Incident #184 and #185 Sighting Reports — Minnesota, October 1948

This document contains a series of reports and correspondence regarding a sighting incident on 20 October 1948, involving an unidentified aerial object observed over Minnesota and South Dakota. The object was described by multiple witnesses as a red ball of fire with a trail of smoke and burning particles. Reports originated from Winona, Minnesota, Aberdeen, South Dakota, and Minneapolis/St. Paul. The Minneapolis Morning Tribune of 21 October 1948 covered the event, noting that witnesses observed the object at approximately 0600 hours. The military investigation, conducted by the 2465th Air Force Reserve Training Center and coordinated through the Fifth Army and Air Materiel Command, concluded that the object was a fireball. The report includes detailed incident summaries for Incident 184 and 185, which were treated as the same event. Witnesses, including a teletype operator and a mailman, provided descriptions of the object's appearance, noting it was round with a tail, orange in color, and appeared to be boiling with flame. The object was observed moving from the south-southwest to the north-northeast before disappearing into a cloud bank. The military's final assessment was that the evidence was consistent with a fireball, and the reports were deemed to have no greater validity than previous sightings that had been proven groundless. The document also includes an incident index from a Project Grudge report, which categorizes various sightings, and correspondence regarding the investigation process and the need for better reporting standards for future sightings.