Classic cases · United States · Classic case

Saucers over Catalina Island: four old Air Force reports from the Pentagon files

7 min read

The Pentagon's October 23 batch of files includes four reports about Santa Catalina Island off Los Angeles. Six lights appearing one after another, a silvery body that seemed to fall apart before the eyes of three Boy Scouts, a purplish-white dot and a falling orange light – between 1949 and 1955. In two of the cases, the Air Force investigators of the time themselves suggested an ordinary explanation.

When: 1949
Where: Catalina Island, United States

Four documents, one island

Santa Catalina Island lies off the coast of Southern California and is administratively part of Los Angeles County. Its only city is Avalon. The island is home to Camp Fox, a summer camp that the Glendale YMCA has operated since 1926. Participants in its family camps still travel there by boat from Long Beach.

On October 23, the U.S. Department of War released the seventh batch of files from the PURSUE program (Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters), 28 documents. Four of them concern the island. The four documents are not a single case but four separate reports over six years, with different witnesses and about different phenomena. The types of documents also differ: they include a handwritten letter, an Air Force intelligence report, a telegram and two record cards.

The Air Force and the age of flying saucers

The four reports were written during the period when the U.S. Air Force itself still collected and investigated UFO reports from the public. Public investigations began in late 1947 with a program called Project Sign. It was followed by Project Grudge, which concluded that the sightings were natural phenomena or misidentifications, although it could not explain 23 percent of the reports.

Project Blue Book was launched in March 1952 under Captain Edward J. Ruppelt. In July of the same year, radars and eyewitnesses simultaneously detected unidentified targets over Washington. In January 1953, the Robertson Panel convened by the CIA concluded that most reports had an ordinary explanation and recommended that the subject be given less emphasis. Blue Book ended in December 1969. It collected a total of 12,618 reports, of which 701 remained unidentified.

Two of the Catalina documents are record cards marked Project 10073. Such cards also appear among the Project Blue Book materials held at the National Archives.

1949: six lights one after another, a letter to Idaho

The first document is a handwritten letter from an Avalon man to an acquaintance in Boise, Idaho. According to KTLA's report, the man wrote that on the night of April 28, his wife and a teacher saw six objects in the sky. They did not fly in a group but appeared one at a time, one after another. A few minutes later, the letter writer's daughter, grandchild and others saw four more, heading in the same direction.

The Air Force card belonging to the letter is terse. According to it, a civilian observer saw six objects, each flying alone, and the observation was made from the ground. Neither the duration of the observation nor the direction of the objects was recorded, and there was no photograph or physical evidence. The document bears a handwritten note, and the card's conclusion is the same: there is insufficient data for evaluation.

There is uncertainty about the document's date. The Pentagon released it as a 1949 document, and the Los Angeles Times also places the case on April 28, 1949. KTLA, however, read a date of May 1, 1947, from the letter itself. Without the original document, we could not resolve this.

1952: the Scouts and the silvery body

The most detailed document is an Air Intelligence Information Report prepared by the 807th Air Base Group at March Air Force Base in California on August 28, 1952. The report concerns alleged flying saucers and describes a case from two months earlier.

On June 25, 1952, three Scouts who were at the Camp Fox summer camp saw a strange object while hiking up one of the island's hills.. According to KTLA, it happened at noon; according to the press, the report recorded clear, calm weather. According to the report:

the object was silver-colored, and they heard no sound,
they could not determine its altitude, and they estimated its speed as faster than that of a conventional jet,
they saw a single maneuver: a climbing turn, immediately before the object, according to the report, vanished by disintegrating.

The report also records what reduces the weight of the account. The boys had no observation equipment, and all three were traveling in the same group, meaning they did not see the phenomenon independently of one another. The officer who prepared the report said the witnesses' experience was "probably at most slight", so the reliability of the account is difficult to judge. Citing the California Post, KTLA also reported that there was a sketch on the back of the original report, which has since been lost and has not been found in government archives either.

The case falls in the summer when Blue Book had been operating for only a few months, and it happened a few weeks before the Washington sightings.

1953: a purplish-white dot toward Los Angeles

The November 1953 case is described in a telegram received by the commander of the Air Force's Continental Air Command at Mitchel Air Force Base in New York State.

The witness saw a single object when he happened to look up at the sky. According to the telegram's description:

it was round, saucer-shaped, and appeared to be the size of a pea,
it was purplish-white at first, then faded to a whiter color,
at first it hovered in place over the island, then moved on a straight, level course to the northwest, toward Los Angeles, where it disappeared from view,
it appeared at an angle of about 45 degrees above the horizon,
the observation lasted about ten minutes, on a clear night, from the ground.

According to KTLA, the report considered the witness relatively reliable because he served at Long Beach Air Force Base and did work related to military jets.

The telegram bears two evaluative notes. One says the object's movement did not match the upper-level winds. The other says it is possible the witness saw planets, which are more clearly visible after rain. According to KTLA, a local astronomer also examined the report and judged that Jupiter was a possible explanation.

1955: an orange light over Avalon

The last document is again a Project 10073 card, dated March 15, 1955, from Avalon. A civilian observer saw a very bright, orange object falling straight down. According to KTLA, it appeared to be the size of a nickel held at arm's length. According to Fox News's summary, it changed from orange to red as it fell.

According to the card's assessment, the phenomenon may have been astronomical in origin, and the investigator did not consider further investigation worthwhile.

What does a SETI researcher say?

Bill Diamond, president and CEO of the SETI Institute (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute), urged caution to CBS Los Angeles. In his view, it is hard to imagine an alien civilization traveling such a distance just to fly over a Boy Scout camp for a few hours. He pointed out that the documents come from an era when science fiction and the boom in space exploration strongly influenced people's imaginations. He also noted that more UFO photos survive from that era than are taken today, even though billions of people now carry high-resolution cameras in their pockets. He did acknowledge, however, that some eyewitness accounts may also be based on real observations.

The sober take

The four documents are four separate reports, not one connected case, and none of them contains a photograph, instrumental measurement or physical evidence. The fact that they appear in the PURSUE release does not mean they are unexplainable: in two of the cases, the investigators of the time themselves suggested an ordinary explanation. The 1953 telegram states that the witness may have seen planets, and a local astronomer considered Jupiter a possible explanation. According to the telegram, the object's movement did not follow the upper-level winds, meaning a wind-borne object does not fit. Regarding the 1955 Avalon phenomenon, the investigator judged that it may have been astronomical in origin, so the investigation was not continued. According to the Air Force, the 1949 letter revealed too little data for an evaluation, and the document's date is also uncertain. The 1952 Scout account is the most detailed, but the report itself records its weaknesses: the boys had no observation equipment, they saw the phenomenon as a group, not independently of one another, they could not determine the altitude, the speed is only an estimate, and the investigator considered the witnesses' experience minimal. For this case, the documents of the time offer no explanation. The fact that the four reports concern the same island does not in itself point to a common cause: they came in over six years, at different times of day and about different phenomena. Some American press reports place the Scouts' case in August, but that is the date of the report; the observation itself took place on June 25.

What was that?

Venus, the most common UFO – and why it will trigger many reports this winter