Where Texas UFOs have been spotted, according to new Pentagon files

The Pentagon on Friday released its first round of documents related to Unidentified Anomalus Phenomena and several reports outline decades-old sightings across the Lone Star State and a conversation between mission control in Houston and Gemini 7 that describes an encounter with a "bogey" and particles that look like the "path of a vehicle."

Dallas man photographs ‘diamond-shaped object’

In 1956, J.G. Kirby, from Dallas, photographed a "diamond-shaped object" flying through the sky while driving through Amarillo. 

Hockley gave the photo to the FBI for investigation. The Air Force later described it as a photo of "radiation vapor."

Hockley County Sheriff sees a UFO

Among the files is a UFO sighting in Levelland, Texas in November 1957. Hockely County Sheriff Weir Clem and a deputy responded to reports of an "egg-shaped object" that looked like a "blinding-red sunset" over Levelland. 

According to the report, three drivers said the object killed their engines and headlights when they got near the object. Clem also said he saw the object because it "streaked noiseless" across the road.

One of the drivers, James Long, from Waco, said the object was about 200 feet long and glowed like a neon light. Long told the sheriff that he got out of his car to look at the object, and it rose "200 feet straight up in the air" and disappeared.

Another driver told the sheriff that the object sounded like an explosion.

"It sounded like an ear-splitting clamp of thunder – as if something had exploded," Pedro Sacido told Clem.

The sheriff said there were no indications of burn marks and that officials from Reese Air Force Base in Lubbock checked for a possible plane crash and found nothing.

 

Lackland Air Force Base sighting, 1957

In November 1957, a civil service worker at Lackland Air Force Base reported seeing an "egg-shaped" object land in a ravine. The man said his car's engine and lights went out and when the object flew away he was able to drive away.

Around the same time as the Lackland sighting, the Midland Ground Observer Corps reported seeing a large, red object. They also said they picked up "unintelligible conversation on a sound recorder."

Fort Worth man photographs ‘flying bananas’

Ira Maxey, in 1950, photographed two groups of "flying saucers" near Fort Worth, according to an April edition of the London Daily Graphic. 

Maxley said the objects were "more like flying bananas than flying saucers."

‘Bogey at ten o’clock high': Gemini 7 crew sees something in space

Astronauts on the Gemini 7 mission in 1965 radioed mission control in Houston: "a bogey at ten o'clock high."

When Houston asked for clarification and if it could be a booster, the crew responded with, "this is an actual sighting."

The Gemini crew said there was a line of particles that looked like the path of a vehicle about four miles from their location and going to "polar orbit."

Is it just ‘fantasy’ or military research balloons?

Despite sightings in Texas around the same time, then Rep. George Mahon called the idea of flying saucers "just a fantasy" when his colleague, Michigan Rep. Albert Engel said he'd seen a "flying disc" in the summer of 1949. 

A 1953 story in the Washington Post said sightings of UFOs across the United States were just Air Force "Moby Dick" balloons. The story said that the balloons had a reflective nature that would allow them to reflect light even after dark and that vapor dust could account for the colors often seen during sightings. 

The balloons appear to have fooled even the Strategic Air Command in Texas after they tried to shoot down a flying object that turned out to be a balloon at an altitude of around 90,000 feet and giving off a dust-aided glow.

The complete files are available on their website at war.gov/ufo. 

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