NACA aeronautical engineer Paul R Hill saw two amber-colored objects approach from the south, turn west, reach overhead, begin a maneuver to revolve around a common center, then transition to a vertical plane after a few orbits. They were joined by two more objects, and then flew off to the south. (Nash; Paul R Hill). No sound was heard.

Paul R Hill's own account:

In the early 1950s, I studied the UFO pattern and noticed their propensity for visiting defense installations, flight over water, evening visits, and return appearances. Within a 20-mile radius of the Langley Research Center n Hampton, Virginia, where I was employed, were located over a dozen defense installations, and we were almost surrounded by water. On July 16, 1952, after the Pan American pilots made headlines in the local paper by reporting disks passing below their airliner near Hampton, I thought, "This is the night. They may be back."

Accordingly, expecting conformance to the pattern, at 5 minutes to 8 P.M., just at twilight, a companion and I arrived at the Hampton Roads waterfront, parked, and started to watch the skies for UFOs. At 8:00, I said to my companion, "I'd give a thousand dollars for a good look at a UFO." No sooner were the words spoken than there they came, up over the southern horizon, slightly east of a collision course with the observers. We kept an eye on them as they approached, getting out of the car to do so. They came in side by side at about 500 mph, at what was learned later by triangulation to be 15,000 to 18,000 feet altitude. From all angles they looked like amber traffic lights a couple of blocks away, which would make them spheres about 13 to 20 feet in diameter.

They slowed into a left turn to pass directly over our heads toward the west. They practically came to a stop as they approached. It was then that they started their strange jitter, a surprising phenomenon. First one leaped a little way ahead of the other as fast as or faster than the eye could follow -- you couldn't be sure. Then the other seemed to jump ahead. They kept up these odd mincing steps for a few seconds as they passed overhead, while we craned our necks. Then, after passing zenith, they made an astounding maneuver. Maintaining their spacing of about 200 feet, they revolved in a horizontal circle, about a common center, at a rate of at least once per second. After a few revolutions, and without a pause, they switched their revolutions into a vertical plane, keeping up the same amazing rate. Awe stricken, I reached my hand out to the car for support saying, "Nothing can do that. Those are really saucers."

That was halfway into a 3-minute sighting. Up to that mint I had just been a fascinated spectator. Now they had convinced me. At that moment, I realized that there were visitors from another world. There is a lot of truth in the old saying, "It's different when it happens to you " It was within my line of business to know that no Earthcraft could remotely approach those maneuvers.

Within seconds of the circling maneuver, an identical sphere came in from the Atlantic Ocean on an ascending course over lower Chesapeake Bay and joined the others, falling in below. For a few seconds they seemed to float along, then began accelerating slowly toward the south as a fourth amber sphere came in from the James River to build the group up to a formation of four as they headed south. I thought, "A-ha, the circling maneuver was a rendezvous signal."

The sphere that came in from the Atlantic had evidently cruised northward, just offshore. This was learned on visit to Norfolk, Virginia, looking for additional data. One of the Norfolk papers carried an article about it. A Virginia Beach bus driver was going north along the coast when a lone passenger had come forward a few minutes before 8:00 P.M. and tapped him on the shoulder, calling his attention to a strange, orange or amber fiery-looking sphere out over the water. The driver was sufficiently impressed to stop the bus, and together they watched the fiery sphere cruising northwest parallel to shore, just above the water's surface. This was obviously the first object that answered the rendezvous signal. My instant impression was that these vehicles were surveying the East Coast. If they had good resolving power, perhaps I was in their survey.

It was subsequently learned that a ferryboat load of passengers, docked at Old Point and waiting to make the overnight trip to Washington, had witnessed the entire event, among them the President of the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Corporation. The next morning the Newport News Daily Press carried a two-inch banner headline, FLYING SAUCERS OVER HAMPTON ROADS. The detailed report had been made to the Press by an Air Force captain, a fighter pilot. Our observations agreed even to the estimated 500 mph speed. However, one thing puzzled me. The Press article said that aircraft spotters who had been on duty reported nothing. Determined to check this out, I got a list of spotters on duty the night in question and visited them individually in their homes. They all said they saw the UFOs and knew that they were not aircraft. The head spotter said that he had been instructed by the Richmond Filter Center, operated by the Air Force, to report aircraft, and no nonsense, and so had said nothing. However, they gave me the data needed for triangulation to obtain altitude.

Reporting the incident to my NACA boss next morning was a mistake. "What had you been drinking?" were his first, and almost his last, words. Knowing my duty was to report to Air Force Intelligence, I went to the local ATIC Office. The desk officer and his secretary listened to my story, then he reported to his chief. I caught the gist of their conversation:

"Are you sure he saw the saucers?" asked the chief.

"Yes, I know he saw them. Do you want to interview him?"

"No, you go ahead."

I signed a statement written by the secretary. The intelligence officer complained that I should have run to a phone and called Tactical Air Command Headquarters so that they could have tried an intercept. With a few Yes Sir's, I left. At the time, I already had a growing aversion to the Air Force's attempted intercepts, but why discuss policy at the bottom of the totem pole?

Two nights later there was another sighting in exactly the same area but from the ground. At 9:00P.M. a high-ranking civilian scientist from the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics Laboratory at Langley AFB and another man were standing near the ocean looking south over Hampton Roads when they saw two amber-colored lights, "much too large to be aircraft lights," off to their right, silently traveling north. Just before the two lights got abreast of the two men they made a 180-degree turn and started back toward the spot where they had first been seen. As they turned, the two lights seemed to "jockey for position in the formation." About this time a third light came out of the west and joined the first two; then as the three UFO's climbed out of the area toward the south, several more lights joined the formation. The entire episode had lasted only three minutes.

The only possible solution to the sighting was that the two men had seen airplanes. We investigated this report and found that there were several B-26's from Langley AFB in the area at the time of the sighting, but none of the B-26 pilots remembered being over Hampton Roads. In fact, all of them had generally stayed well south of Norfolk until about 10:30P.M. because of thunderstorm activity northwest of Langley. Then there were other factors--the observers heard no sound and they were away from all city noises, aircraft don't carry just one or two amber lights, and the distance between the two lights was such that had they been on an airplane the airplane would have been huge or very close to the observers. And last, but not least, the man from the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics was a very famous aerodynamicist and of such professional stature that if he said the lights weren't airplanes they weren't.

Google map of this location.