South Korea.Kimpo · five airmen watch a bright light hang in the dawn sky

In the early morning of Sunday, September 19, 1954, at 0555 local time (2055 GMT on the 18th), Airman Third Class Winston F. Perry, duty dispatcher of base operations at Kimpo Air Base (K-14), near Seoul, was outside the building when he noticed a bright object that was moving. He called a weather observer, Airman Third Class Frederick J. McNeill, and McNeill called the forecaster, Master Sergeant James E. Sheldon, who came to the door on the south side of the weather station. To Sheldon it looked like a very bright star, but he was sure it was not one, because it was moving from east to west, so he called the control tower.

In the tower, controller Schexnayder looked at the object through 7x50 binoculars and said it did not look like a star, because it was much brighter and seemed to be moving west. He asked whether it could be a weather balloon, and the weather station answered that it could not, because it was moving the wrong way. Through the binoculars he saw no streamers, tail or structure, only a white light like sunlight reflected by an aluminum surface, about the size of a pinhead. His colleague, controller Ellsworth G. Johnson, found it too bright to make out a shape, dimensions or altitude. He lined up his eye with the edge of the roof and for a minute and a half the light seemed to stand still; the clouds, moving fast from the west, gave it an apparent motion. He looked again a few minutes later and saw that it had shifted, though only slightly.

The light was about 50 degrees up and at an azimuth of about 175 degrees, and it passed to about 180 with no noticeable change in elevation. Three of the five observers saw it as round and the other two could not make out the shape because of the glare. Its color resembled strong sunlight glaring off polished aluminum; Sheldon said it was about the size of a star and sometimes flickered like sunlight on a tilted mirror, and McNeill that it was a little larger than a star and much brighter. Its size was that of a pinhead or a pea at arm's length. There were clouds at 12,000 feet, seven-tenths coverage, and the sun had not yet risen (it rose at 0618). At 0608 a cloud deck moved in underneath and hid it, to the south.

The weather station released a balloon at 0600, during the sighting, and noted its track for the first 15 minutes: it started to the west, at an azimuth of about 263 degrees, climbed through the north and ended to the east, at about 86 degrees, at elevations between 42 and 76 degrees. It was never in the south. It was white and carried no lights. At 40,000 feet the wind blew from the west at 105 knots and at 45,000 feet at 95.

Second Lieutenant Anthony F. Ingram, intelligence officer of the 4th Fighter Interceptor Group, signed the report on September 22, three days later, and rated the reliability of the five observers as good. His preliminary analysis concluded that there was apparently no explanation: the balloon had no bearing because it was never seen to the south, and the object was traveling west against the west wind. He added that the local radar had no plots in the K-14 area while the sighting lasted.

Colonel George D. Hastings, Deputy for Intelligence of the Far East Air Forces, commented that the object was either a star (Sirius) or a high-flying aircraft. By his account, Sirius would have been in almost the same position, but 12 and a quarter degrees lower, and observers tend to estimate elevation 10 to 15 degrees too high; an aircraft above 45,000 feet would have been lit by the sun even though the sun had not risen at the surface. The Blue Book card says the light looked too bright to be a star at dawn, although it notes that Rigel was at 50 degrees elevation and 180 azimuth, and rules out the balloon because the object was stationary and the balloon moved. The conclusion is "UNIDENTIFIED".

The case is well documented on the human side and empty on the physical side. Five servicemen at three different posts, the operations office, the weather station and the tower, saw the light and signed statements, and an intelligence officer collected them three days later. There was no radar, photograph or instrument measurement of angles: the elevations and azimuths are estimates by eye, and the pinhead size says nothing about the real size.

The two official readings contradict each other. The unit that investigated found no explanation, and among its arguments is that the light was moving west against the wind, a fact that rules out a balloon but not a celestial body: every star drifts from east to west as the Earth turns, and Sheldon ruled out a star precisely because it moved that way. The command in the Far East proposed a star or a high-flying aircraft, and the file names two different stars: Hastings, Sirius; the Blue Book card, Rigel at the object's position, although it judges the light too bright for a star. There are also observations that weigh in favor of the conventional reading: Johnson saw the light stand still for a minute and a half and attributed the apparent motion to clouds running in from the west, and two witnesses compared its size with a star.

A calculation by this entry for Kimpo between 0555 and 0608 local time (2055 to 2108 GMT) puts Rigel at 44 degrees elevation and 180 to 184 azimuth, and Sirius at 32 or 33 degrees and 154 to 157. The witnesses put the light at 50 degrees and 175 to 180. Rigel matches in direction, in an elevation that barely changes (observers tend to err high), and in a slow drift west of about 5 degrees in 13 minutes; Sirius sits about 20 degrees east of the position given, and the elevation Hastings gives it, 12 and a quarter degrees lower than the light, does not come out of this calculation. The Sun was 5 degrees below the horizon at 0555 and almost 3 at 0608, so an aircraft at 45,000 feet would have caught its light only from about 0602, and the light was seen from earlier. None of this proves it was Rigel: the card judges it too bright for a star and the file holds no instrument measurement of elevation.

The military explanation is not proven either. Hastings starts from the idea that observers overestimate elevation by 10 to 15 degrees, a general rule that was not measured in this case, and the aircraft hypothesis assumes a machine above 45,000 feet whose flight the file does not look for in any record. The description by all five, a very bright white point with no shape, trails or tail, is that of a distant object, and the file has no data to say which one.