PROJECT 10073 RECORD 1. ''DATE ~ TIME C~OUP 2. LOCATION Kokomo, Indiana (12 Witnesses) 10. CONCLUSION Civiljans Other. (REFlECTION FIDH GROUND LICJITS) ... NUMBER OF 05JECTS s. LENGTH OF OaSERVATION 11. BRIEr SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS 50 l-3.nutes SE:r: CASE FilE TYPE OF OBSERVATION Ground -Vi s..:.al 9. PHYSICAL EV!)ENCE FTD SE P 6 3 0~329 (TOE) PNlout edltlcm ol thJe Iota r be ued. ;Repo!t on lifO ,Invest,isation, Kokomo, Indiana, 7/24/66 Investigator: W. T. Powers General sw.mn,ary: Between the hours of about 2210 and 2300, Fridey, July 22 patc~es of white illumination were observed moving very rapidly back and forth wit!lin an area over Kokomo, the area gradually shifting southward until the group of lights disappeared behind trees. Some of the lights moved, so~ re~ned stationar,y for varying periods of time. The lights appeared blue- white , were oval in shape -and shaded off to darkness at the edges "like a flas:1, ight seen in fog. " A total of twelye witnesses gave accounts of the lights; the longest base~ine was over seven niles. There was disagreement by four of the witnessc~ concerning clouds: four claimed that the night was cloudy, while four who obse~;ed the longest sai d it vas clear, with stars and moon visible. Four othe~s were uncertain, al~hough their impression had been that the night .vas Result s from Interviews lst Interview: Mr. W. C. Dicterly Chief Deputy, Howard COWlty , wife of a city police detective; Mrs. Interview took place in Howard County Jail ,..; .. .,, received a radio call that inmates ,,L county ho::1e (knO'.m locally as the "poor farm") were watching strange lif.~'' overhead.. He vas at the time west of town, and drove immediately to the county howe, where he got out of' the car and saw the lights .~1rect1y av~ " He is positive that there were six lights. The lights were oval, like n ; "egg-shaped disc", a.nd moved with fast jerky motions from one point to another, remaining within a generally oval area some 30 degrees wide. was at that time looated at 200 south and 300 west on the court~Y grid system, in which roads one mile apart are given numbers by the huna=eds: he was therefore two miles south and three miles west of the 0.0 poin~, which is in the city near its center. arrived about five minutes after the call came in, and when he did arrive, the lights were overhead and moving south as a group, slow-ly; he decided to follow them. He drove south on 300 West {Malfalfa Road) to : intersection of 300 vest and 250 south, where he parked and turned his he i!ghts off. He got out of the car and watched the lights in the sky for per~;;s twenty m1nutes, ~ce lights having moved straight south to an elevation of s 30 to 40 degre~s. At this poin~ ~hree ladies drove by and recognized the car of Mr. Diete=:Y; thinking he :.o{as in trouble they pulled over and called to him what ~e was doing. Die~erly said he was watching "the objects in the sky," which t~e Jadies had not yet seen. The ladies turned their headlights off and go~ out to watch, too. ~;le lights at 'this time {about 2230) were about 20 degrees up from the l':i:>~:.:.::l, just over some woods, and were moving back and forth through an arc o: r~ps 30 degrees, an oval pattern with the north-south dimension about one-~hird of the width. The pattern of movement within this area consis-r.ed of rapid dartings and "chasing" motions; nt one point, one witness said two of the spots stopped, and became narrow with rays of light extending upward from them, while two to the left remained stationary in the normal shape, and two others to the right went around each other in circles. Picture 1 illustrates the configuration. The lights seemed on recollection and by experi- ment, ~o be as big as a penny between 18 and 24 inches from the eye approximately two degrees. Mr. Dieterly s~ggested that they were as big as an automo~ile, and the ladies said no, they must have been bigger than a 707 jet. There were no objective means for determining actual size. All the witnesses had thought of searchlights, but had decided that the spots were not from searchlights for several reasons: 1. The motions were far too fast for a large searchlight to have pr~i~ced. Illustrations of the motion using a hand-held flashlight indicated that the movements were as fast as the flashlight could be moved by hand. 2. No rays of light could be seen extending up from the ground va.11d expect on a hazy night. 3. There were no commercial establishments in the direction toward vhic~ the lights went ; ~he general implication was that the source would have to b e in open country. 4. The lights were too bright to have been produced by ~thing smaller the~ a large anti-aircraft light. All the four witnesses agreed that there was halo of brightness around the area of the lights, as if they were illuminat- 5. All saw stars and the moon, and concluded that there were no clouds for a se cr~ight to play on. The ladies were on their way to Russiaville, :t'ive miles west on Rte. 26, which is the county road 400 south 1-1/2 miles south of where they were parked. They proceeded on to Russiaville after watching for some twenty minutes with Mr. Dieterly Russiaville is located at 750 vest and 400 south. The ladies parked in Russiaville with the car pointed north; at this point they could see one light out of the rear window of the car, somewhat to the east. The most easterly bearing they would agree towas about 155 degrees, or 25 degrees east At the same time, Mr. Dieterly remained talking.with som~ people who live! where the cars had stopped, for perhaps twenty minutes, and then went one mile east and one mile south, to the junction of 200 west and 400 south, where he wat ched until after 2300 hours. The lights were ver.y low on the. horizon at this t ime and were due south. He was probably at this location when the ladies were in Russiaville. The ladies and Mr. Dieterly were at that time 5. 