Lubbock, Texas, with reports from the surrounding area, including Brownfield

Urban or Rural: Urban (the Texas Tech campus and Lubbock backyards), with additional rural reports

No. of Entity(‘s): Not Applicable

Entity Type: Not Applicable

Entity Description: Not Applicable

Hynek Classification: Nocturnal Light (NL)

Duration: A few seconds per flight (Hart’s panning took about 4 seconds); the phenomenon recurred over about seven weeks, with about 12 “official” professor sightings

No. of Object(s): From 15 to 30 lights per flight in the first reports; about 20 spots on each of Hart’s negatives

Description of the Object(s): Groups of lights in an arc, semicircle, U or V formation that never came into view or disappeared gradually. The professors saw a semicircle of about 160 degrees on August 25 and later flights with no regular arrangement; Hart’s negatives show a flat V of about 20 spots in two rows.

Shape/Size/Color of Object(s): Scintillating points, bluish green in the professors’ first report, yellowish to white in later accounts; individual lights somewhat larger than a star; brighter than Venus in Hart’s account

Distance to Object(s): Unknown; every attempt to measure altitude failed. An astronomer’s estimate of 2,000 to 3,000 feet was not considered reliable. The laboratory computed the formation at about 310 feet across if it were one mile away.

Height & Speed: Altitude never established. The professors measured about 30 degrees per second with stopwatches and protractors, and Ruppelt reproduced Hart’s panning at 30 degrees per second. Flights went from north-northeast to south-southeast, or northeast to southwest.

Number of Witnesses: At least 3 professors in the first sighting, 4 at the November 8 meeting, Hart, other faculty and hundreds of residents; one Air Force captain from Reese reportedly called the newspaper after seeing the lights

Special Features/Characteristics: Regular schedule: the professors saw flights about every hour and ten minutes starting around 9:20 p.m.; no sound except a few reports of a “whoosh”; four negatives analyzed at Wright-Patterson, and a fifth negative never found; the professors’ lights were a U or semicircle while Hart’s were a V

Case Status: Explained by the Air Force as probably birds (ducks or plovers) with street lights reflecting off them. The laboratory could not confirm or deny the authenticity of Hart’s negatives. The professors and the newspaper editor rejected the bird explanation.

Source: Project Blue Book Lubbock case file (Project 10073 Unknown Subjects file, Ruppelt trip report of November 1951; Office of Special Investigations reports; Wright-Patterson Photo Reconnaissance Laboratory test report WCEFP-2-1); Capt. Edward J. Ruppelt, The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects (1956); Lubbock Avalanche-Journal; Life magazine, April 1952

Summary/Description: Texas Tech professors reported silent formations of lights over Lubbock beginning August 25, 1951, and Carl Hart photographed one on August 30. The Air Force concluded birds; the professors and the Wright-Patterson laboratory left the question open.

Related Cases: Albuquerque, New Mexico, August 25, 1951 (Sandia Base flying-wing sighting); Matador, Texas, August 31, 1951 (pear-shaped object sighting); the Air Force linked all three in an October 1951 note

Detailed Report

August 25: The First Sighting

On the evening of August 25, 1951, three Texas Technological College professors were sitting in a backyard in Lubbock discussing a project on micro-meteorites and counting meteors. The first object passed over the yard at about 9:10 to 9:20 p.m. The three were a geology professor, a chemical engineering professor and the head of the petroleum engineering department. They were surprised and agreed that if another came, they would try to learn some of its characteristics. About an hour later, by one account, and three to five minutes later by another, a second flight passed over. One man listened while the other two timed it.

Both flights were a semicircle of lights, about 160 degrees of arc, with no discernible noise and an angular velocity very close to 30 degrees per second, from about north to south, passing 15 to 20 degrees west of the zenith. The men could not agree on a color except that it was yellowish to white, but their signed statement described scintillating points of bluish-green color, clearly visible but not brilliant. The lights varied in intensity and seemed to have their own light source.

The Following Weeks

In the week after August 25 the group saw five more flights between about 9 p.m. and midnight, always from north to south. On September 1 a fourth man joined them and two flights were seen that were less regular. Their most unusual sighting came at 12:17 a.m. on September 2, when a flight passed directly overhead with an irregularly shaped yellow light in the rear, dark diffuse areas in the formation and an arc that appeared to quiver or pulsate in its direction of travel. Observers described it as a group of 12 to 15 yellow flames in violent agitation.

