Project 10073 Record Card — Redmond, Oregon, 24 September 1959

This document collection details the investigation into a UFO sighting reported on 24 September 1959, near Redmond, Oregon. The incident involved a report by a local policeman, Robert Dickerson, and an FAA station operator, Laverne Wertz, who observed a bright, multi-colored light hovering and moving erratically in the northeastern sky for over an hour. The object was reported to have hovered at 800 feet before ascending to 3000 feet. Following the report, the Air Force scrambled several interceptor aircraft, including F-102s and an F-89, and a civilian Tri-Pacer, but none made visual or radar contact with the object. The 25th Air Division subsequently ordered the track number assigned to the target, JB-129, to be scrubbed. The National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) challenged the Air Force's official explanation, which dismissed the event as a combination of atmospheric refraction of the planet Venus and the star Regulus, and false radar returns caused by a gap-filler antenna located on a mountain at the 8010-foot level. NICAP argued that the Air Force was withholding information and that the FAA logs provided evidence of a genuine, tracked object. The Air Force, through Major Lawrence J. Tacker and other officials, consistently maintained that the radar returns were not evidence of a UFO but were instead artifacts of the radar system under specific atmospheric conditions. The case remained in the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) files classified as 'insufficient evidence.' The correspondence included in this file shows the ongoing tension between NICAP, which sought public disclosure, and the Air Force, which defended its investigative procedures and conclusions regarding the Redmond incident and other contemporary sightings.