5 miles apa=t on 400 south: the minimum distance of the lights is therefore 5.5/tan(25) or thirteen miles south of Dieter~, at approxjmately 2300 hours. During this interview, "My next door neighbor said they ~ere in Indianapol~s Friday night and close to them they were using six spo-:!!ghts at a used ca:-lot " Indianapolis is about forty miles to the south of the location of the witnesses. The witnesses were asked if the lights ever went through each other, and t~ey said emphatically that they did not. On being asked whether a light ever -e~t in front of another one or behind, however, they all agreed that this r~i happened repeatedly. The deputy chief said that they would move in. cur;e~ ~tn like t he wheel of a racing car taking a curve, becoming oval, then circular again. lvf.rs. aid, "I wish we could have gotten a hold of Frank Edwards you ever talked to him? (No) He is the most interesting person! just lova to hear him talk. Especially when he has actually seen them." Mr. Dieterly repeated several times that there were definitely six of aid she saw four, and Mrs aid they were hard to count. added that there was interference with the television pictures that night, and Mr. Dieterly said he could not reach more than four miles on his poli~e radio which normally makes contact over tenmiles. Second Interview: Mr. and M,.. and two children, (e.bo.1t twelve) and Jeff (about ten). This fa.mily:had just come from dinner, lea:ring the restaurant about 2000. At around 2010 to 2020, they were on 200 west at about 150 south when they saw two or three lights on the clouds. They thought they were spotlights on clouds. Turning west on l~OO south, they saw the lights still to the south, but lower; the family drove to 300 west and tu ed south, losing sight of the lights at 300 west and about 375 south owing to trees thirty t o forty feet feet tall, and about one-half mile away. T lights still seemei v O be three in number, and moved in circles in a ree;..:lar pattern. The lights wer~ last seen at about 2030. When the witnesses were told that the previous :vi~nesses had reported no clouds at a.Jl, the HiJJmans were ve~E surprised, and while they did not contradict the other witnesses, they seemed to be avoidir.~ that out of tact more than conviction. ~tr "I lo~ked. '-lp vhen I go~ home (about 2040) and I saw a few stars but I a.lso thought tha.~ ~::,.e::-e 11ere some clouds u --.J.~ ..a.VJ.,_,.w. Mr. and Mrs Mr. and Mrs The sa ...,-l. ~:1esses were located about 1/2 mile directly north of the "poor :farm" and saw the lights at about 2030 to the south, moving back and forth over about a thirty degree arc and remaining generally fifteen to twenty degrees above t he horizon. They thought the lights were spotlights, but had evidently been talked to a bit, since they added that the lights seemed "under" the clouds not on their bases. They were positive that there were clouds, and could not be shaken into saying that the night was clear; in fact, they pointed to heavy cumulus and said that the cloud cover was dense, like that. Add:i Information According to the Indianapolis weather bureau, the cloud cover at 2155 was th=ee-tenths altocumulus in a layer at 16,000 feet, thickening to six-tenths an ho~ later; there was another layer of cirrostratus, about five-tenths cover, 000 feet. Therefore, stars could be seen between the clouds. The high cirrus thickened to an overcast by 2255 hours at Indianapolis, and probably late:-at Kokomo. The layer at 16000 feet would be intercepted by a horizontal beam of lig at a distance of 155 miles. A beam angled up at about 3.3 degrees would make a spot that would appear overhead forty miles away. size of a S?Ot forty miles away depends on the focal length of the sea 11ight, the arc size, and the throw distance. A 60-inch searchlight with a 26-i~ch focal length and a 1/4-inch arc will make beam about 0.5 degrees wide. At a forty-mile distance the spot will be 1800 feet in diameter. Viewed 15,000 feet below this spot will sub tend 6. 5 degrees the short way many ~i~es that length in the long dimension, provided the cloud layer is horizon- tal. e apparent size vas given as considerably smaller than this, so one muet conc:~i~ ~hat (1) the searchlights were aimed through holes in the l er layer to impir.ge on the higher layer, and/or (2) the searchlights were closer than forty miles, (they could have been as close as 30 miles), or (3) the witnesses underes Ated the size. Of these choices, the first seems somewhat likely, as the cover was only three-tenths at 16 while it began at five-tenths at 20 (minimum estimate) and became 100~ overcast. At the point when the witnesses were together watching the display in the southern sky, the lights were about twenty degrees up, which on the 16 000 foot layer, would place them about nine miles away. Since they were. still moving south, this agrees well with ~he thirteen mile figure from thetriangulation on the baseline to Russiaville, whic!l was detexm1 ned for a later time. The estimated sizes were determined by aJl the witnesses f'or the case in w~ich the lights were to the south: if they had been halfw~ between the source postulated above and the observers, they would have appeared round and abou~ one-half degree in diameter, when on a direct line to the source, and oval when. off that line. A two-degree diameter would place the lights about 1/4 of the distance to the source away. Conc:"'...!.sion A reasonable interpretation of the event is that the witnesses saw lights from six searchlights ~nown (by one of the witnesses) to have been in action at the proper time in Indianapolis. The cloud cover is sufficient to account for seeing the spots as far away as 155 miles; it is not therefore impossible for tiem to have been seen clearly at thirty to forty miles range, directly Tee extremel~Y fast motions seen by the observers are easy to understand when i~ is realized that the angle of motion seen by the witnesses would have been fo~ to ten times as great as the actual angular deviations of the search- lights, due to the great difference between the angle of thraw and the distance of obse:-vation. The color of the lights was likened to a mercury-vapor light; this is also characteristic of the blue-white light from a carbon arc source The oval shape of the lights is due to the angles of incidence and observation. The failure to see beams coming up from the ground was due to the fact that there were no clouds beiow 16 000 feet, and since ~he beams were coining at a low angle f'rom the south, the forward scatter would be low. A halo effect vas seen in the area of the lights, which is accountable for by natural diffusion of light from inevitable imperfections in the light source mirrors, and f rom scattering of light over small angles by the atmosphere. There seems to be no reason to assume that the source was other than the ~earchlights in Indianapolis.