Correspondence regarding 1950 UFO Sighting by Retired USAF Colonel

This document collection contains correspondence from 1966 between a retired United States Air Force Colonel and the Air Force Office of Information regarding an unidentified aerial phenomenon (UAP) sighting that occurred in the spring of 1950. The witness, who was attending a Survival School at Camp Carson, Colorado, at the time, reported observing a circular, dark-colored object moving in a straight line from southwest to northeast at an estimated speed of 500 to 1000 mph and an altitude between 4000 and 7000 feet. The witness, an experienced pilot and amateur astronomer, expressed significant frustration that his original report, filed through proper channels after his return to Rapid City AFB in 1950, had been ignored or dismissed by the Air Force as a 'hallucination.' In his 1966 letters, he challenged the Air Force's public conclusions on UFOs and requested an explanation for his sighting, stating that he would continue to make his experience a matter of public record. The Air Force responded by stating that they had screened all 1950 cases and were unable to locate any record of his report. They suggested that the sighting might not have reached the Project Blue Book office at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base if it had been evaluated only at the base level. The Air Force provided the witness with an FTD Form 164 to formally document the details of the incident, which the witness completed to the best of his ability, noting that he had been standing with a sergeant who also saw the object for a few seconds. The correspondence highlights the tension between the witness's insistence on the validity of his observation and the Air Force's inability to substantiate the report within their existing archives.