United States.Seymour · a couple in their car see two rings of spinning lights

On January 13, 1954, Headquarters of the 2466th Air Force Reserve Combat Training Center, part of the Continental Air Command (CONAC) and based at Atterbury Air Force Base, next to Columbus (Indiana), sent the Air Force Director of Intelligence in Washington a letter headed "UFOB". The letter was submitted "in lieu of AF Form 112b", that is, in place of the report form, as required by regulation AFR 200-2 of August 26, 1953 in its paragraph 6b, and it follows that regulation's outline point by point. It carries the number AF607182, Atterbury's dispatch stamp of January 13 and the Directorate of Intelligence's receipt stamp of January 15, 1954, and an information copy went to ATIC, which the letter spells "AITC".

The story reached the base indirectly. On January 9, at about 4:50 p.m. Central time, Dr W. S. Fisher of Columbus telephoned Second Lieutenant Marvin S. Satin, the unit's adjutant and officer of the day. Hiram Jones, a 60-year-old druggist who owned Jones Drug Store in Seymour, was a patient at Bartholomew County Hospital under Fisher's care, due to be released on January 10 or 11 after a short convalescence. According to the report, Fisher drew the story out of him by mentioning a letter from his own son, serving with the Air Force in Saudi Arabia, who claimed to have seen a "Flying Saucer"; Jones then told his own. Until then he had told only three friends, wanting to avoid ridicule, although he firmly believes in what he saw, and his wife, Gladys, has the same attitude. The report was prepared by Staff Sergeant Bruce C. F. Butler, NCO in charge of the Reserve Information Office, who notes that no officer was assigned when the contact was made; Satin signed it for the commander. The sergeant describes Jones as not prone to exaggeration, direct and forthright, and truthful within his knowledge; of Gladys he says only that she has the same attitude as her husband.

The couple's account runs as follows. They were driving east when a brilliant moving light caught their attention, and they looked north, at about 20° above the horizon. They saw two objects, each a circular ring, like smoke, of a cloudy substance that stayed in a plane, with no structure visible above or below; white, cloudy, gaseous. Jones would not estimate the size and only called them large. They were staggered "like two jets in flight", tightly following each other. There were four bright, equidistant points of light in the same plane, rotating slowly clockwise and seeming to be the source of the cloudy aura; the letter does not say whether there were four per object, and the release's official description places them in each. They left a bluish white, vapor-like trail that Jones compared with a jet take-off seen at night. They heard no sound, and got out of the car to make sure.

The path, again according to the report, was an in-line approach from the north with a steady descent and a downward tilt that looked controlled, to a point where the objects stood still, perfectly level. Then they tilted upward, with the points of light fixed, two to the rear and two forward, and accelerated suddenly at an abrupt angle, in what the witnesses called a "sharp upward travel" to the southwest, although they could not determine the angle of departure ("Undetermined by observers"), at a speed they described as incredible and keeping formation. They watched them for about three or four minutes; with two moves and one change of direction of the car, which they reckoned at about two minutes, the total came to five or six. It was a ground-visual observation, with no optical aids, and the last part was seen from flat ground north of the town's built-up area, with no buildings nearby. The report gives the time as 0002 to 0008Z, that is, 6:02 to 6:08 p.m. Central time on the previous day, with light "between dusk and night"; the witnesses were "unable to remember exactly" the date. The conversion to Central time follows the report's own convention, which gives the time of the doctor's call in "CST". The coordinates read "85° 49' East 39° 03' North", with the longitude miswritten: Seymour lies west of Greenwich, and at 85° 49' west the point falls about 12 kilometers north-northeast of the town center (our own calculation); given in whole minutes, they may be an approximate reference for Seymour rather than the exact spot.

With no date, the report gives the weather for the whole week, without assigning the event to any day within it, of December 8 to 15, 1953, from Staff Sergeant Billy R. Egger, chief observer of Detachment 21, 9th Weather Group, at Atterbury: overcast from the 8th to the 10th; on the "10 - 12", clear from 1800 to 2400 and otherwise overcast; on the "11 - 12", overcast, a line that overlaps the previous one; from the 13th to the 15th, overcast, with intermittent light rain, drizzle, light snow and fog. Winds were south through west until the 13th and north on the 14th and 15th, at 10 to 12 knots, and visibility varied between a mile and a half and 15 miles. There were no other disturbances or unusual conditions in the area, and no physical evidence. On air traffic, the report says there was none according to the observers, but that it was impossible to verify without the exact date through air traffic control and the 2466th's operations section.

