The skies over Chamblee, Georgia on January 23, 2021.
Visitation/documentation date Saturday, January 23, 2021, 10:32 EST; original sighting dates: Monday, July 26, 1948, at approximately 21:00 EST. (And Saturday, July 24, 1948 in Montgomery, Alabama.) The sky was mostly clear on the day of visitation, with some light clouds. No observed phenomena on day of visitation.
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This case begins rather benignly, but then takes some interesting twists and turns. On the evening of Monday, July 26, 1948, an officer on duty (“Avery”, in a mistakenly non-redacted portion of the report) in the observation tower at the Atlanta Naval Air Station in Chamblee, Georgia (now Peachtree-Dekalb Airport) reported seeing a blue-white streaking light in the sky, at a low altitude, on a straight, steady course, from west to east (also reported as southeast to northeast). Overall, there were multiple reports across various locations, prompting the Project Sign (the precursor to Blue Book) investigator to declare the sighting a meteor. It is curious to note, however, that the reported object seemed to “gain altitude” instead of descending, as it would be expected with a meteor. Further, the object was initially reported as “non-maneuvering,” yet it is reported that Avery stated that the object, in addition to “gaining altitude” also “turned shapely to the south” before disappearing. Importantly, the officer stated that no flights were in the air around that area during the time of the sighting. It was also reported that visibility was good and that winds were calm but variable.
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Another group of folks, perhaps students at Georgia Tech, also reported seeing the object at about 2045 hours. “The light appeared about the size of a football and was traveling southeast in a steady course. It was green and faded into a silver-colored tail. The light appeared to fade away in flight as if extinguished. The light was absolutely silent.” There were several reports from witnesses around the Augusta, Georgia area that night, and while the writer of the Project Sign report (I believe a Captain J. R. Breece*, U.S.A.F.) is open to the idea of multiple objects in the air, they are apt to declare the sightings as one meteoric entity. Further in the report, many additional witnesses are interviewed, including two housewives and the night editor and night printer at the Augusta Chronicle.
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*There is no easily available information online about a U.S.A.F. Captain, J. R. Breece. Though, he (assuming) is also listed as an intelligence officer and perhaps information related to him remains enigmatic.
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In all honesty, one of my favorite parts about this report is the drawing of the purported UFO that is included.
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It is worth noting that many folks who investigate UFOs/UAPs, either as a hobby or as some kind of professional endeavor, often link the U.S. Government as one umbrella organization conspiring to cover up all information linked to the subject. However - and I am not the first to point this out - it needs to be remembered that the U.S. Government is not one entity, but many different entities that are often fighting amongst themselves for varying reasons. These different factions hide and hoard information, squabble over budget and finances, and just generally do not always play nice with each other. And, perhaps most importantly, they are all run by humans who are subject to human error. For example, in this specific report, the name “Avery” is redacted in one sentence, not redacted in the next, and then redacted again further along in the same document. There are many reports that I have come across that have errors like this. One of the great criticisms by skeptics to the UFO/UAP phenomena is that it would be very difficult to keep all the different factions of the U.S. Government uniformly quiet about hiding something of this magnitude. It’s not a criticism without merit, especially if we can’t even properly redact an officer’s name in one report.
Further, in her book UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials go on the Record, Leslie Kean talks about the compartmentalization of government organizations, so that the majority of people involved in special black budget projects have “authentic” plausible deniability if asked about what they are working on. (Kean is also not the first person to discuss this, but I am reading this book currently, so it sticks out in my mind as an example.) I bring all this up just as a reminder that while not without due criticism, the whole of the U.S. Government should not be considered to be engaging in one massive coverup. While there should always be advocacy for transparency, this idea that the government as a whole is actively trying to hide and confuse the American public only leads into further caustic erosion of trust in our public system that I personally think is incredibly dangerous to American democracy.
