Incident #151 Sighting Report — Indianapolis, Indiana, 29 July 1948

This document details the investigation of Incident #151, a sighting of an unidentified aerial object that occurred on 29 July 1948 in Indianapolis, Indiana. Two employees of the W. O. Jones Rug Cleaners observed a shiny, aluminum, propeller-shaped object gliding at an altitude of approximately 30 feet. The object was described as being 6 to 8 feet long, 1.5 to 2 feet wide, and 1 foot thick, featuring protruding 'cups' on the upper side of its blades. The witnesses reported that the object moved at a speed of 25 to 30 mph, traveled south, and appeared to descend into a densely wooded area near a cantilever bridge on East 56th Street. Following the report, Lt. John E. Hoskins and Lt. Russell J. Carey Jr. conducted a thorough search of the area but were unable to locate the object. The Air Materiel Command (AMC) initially suspected a connection to the 'roto-chute' device developed by I. B. Bensen for the Hermes Project at General Electric. Consequently, the AMC initiated correspondence with the Rochester Ordnance District and General Electric to determine if the object was a test device. General Electric confirmed that the object was definitely not a 'roto-chute' dropped by their personnel. The official conclusion reached by the AMC was that no satisfactory explanation could be drawn. The incident was subsequently indexed within Project Sign and Project Grudge reports as an unexplained event. The file includes diagrams of the object and maps of the sighting location, as well as internal military correspondence documenting the administrative process of evaluating the sighting against known domestic experimental technology.