One blue ball was observed by two witnesses for over 15 minutes.

Project Grudge Assessment:

I. DESCRIPTION OF INCIDENT At approximately 1920 MST on 20 January 1952, two Wing Intelligence airmen noticed a bright spherical object traveling through the sky. At first it was assumed to be a meteor but then it wag noted that it appeared to be traveling beneath the cloud layer

The object was„traveling at a speed much faster than a jet aircraft. The object, which made no sound, was traveling in a path horizontal to the earth at an estimated 500 feet and left a blue trail. The trail seemed to come from the object in spurts. The object disappeared from sight behind a building.

The two airmen observers, a Tech Sergeant and Master Sergeant are considered reliable observers..

II. STATUS OF INVESTIGATION

This incident is interesting due to the fact that there was an eight-tenths cloud coverage at 4,700 ft. It is possible that the object was viewed between a break in the clouds and that it was extremely high, indicating that the sighting was a meteor. However, the sources indicated that they believed the object was below the cloud cover, and if this is true the slant range of the object can be computed to be about 7,300 ft. This would eliminate the possibility of the lighted object being a conventional aircraft, since no sound was heard. The possibility of a meteor is also nil because a meteor would not be traveling horizontally at 7,300 ft.

A request was made for the angular measurement of the arc made by the object, however, this information could not be obtained,, It is presumed that the sources were not available for questioning.

III. CONCLUSIONS

If the object was beneath the cloud cover it was not a conventional aircraft or meteor, and no conclusions can be made as to its identity.

On January 20, 1952, at seven-twenty in the evening, two master sergeants, both intelligence specialists, were walking down a street on the Fairchild Air Force Base, close to Spokane, Washington.

Suddenly both men noticed a large, bluish-white, spherical-shaped object approaching from the east. They stopped and watched the object carefully, because several of these UFO's had been reported by pilots from the air base over the past few months. The sergeants had written up the reports on these earlier sightings.

The object was traveling at a moderately fast speed on a horizontal path. As it passed to the north of their position and disappeared in the west, the sergeants noted that it had a long blue tail. At no time did they hear any sound. They noted certain landmarks that the object had crossed and estimated the time taken in passing these landmarks. The next day they went out and measured the angles between these landmarks in order to include them in their report.

When we got the report at ATIC, our first reaction was that the master sergeants had seen a large meteor. From the evidence I had written off, as meteors, all previous similar UFO reports from this air base.

The sergeants' report, however, contained one bit of information that completely changed the previous picture. At the time of the sighting there had been a solid 6,000-foot-thick overcast at 4,700 feet. And meteors don't go that low.

A few quick calculations gave a rather fantastic answer. If the object was just at the base of the clouds it would have been 10,000 feet from the two observers and traveling 1,400 miles per hour.

But regardless of the speed, the story was still fantastic. The object was no jet airplane because there was no sound. It was not a searchlight because there were none on the air base. It was not an automobile spotlight because a spotlight will not produce the type of light the sergeants described. As a double check, however, both men were questioned on this point. They stated firmly that they had seen hundreds of searchlights and spotlights playing on clouds, and that this was not what they saw.

Beyond these limited possibilities the sergeants' UFO discourages fruitful speculation. The object remains unidentified.

The UFO reports made by the two colonels and the two master sergeants are typical of hundreds of other good UFO reports which carry the verdict, "Conclusion unknown."

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