Project 10073 Record Card — Baltimore, Maryland, 2 July 1962

On the evening of 2 July 1962, a sighting of an unidentified aerial phenomenon was reported in the Brooklyn section of Baltimore, Maryland. The primary witnesses, identified as a woman and her son, observed a reddish-orange, oval-shaped object resembling a football with rounded ends. The object, which appeared to be the size of a grapefruit or volleyball held at arm's length, exhibited a glowing, varying intensity, suggesting a slow rotation with a light source on one side. The sighting lasted between four and five minutes, during which the object moved in a straight path across the sky in a northeastern direction. The witnesses reported no sound. A separate report from a Mrs. Blanch Rattagin, who contacted the local station WFBM, described a red flickering flame attached to a blue-colored, balloon-shaped object moving against the wind. This report noted that the object disappeared into a cloud as an aircraft approached from the east. The official Air Force investigation, conducted by Captain William D. Lemaster, concluded that the object was the Echo I satellite. The evaluation noted that the sighting took place at dusk and that the object's disappearance was consistent with it entering the earth's shadow. The report explicitly discounts the possibility that the object was an aircraft.