Incident #68 — Portland, Oregon — 24 June 1947

This document details Incident No. 68, a sighting reported on 24 June 1947 in the Cascade Mountains, Washington. A prospector from Portland reported observing five or six disk-shaped objects, approximately 30 feet in diameter, banking in the sun. The witness claimed to have observed these objects through a telescope for 45 to 60 seconds. A notable feature of the report is the witness's claim that the needle on his compass wavered wildly while the objects were in sight. The report notes that the witness had read about the famous Kenneth Arnold sighting (Incident No. 17) which occurred on the same day, and suggests that the observer may have consciously or inadvertently conformed his report to match that account. The evaluation by the Air Materiel Command Aero-Medical Laboratory concludes that it is impossible to reach a definite conclusion based on the limited evidence. Furthermore, experts Dr. G. B. Valley and Dr. Hynek expressed skepticism regarding the reported compass behavior, noting that such an effect would imply the presence of 'fantastically large magnetic fields.' The document includes technical analysis regarding the physics of magnetic fields and their potential effect on a compass, ultimately dismissing the reported effect as unlikely and noting that the observer was clearly uninformed about the implications of such magnetic phenomena. The report is categorized as one of the remaining unexplained incidents under Project Grudge, though it is treated with significant skepticism by the evaluators.