U.S. Air Force Technical Information Sheet — Sighting Report, Brooklyn, New York, 18 July 1953

On the night of July 18, 1953, a 37-year-old civilian ship clerk in Brooklyn, New York, observed an unidentified aerial phenomenon while resting on his roof to escape the heat. The witness reported seeing a glowing, dull red object, which he compared to heated iron, moving in a straight line across the sky from the East/North-East toward the West/South-West. The object made no noise, produced no smoke, and left no vapor trails. The witness estimated the duration of the sighting to be between 15 and 20 seconds. He noted that the object appeared elliptical in shape and traveled at a speed he described as faster than an airplane but not as fast as a shooting star. The witness expressed a personal belief that the object might have been a man-made, experimental aircraft not yet released to the public, noting that he had seen planes landing and taking off at Floyd Bennett Field shortly before and after the sighting. He submitted the report to the U.S. Air Force in hopes of corroborating his experience, as his wife had been dismissive of his account. The official Air Force conclusion, recorded on the technical information sheet, categorized the event as an astronomical sighting of a meteor, noting that the object's slight ascent did not rule out this possibility.