By November the professors counted about 12 “official” sightings, which they defined as sightings witnessed by at least two of the group, and said the true number was larger. They said the lights always appeared at about 50 degrees in the south or southwest, never came gradually into view or faded, and followed a rough schedule beginning about 9:20 p.m. with flights every hour and ten minutes up to three in a night. Several attempts to measure altitude by triangulation from a measured baseline, including an 11-mile baseline with radios, failed. An astronomer’s estimate of 2,000 to 3,000 feet from three lay witnesses was set aside as unreliable.

The professors also told Ruppelt, after saying they thought the stories too absurd to mention, of two other incidents: a professor’s wife who ran into her house at dusk after seeing a very large, silent, flying-wing aircraft pass over, and a low, wiggling group of yellowish lights that upset one professor enough that the experience was nicknamed a “horror.” Ruppelt noted that the first closely resembled an August 25 sighting at Albuquerque.

August 30: Carl Hart’s Photographs

At about 11:30 p.m. on August 30, 1951, Carl Hart Jr., a Texas Tech freshman, saw lights pass overhead from his backyard, ran for his Kodak 35 and took five exposures. He used the widest setting, f/3.5 at 1/10 second, and swung the camera to follow the lights, taking two pictures of one group and three of another. He said the lights appeared at about 30 degrees above the horizon just over a treetop to the north-northeast and went to the south-southeast, an arc of about 120 degrees. Ruppelt, an amateur photographer of 14 years, duplicated the panning with a stopwatch and got four seconds, or 30 degrees per second, the same figure the professors had measured.

Hart took his negatives to a photographer who worked for the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. The editor, who had a reputation for making sure what he printed was true, questioned Hart repeatedly about a hoax and threatened to run him out of town if it were one. Hart said only that the pictures were of something flying over Lubbock. The negatives were sent to the Associated Press in Fort Worth for checking, and the photographs went out on the wire service. Life magazine looked at them and at first rejected them; the photographs ran in Life in April 1952. Hart received $7.50 to $10 for them.

Ruppelt reinterviewed Hart in November and an Office of Special Investigations agent did so again on December 2, 1951, after explaining his rights under the Fifth Amendment. The agent reported that Hart’s account did not deviate. Hart’s handwritten statement says he took pictures of strange objects passing overhead from north to south at about 11:30 p.m. on August 30, saw three separate groups, and that two of the pictures were of the second group and three of the third. He added that the last negative had not been found and was not in his possession.

The Wright-Patterson Laboratory

Four of the 35 mm negatives were sent to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in October 1951. The laboratory’s test report found about 20 spots on each negative in a flat V formation, in two rows on three of the frames and a single row on the fourth. All showed camera motion, and the pattern of spots proved conclusively that three of the frames were exposed to the same object pattern. One row of spots held a fairly precise V, while the other moved relative to it, so the spots were not lights on a fixed object. The report computed the angular size of the formation as equivalent to about 310 feet, plus or minus 40, at a distance of one mile.

The laboratory’s summary memo to the Air Technical Intelligence Center stated, “It is not possible at this time to confirm or deny the authenticity of these negatives as a record of unknown objects against either a starlit or overcast sky. No images which could be interpreted as stars are present.”

Ruppelt’s Trip, November 6 to 9

Ruppelt traveled to Lubbock with Reese Air Force Base personnel. He interviewed the newspaper publisher and managing editor, the head of the petroleum engineering department, Hart, the newspaper’s photographer and a federal game warden, read the Brownfield News reports on a trip there, and met four Texas Tech professors on the evening of November 8. The professors, all with doctorates and in geology, chemical engineering, physics and petroleum engineering, told him they had given up their investigation because they had concluded the lights were a new U.S. weapon and none of their business, and that their interest had revived when they learned the Air Force had no such project. They said the lights were not birds because of the speed and the nearly perfect geometric pattern of the first two formations.

