Project 10073 Record Card and Related Correspondence — October 1958

This document collection centers on Project 10073, an Air Force effort to record and evaluate Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) sightings during the late 1950s. The primary incident detailed is a sighting on October 13, 1958, by a B-47 aircraft crew near Cameron, Arizona. The observer, a captain and instructor pilot, reported an elongated, cylinder-shaped object with a red core and white-and-blue edges. The object was visible for three seconds during a shallow descent at 30,000 feet. The report explicitly notes that no sound was heard, no trail was visible, and no radar contact was made. The intelligence officer at the 97th Bomb Wing, who prepared the report, stated that no preliminary analysis could be offered and questioned the observer's ability to accurately define the object's size under the circumstances.

Beyond the Arizona incident, the document includes correspondence and press clippings regarding a separate, widely publicized sighting involving a Monon Railroad freight train in Indiana on October 3, 1958. In this case, the train crew—including engineer Harry Eckman, fireman Cecil Bridge, and conductor Edward Robinson—reported four elliptical, lighted objects that hovered and maneuvered near their train for over an hour. The crew described the objects as having intelligent control, as they dodged flashlight beams. Despite the public attention and media coverage this incident received, official Air Force correspondence from Major Lawrence J. Tacker to a private citizen dated April 6, 1959, states that the Air Force has no record of this specific Indiana sighting. The collection also contains a list of various sightings from October 1958, categorized by location and evaluation, with many labeled as 'Astro' (meteor) or 'Insufficient Data.' The documents reflect the Air Force's internal tension between the public's desire for information and the official policy of investigating sightings while maintaining that many are explainable as astronomical or atmospheric phenomena, as outlined in AFR 200-2.