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Stray observations:
1. Further in the report, a memo dated 6 August 1948 has a Col. H. M. McCoy direct Army officers at McPherson Army Base to submit “graphic statements” of any anomalies observed during the night of 27 July 1948. Further, McCoy address the anomalies as “unidentified aerial phenomena”, one of the earliest instances I have heard this phrase used. In fact, recent UFO/UAP whistleblowers and former intelligence officers (Jay Stratton, Luis Elizondo, etc.), often state that the term “UAP” came about under their tutelage, though we can see here that it has been in military use since at least 1948.
2. Further, Col. McCoy advises McPherson to do no publicity around the event, and further documentation shows that serious steps were taken to ensure that little press about what was seen got out. (Newspaper reports included later in the file showed that attempt to be futile.)
3. Those newspaper reports include sightings of the object in nearby Atlanta, but also as far away as southwest Virginia. As the news reports go on, though many are illegible, the descriptions of the object intensify – for example, it is described as a “wingless sky monster” in one.
4. In an Intelligence Information Report (AF 36371), it seems that the Chamblee/August sighting was actually being treated as FOUR separate cases around similar dates (24 and 26 July), with additional locations investigated in Montgomery. Another case is brought up, Project Sign case #144, in which “a preponderance of evidence is available to establish that in almost all cases an unidentified object was seen within the times stated and on the same dates over an extended area pursuing a general course south. Descriptions to size, shape, color and movements are fairly consistent.” Which obviously begs the question that if this was a meteor, how could it have been seen on two distinct dates?
5. Further witnesses are interviewed, primarily officers from Robbins A.F.B. and civilians who were aboard an aircraft. The officers were also aboard an aircraft when they saw the object, and described it as “cigar” shaped or “cylindrical”. This is noted that the Robbins officers were “trained observers”, and further in the intelligence report, the author, a Captain Robert R. Sneider (sp?) says that due to their testimony, “it is obvious that this object is not a meteor.”
6. This is the first report I have seen that directly references J. Allen Hynek, of Project Blue Book fame. Hynek’s observations as a consultant are listed under “Incident #3”.
7. Due to the reported cylindrical shape of the object, it becomes clear in the report that the investigation is not necessarily to determine whether the object was extraterrestrial, but whether it was foreign and hostile. The conversation turns to the object looking like a “wingless fuselage” and whether or not wings could have been folded back into the body of the object. And, of course, whether or not the object as a missile, possibly nuclear. (The comparisons to the contemporary “tic-tac” UAP are a different conversation.)
8. Then, a newspaper report about a “Flying Whatzit” in New Jersey is included, describing a long, silver, flying something in the air about Asbury Park at about 8:15 a.m. In fact, two pilots “hopped” in a plane to get a closer look at the object, but it “was gaining altitude so fast . . . that they couldn’t get nearer than 5,000 feet.” “It looked like several balloons strung together like pearls.” The sighting is then attributed to the physics department at Princeton sending up cosmic ray balloons.
9. At the bottom of one of the reports, a name “Herman E. Montgomery” appears to be the “SA 111th CIC Det” (Special Agent) in charge. There is no immediate recognition of the name on my end, but it is rare, in my experience so far, to have the name of the SA not redacted on the report. No immediate information is available through a basic Google search, except for a census record that states a Herman Montgomery was born about 1929 in Franklin, Alabama. The timing and location seem right, though further research would obviously need to be done.
A “Walter E. Cassidy” shows up as a special investigator later on in the report, though much of that is illegible. It appears Special Agent Cassidy interviewed many of the witnesses in and around Augusta, Georgia.
10. A bit of the redactions concealing witness names appear to be faded. I can make out the following:
- A Mr. and Mrs. Harold Shaw (?), Apartment 201 F, Georgia Tech Apartments, Chamblee.
- A Mr. Winton _. Desmith (?) of 812 Russell Street, Augusta.
- A Charles Atkinson of 2412 Cobb Street, Augusta (2412 Cobb Street is now “Summerville Medical Village,” further research would need to be done to determine if this was a residential address in 1948. Mr. Atkinson was the night printer for the Augusta Chronicle.
- A Mrs. Harry ??????? of 609 Grant Avenue, North Augusta.
Updated April 2, 2024