The newspaper’s photographer told Ruppelt he had tried to photograph birds over the city from the roof of the newspaper building using a flashbulb in a concentrating reflector, in the light of Lubbock’s sodium vapor street lights. The birds were silent and in a ragged V, he said, and the images were too weak to print. He concluded that whatever Hart photographed was many times as bright. The managing editor said many people who saw ducks knew they were ducks because they could see them, while those who saw the V of lights knew they could not be ducks.

At Brownfield, Ruppelt found a report in the local newspaper from a retired man who said that on the night of August 25 he and his wife saw two flights of 15 to 20 glowing lights, in no V shape, and then a third flight that circled the house lower down. He said he could see the objects as birds and heard one chirp, which he identified as a plover. The Lubbock game warden told Ruppelt that several plover species with white breasts live in West Texas, that they fly at night in groups usually not larger than five or six, and that they migrate south from late August to mid-November. He tended to doubt the plover explanation and said ducks were possible but not geese.

The Air Force Conclusion

The Air Force summary of the case concluded that birds, with street lights reflecting from them, were the probable cause of the sighting. It stated that the angular velocity of 30 degrees per second seemed rather high for migratory birds, that it was probable the velocity was less, and that the witnesses’ eyes were dark adapted, making the objects appear brighter. It noted that the success of Hart’s panning suggested the angular velocity was lower than estimated. It added that the kind of birds was not known but that, since plovers do not usually fly in formations of more than six or seven, ducks were the more probable. An earlier status note had said that the possibility of known aircraft had proved negative and that the objects might have been night-flying migratory birds, though no conclusions had been reached.

The file also records that in 1959 Dr. J. Allen Hynek contacted one of the Texas Tech professors, who said that he had conducted an extensive study and determined that the lights were definitely birds.

The Albuquerque and Matador Links

An October 10, 1951 note from the Air Technical Intelligence Center tabulated the Lubbock sightings of August 25 and 30 alongside an Albuquerque sighting of August 25 and a Matador, Texas sighting of August 31, and associated them with a swept-wing aircraft described at Albuquerque. It carried the group under a provisional evaluation of C-3 and noted a query to the Strategic Air Command about whether its aircraft were nearby. The Matador report is a separate daytime encounter that Ruppelt did not have time to investigate on his trip.

RESEARCHER’S NOTES

The Lubbock Lights, 1951: What the File Says and What the Legend Says

The Air Force’s verdict was birds: The Blue Book file concludes that birds, probably ducks, with street lights reflecting off them, were the probable cause. The Lubbock Lights are often described as unexplained, but the Air Force explanation exists and should be stated with the case.
The bird theory has its own problems: The Air Force itself said 30 degrees per second was high for migrating birds and rested on the estimate being too high. The game warden doubted plovers, and the photographer’s attempt to photograph birds from the roof produced only faint images.
The photographs are neither proven nor disproved: The laboratory could neither confirm nor deny that the negatives recorded unknown objects. It found a precise V in one row of spots and a shifting second row, which it said were not lights on a fixed object. It did not say the pictures were faked.
A missing negative and a mismatch in shape: Hart took five exposures and only four negatives reached the laboratory; the fifth was never found. The professors’ lights were a semicircle or U, and Hart’s negatives show a V.
The professors’ own doubts: In 1959, one of the Texas Tech professors told Hynek that his study had shown the lights were birds. The file records this without comment, and it conflicts with the 1951 position of the group as a whole.
Details that did not hold up: Several widely repeated details do not appear in the Air Force file: Ruppelt’s trip dates are November 6 to 9, 1951, not late September; the Hart photographs were taken at about 11:30 p.m., not 10:37 p.m.; the file reports about 12 flights for the professors as a group, not for one man; and the game warden gave groups of five or six for plovers, not three.

The Lubbock Lights are one of the best-documented early UFO cases, with named university professors, a photographer who held to his story under repeated questioning, and a laboratory report that declined to call the photographs genuine or fake. The Air Force’s answer was birds, and the people who saw the lights were not persuaded. Both positions are in the file.

“It is not possible at this time to confirm or deny the authenticity of these negatives as a record of unknown objects.”
— Wright-Patterson Air Force Base Photo Reconnaissance Laboratory, on the Carl Hart negatives, December 1951

Photographs

— Professors at Texas Tech who saw the Lubbock Lights (left to right): Dr. Oberg, Prof. Ducker, and Dr. Robinson, discussing them with Dr. E. L. George.