Encounter Atlas
Military
Military encounters
Pilots, radar operators and soldiers have reported some of the strangest things on record, and the military has kept files on them since the 1940s.
The Air Force's own Project Blue Book alone holds 10,622 case files. Browse them by state. Below are the military cases people still talk about.
- 1942
Battle of Los Angeles
Los Angeles, California · US Army
Three months after Pearl Harbor, air-raid sirens sounded over Los Angeles and Army anti-aircraft guns fired about 1,400 shells at something in the night sky. Searchlights pinned an object that many witnesses said hovered and took the fire. No bombs fell and no aircraft were found. The Navy called it a false alarm brought on by war nerves.
Sources: Wikipedia
- 1944
Foo fighters
Over the Rhine valley, Germany · US Army Air Forces, 415th Night Fighter Squadron
Night-fighter crews flying over Germany began reporting balls of orange and red light that paced their aircraft, then vanished. They borrowed the name "foo fighters" from a comic strip. British, German and Japanese pilots reported the same thing, and each side assumed it was an enemy weapon.
Sources: Wikipedia
- 1952
Washington, DC flap
Washington, DC · US Air Force, CAA radar
On two weekends in July 1952, radar operators at Washington National Airport and Andrews Air Force Base tracked unknown targets over the capital, including restricted airspace over the White House. Jets were scrambled; pilots saw lights that sped away. The Air Force held its largest press conference since WWII and blamed temperature inversions.
Sources: Wikipedia
- 1953
Kinross incident
Lake Superior, near Kinross AFB, Michigan · US Air Force
An F-89C Scorpion jet was sent to intercept an unidentified radar target over Lake Superior. Ground radar watched the jet's blip merge with the target, then both disappeared. Pilot Felix Moncla and radar operator Robert Wilson were never found.
Sources: Wikipedia
- 1966
Rock apes of Vietnam
Central Highlands and DMZ, Vietnam · US Marines and Army
American soldiers and Marines told stories of "rock apes": large, reddish, upright primates seen in the mountains, sometimes throwing rocks at patrols. One story has a Marine unit on Hill 868 fighting off a troop of them. Primatologists suspect orangutan-sized macaques or bears.
Sources: Wikipedia
- 1967
Malmstrom missile shutdown
Malmstrom AFB, Montana · US Air Force
Missile officers at Malmstrom's Echo Flight reported that ten Minuteman nuclear missiles went offline within seconds of each other. Former officer Robert Salas later said guards had reported a glowing red object hovering over the site. The Air Force's investigation pointed to an electrical fault.
Sources: Wikipedia
- 1968
Minot B-52 encounter
Minot AFB, North Dakota · US Air Force
Missile maintenance crews reported a large, glowing object near the launch sites, and a B-52 crew returning to Minot tracked it on radar as it paced the bomber. It is one of the best-documented cases in the Blue Book files.
Sources: Wikipedia
- 1976
Tehran F-4 intercept
Tehran, Iran · Imperial Iranian Air Force
Two Iranian F-4 Phantom jets were sent after a bright light over Tehran. Each lost instruments and communications as it closed in, and one crew said a smaller object came at them before the weapons panel failed. A US Defense Intelligence Agency memo called it a classic case.
Sources: Wikipedia
- 1980
Rendlesham Forest
RAF Woodbridge, Suffolk, England · US Air Force (stationed in the UK)
US airmen guarding RAF Woodbridge went into Rendlesham Forest after seeing lights and described a glowing, triangular craft. Two nights later deputy base commander Lt. Col. Charles Halt led a team back and recorded the search on tape. His memo to the UK Ministry of Defence was released in 1983.
Sources: Wikipedia
- 1990
Belgian F-16 scramble
Wavre, Belgium · Belgian Air Force
At the height of the Belgian UFO wave, thousands of people reported dark triangles with lights. On the night of March 30, two F-16s were scrambled after ground radar tracked unknowns; the pilots got brief radar locks on targets that changed speed and altitude abruptly.
Sources: Wikipedia
- 2004
Nimitz "Tic Tac"
Off San Diego, California · US Navy
The USS Princeton tracked unknown objects for days. Commander David Fravor and his wingman were sent to look and saw a smooth, white, 40-ft object that mirrored their moves and then shot away. A later flight filmed it with an infrared pod: the FLIR1 video.
Sources: WikipediaUS Navy FOIA reading room
- 2015
Gimbal and GoFast videos
Off the US East Coast · US Navy, USS Theodore Roosevelt
F/A-18 crews training off the East Coast filmed objects with their targeting pods, including one that seemed to rotate (Gimbal) and one skimming over the water (GoFast). Pilots said they saw such objects almost daily in 2014 and 2015. The Pentagon officially released the videos in April 2020.