Project 10073 Record and Correspondence Regarding Gainesville, Georgia Sighting

This document collection details the administrative handling of a UFO inquiry submitted by a citizen in Gainesville, Georgia, in July 1964. The citizen wrote to the Smithsonian Institution regarding a peculiar oil spray pattern found in their neighbor's yard on the morning of July 18, 1964. The pattern was described as a circle approximately 15 feet in diameter with a small tail, accompanied by indentations resembling tripod marks. The correspondent noted that local citizens had reported several UFO sightings in the area, describing saucer-shaped objects with red, white, and green lights that left odors and, in one instance, caused witnesses to feel radiation. The Smithsonian Institution forwarded the inquiry to the U.S. Air Force, Office of Information, which subsequently routed the matter to the Foreign Technology Division (FTD) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. The FTD conducted an analysis of the grass samples provided by the correspondent and concluded that they contained nothing unusual. In their response to the citizen, Major Maston M. Jacks of the Air Force Office of Information stated that the July 18 incident had not been officially reported to the Air Force and that the grass samples were normal. The correspondence also addressed a separate sighting in Spartanburg, South Carolina, which the Air Force had evaluated as ball lightning, noting that newspaper accounts of these events were often distorted. The file includes a newspaper clipping from the 'Habersham Bureau' titled 'Nine Describe UFO In Habersham Area,' which features an artist's conception of the object and a report by Tom Winfield regarding a sighting by nine people on a Tuesday night. The Air Force concluded that no official evaluation of the Gainesville incident was necessary, as the report was not official and the physical evidence was unremarkable.