The copy that reached ATIC is in Blue Book file 6778927, filed as Columbus (Indiana). The first names, the addresses and the doctor's name are blacked out, although the surname Jones remains legible; it has neither the letter's date nor the number AF607182, and it bears the handwritten notes "Info Cy ATIC Wright Patterson AFB" in the margin, "?/0002Z Columbus Ind" at the top and "Multi" in the corner. The case record card, on an FTD form of September 1963, dates the event "Approx 10 Dec 53 between dusk & night", places it at Columbus, records a civilian source, "one" object in the number box although its own summary says "two objects", four minutes, a ground-visual observation and a southwest course, summarizes "Four bright points of light rotating clockwise. White, cloudy or gaseous, described as a circular ring of smoke, two objects" and concludes "INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR EVALUATION". The file also holds two teletypes about other sightings on December 10 and 11, near Pittsburgh and in Maryland and Washington, unrelated to the Seymour one, which also carry a handwritten "Multi"; on the Westover one about Pittsburgh, the "10" of the date is circled and annotated "Prob 11".

As evidence, it is the testimony of a married couple who saw the same thing together, from the same car, and it counts as one. The witnesses are identified by name, age, occupation and address, and the NCO who prepared the report judged Jones reliable; of his wife he notes only that she has the same attitude. But the account was written down some four weeks after the event, in a report a sergeant drafted from the contact with Jones, without the date of the sighting and without any instrument record or physical evidence. A month's delay and a date nobody could pin down weigh more than the good impression the witness made.

The Blue Book record card's conclusion, "Insufficient data for evaluation", neither proposes a cause nor declares the case unexplained: it says the file lacked what was needed to evaluate it. The Atterbury report itself explains the main gap: without a date that evening's air traffic could not be checked, which is exactly what would have ruled out or confirmed aircraft. The card, written no earlier than September 1963, also simplifies the report: it marks one object in the number box while its own summary says two, places the event at Columbus, the base's town, when the witnesses were north of Seymour, and dates the case to around December 10. That date does not come from the letter. The "Multi" note on the copy of the letter and on the two teletypes of the 10th and 11th suggests the file grouped them as multiple sightings of those dates, and the card's date may have come from there; it also matches the only clear window in the weather summary, the evening of the "10 - 12" between 1800 and 2400. The file does not say which of the two whoever filled in the card relied on.

The sky that week at the reported time helps little (our own calculation with ephemerides for the point given by the coordinates). At 0005Z on any night between December 9 and 16, the Sun was about 19.5° below the horizon and astronomical twilight had ended at about 2356 or 2357Z: it was full night, which fits poorly with the report's "between dusk and night". If the witnesses gave the time in Eastern rather than Central time, the sighting would have been an hour earlier, around 2302 to 2308Z, with the Sun 8° to 9° below the horizon, in nautical twilight, which would match that light. Jupiter, at magnitude −2.6, stood 15° to 21° high toward the east-northeast, ahead and to the left of a car heading east, while the witnesses were looking north. The waxing Moon was between the southwest and the southeast depending on the night: low on the 9th and 10th (about 3° high in the southwest on the 9th), near first quarter on the 13th (about 44° high in the south-southwest) and gibbous and high afterwards (about 59° high in the southeast on the 16th, 75 % lit). None of those fixed points explains two rings that come down, stop and leave, and in 1953 there were no artificial satellites yet. Nobody, neither the base, nor Blue Book, nor the official description that accompanies the document in the release, proposed a cause.

The comparisons in the account, the smoke ring, the two jets in formation, the trail of a night take-off, are the images the witnesses used to describe what they saw and identify nothing. The release's official description warns that the report's descriptive and estimative language reflects the reporter's subjective interpretation at the time and should not be read as a conclusive indication of the object's features. The document also shows how regulation AFR 200-2 worked in a reserve unit with no intelligence officer: a tip from a doctor to an officer of the day, an information sergeant filling in the regulation's outline, and a letter that reached Washington two days after leaving the base.