An El Paso Optometrist, Dr. G. Oliver Dickson, reported that at an unspecified time during the day he had seen a
"blimp-like
" object traveling over a mountain-top near the city. He said that although the object appeared
"bright and shiny
," it "did not reflect the sun's rays
." Dr. Dickson estimated the speed of the object
was about 150 miles an hour, and its size about 40 feet across and five feet thick. It was in view for 15 seconds,
Dr. R. F. Sensenbaugher, Silver City dentist, was driving with his wife and her sister, Mrs. C. B. Munroe, shortly
after 8:00 p.m. MST when they saw a "luminous disc
" sail out of the northern sky and disappear over the
southern horizon. Dr. Sensenbaugher described the object's size as "about half the size of the full moon," and said
it was "very brilliant, giving off a green light
." The disc appeared to the reporting witness to be "far-distant
,"
and it was not moving at an excessive speed, as, for example, a meteor would. The three observers viewed the object
for six or seven seconds before it disappeared over the southern horizon.
Dr. Sensenbaugher reported the details of his sighting to Dr. H. H. Nininger, the meteoriticist, who concluded that
the object was "definitely a meteor and probably landed 200 miles south of Silver City, in Mexico
." However,
the Sensenbaughers could not connect the phenomenon with anything they had experienced before.
En route to San Francisco to attend classes in atomic medicine at the University of California, Dr. Leon Oetinger,
a physician from Lexington, Kentucky, accompanied by his mother, Mrs. Leon Oetinger, Sr., and Miss Carol Street, of
Winston-Salem, North Carolina, had been spending some time sightseeing at the Grand Canyon. At an unspecified time
during the day of the 26th, shortly after having left Canyon Lodge, on the north rim, they saw "a silver ball
flashing through the sky
" above the canyon. "It was a distinctly large ball
," Mrs. Oetinger reported
later, in San Francisco. She said it first "looked like an airplane, yet it was falling too swiftly for an
airplane. It was in the sky one minute, and by the time I had called my son's attention to it, the form had
swooshed to almost the horizon point. Then it was gone
." Dr. Oetinger described the phenomenon in what his
mother called "the conservative words of a physician." He said the body was moving extremely fast, "too swiftly
for a falling plane.
"
Ashland physician Dr. S. Everett, and his family, together with C. E. Corry, superintendent of Ashland Park, and
Corry's family, were camping on the banks of Rock River, near McKee Bridge. At 6:40 a.m. PST they saw a silver,
disc-like object traveling in a straight line overhead at a high rate of speed. The witnesses estimated its altitude
was approximately 7,000 feet -- gauged by an airliner passing overhead at the time. The object would have had to be
"quite large," Corry reported later, "to have been seen at that height.
" The sighting was reported to the
Ashland Tidings the next morning.
Dr. David S. Long, Jr., Kansas City physician, reported that while he was sailing on Lake Lotawana, a few miles southeast of Kansas City, at about 10:00 a.m. CST, he saw a formation of seven disc-shaped objects, each appearing about the size of a grapefruit, moving in a northerly direction at a rapid speed. He said that when he first saw the discs, they were passing directly overhead.
Dr. Walter Hoefer, of 23 Black Lane, Ladue, about six miles west of St. Louis, reported that at 7:45 p.m. CDT he,
as well as his son and daughter, had seen "six round or oval objects flying in an apparently integrated manner,"
going noiselessly from the northwest to the south at a very high altitude. He hurried into his house to obtain a
pair of binoculars, and each of the three witnesses was able to use them to view the object more closely before they
disappeared from view. The discs were arranged in two groups of three each, "like a disc harrow
." They were
light-colored, and as seen through the binoculars, Dr. Hoefer reported that "each had a light spot in the center."
He was unable to estimate their rate of speed. The objects were called to the attention of neighbors, several of
whom thought they might be planes.
About the same time, several miles to the south at Shrewsbury, Mr. and Mrs. George Willson and their daughter, and Mr. and Mrs. Charles Downs, neighbors, reported seeing two groups of three discs each, moving eastward at high speed (Case 462). Farther to the east, in St. Louis, Mrs. N. P. McDonald and her daughter, of 5941 Scanlon Avenue, and Mrs. Walter Simonds, 5935 Scanlon Avenue, also reported seeing an eastward flight of six objects in two groups of three each (Case 463). Miss Lois Bogner, of 6338 Sutherland Avenue, made a similar sighting (Case 464), and six discs were reported observed by Leonard Coleman and his sister, at 5381 Pershing Avenue (Case 465). All these sightings were made at approximately the same time and, in spite of a difference in direction with Dr. Hoefer's report, are probably independent verifications of the same objects. (The difference in directions can be accounted for if one considers the possibility that the formation shifted to an easterly course following Dr. Hoefer's view of their passage; it's also possible he could have been in error about the direction.)