Incident #169 Sighting Report — Maplewood, Ohio, 29 August 1948

This document details Incident #169, a reported sighting of an unidentified flying object in Maplewood, Ohio, on August 29, 1948. The witness, a farmer, reported observing a large, silver-colored sphere that emerged from behind woods and traveled across his farm. During its flight, the object appeared to unravel a silver substance that floated toward the ground before the sphere itself disintegrated in mid-air. The report includes a note from Mr. Kadel of MCIAXP, who interviewed the witness. Kadel noted that the witness appeared to be a sincere and conscientious individual. The incident occurred while the witness was speaking with Kadel, and an airplane happened to fly overhead at the time. The official evaluation of the incident, provided by the Air Weather Service, concluded that there was no astronomical explanation for the sighting, but suggested it was possible the object was a weather balloon in the process of disintegration. A handwritten annotation on the report suggests 'SPIDER WEBS' as a potential alternative explanation. The document is part of a larger collection of incident summaries under Project SIGN, which was tasked with the collection and investigation of reports regarding unidentified flying objects. The correspondence included in the file shows that the Air Weather Service was tasked with reviewing these sightings to determine if they could be attributed to routine weather balloon flights, with the goal of filtering out such occurrences from the project's investigations.