Project 10073 Record Card — Belton, Missouri, 13 August 1957

This document is a Project 10073 record card and associated military teletype report concerning an Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) sighting that occurred on 13 August 1957 near Belton, Missouri. The report was generated by the 20th Air Division at Richards-Gebaur Air Force Base. According to the documentation, a single object was observed for approximately 15 seconds. The witness described the object as round, roughly the size of a grapefruit, and emitting a bright light. It was observed traveling at a high speed in a straight horizontal line toward the northwest before disappearing. The report explicitly states that there was no sound associated with the object. Weather conditions at the time were reported as clear, with only a few clouds on the northern horizon. The military investigation, conducted under the guidelines of Air Force Regulation 200-2, concluded that the sighting was likely a meteor. The report includes a note indicating that the observers had been looking at a comet, which was obscured by clouds, shortly before the object appeared. The documentation was routed to the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, the Air Defense Command (ADC) in Colorado, and the Director of Intelligence at USAF Headquarters in Washington, D.C.