Hometown Tales Podcast

Sunday, December 28, 2008

Yuma, AZ - Flying Discs

At the close of the 1940s “Flying Saucer” Mania was so hot that, in 1951, the United States Air Force had to create Project Blue Book to “Investigate numerous claims of unidentified flying objects (UFOs)”.?One of their first official cases was in 1952 in Yuma.

On April 17, 1952 at 3:05 p.m., a group of Army weather observation students witnessed a flat, white, circular object flying in an irregular trajectory. The object also left a short trail behind it. The sighting took place in all of 7 seconds. What was likely the same object returned to the area the next day, with two more weather observation students seeing it, this time for 5-10 seconds.
Over a week later, an object of a different type was witnessed by off duty M/Sgt. and Mrs. G.S. Porter. It was April 27 at 8:30 p.m. when the couple saw bright red or flame-colored discs, which they estimated to be about the size of fighter planes. Over a period of 2 hours, the discs flew in formation or alone, under a cloud cover of below 11,000′. ?Short weeks later, on June 19, 1952 at 2 p.m., USAF pilot John Lane witnessed a round, white object, which could have been the same that flew the skies in the previous month. Rather than flying erratically, though, this object flew straight and level for a 10 second period of time.

The final unknown sighting in Yuma that turns up in the Blue Book files took place Feb. 4, 1953 at 1:50 p.m. This time, U.S. Weather Bureau observer Stanley Brown, witnessed a white, oblong object flying straight up then leveling off just as a second similar object joined it. During a 5-minute period, the second object flew away and returned to the first. Eventually, the two objects flew out of sight behind some clouds.

USAF’s Project Blue Book declared these sightings as being “unknown”.