Project 10073 Record Card and Staff Message regarding Sighting at Scott AFB, Illinois

This document consists of a Project 10073 Record Card and a series of incoming staff messages from the Department of the Air Force regarding an aerial sighting on November 5, 1961. The primary observation, reported at 050730Z, involved a single object described as a blue-green streak of light that began with a flash of yellow and widened into a pie-shaped segment as it fell. The duration of the event was approximately one second, and it was observed under clear, calm weather conditions. The official conclusion reached by ATIC was that the object exhibited all the characteristics of a bolide (a bright meteor) as it exploded, with its color, disintegration, and pattern conforming to this assessment.

In addition to the primary report, the documentation notes a secondary, conflicting report received by the Air Police at Scott AFB. This report originated from the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office, relaying an account from a farmer living 12 miles north of Mt. Vernon, Illinois. The farmer claimed that a plane flew over his house at 12:03 AM CST (0603Z) and dropped a flare. The military documentation explicitly states that no investigation was conducted by Scott AFB into this secondary report, and no effort was made to resolve the discrepancies between the two reported times. Furthermore, the Air Force determined that no USAF aircraft were operating in the area at either of the reported times. The documentation serves as a record of the military's intake and evaluation process for unidentified aerial phenomena during this period, highlighting the reliance on ground-based visual reports and the subsequent classification of such events as astronomical in nature.