Incident #137a Sighting Report — Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 7 July 1948

This document collection details the investigation of a sighting reported on 7 July 1948 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Two witnesses, a Captain in the Infantry Reserve and a Lieutenant in the Naval Reserve who served as a mathematics instructor at the University of North Carolina, reported observing three unconventional objects moving at an extreme altitude and high speed in an East-Northeast direction. The objects were described as cigar-shaped, and the witnesses reported hearing a sound similar to a jet engine. The initial teletype message from the Air Materiel Command to the Director of Intelligence on 9 July 1948 formally recorded these details. Subsequent correspondence from the Air Materiel Command to the witnesses requested a signed statement to clarify the event. In a response dated 8 August 1948, one witness clarified that he heard, but did not see, what he believed to be jet planes. The official evaluation of the incident, documented in a summary report, concluded that the event was likely a sound phenomenon rather than an observation of an unconventional object, noting that the report was too meager to make a definitive determination and that it was more probable that actual aircraft were heard. The document also notes a potential confusion in the summary records between this incident, #137a, and incident #138. The file includes a checklist of the sighting details and an index of evaluations extracted from the Project Grudge report, which categorizes incident #137a under the section for non-astronomical sightings with no evident explanation.