The 701 Club: Case 275 January 4, 1949 Hickam Field, Hawaii.
Don Berlinner lists the case as follows:
Jan. 4, 1949; Hickam Field, Hawaii. 2 p.m. Witness: USAF pilot Capt. Paul Storey, on ground. one flat white, elliptical object with a matte top circled while oscillating to the right and left, and then sped away.1
The description by Sparks adds the witness location, that it blinked once per second, and that the object sped away in a climb towards the Northeast. 2
The Blue Book file
The file contains about as much information as can be expected for the time period the incident happened. Project Grudge did not give too much guidance on getting the important information like radiosonde data but the description does contain enough observational information3:
Time: 1407-1435
Weather: Scattered clouds
It was described as a large piece of round white flat cardboard, which oscillated. It was white on the underside with a dark non- reflective top.
Its size was approximated to be the size of an AT-6 at an altitude of 3000 feet. (Wingspan of 42 feet = 0.8 degree angular size)
Speed estimated at 85 mph.
Object “circled” the area doing right and left circles.
First seen approximately 25 miles east of the base. It came within 6 miles of the observer.
Maximum elevation was listed as 40 degrees. Estimated altitude was listed as 3000 feet.
Disappeared on a bearing of 25 degrees magnetic.
It disappeared by rapidly increasing in altitude and seems to have risen out of sight at the last bearing.
The sighting lines for the observer. The UFO could have taken any path between these two lines if his directions were accurate. While this is a current map, the 1952 aerial4 (right) shows the layout of buildings, airport, and other terrain were similar.
It did seem to pulse about once per second.
Analysis
Missing from the file are winds data. There is mention of “light” in the weather data. I can only assume this means light winds. However, there is no detailed wind data for analysis. Luckily, the RAOBS database does have wind data for Honolulu, Hawaii on the date in question, which I present here. I only list the wind information up to 2000 meters5. Weather underground also has hourly surface wind data for January 4, 19496, which I placed in the right four columns and highlighted in gray.
The winds at the surface were blowing at 13 knots from the South. One can draw the conclusion that winds up to 2000 meters were probably coming from a southerly (SE or SW) direction as well. This gives us an indication that the object could have been wind driven since it was going northward.
Wind speeds above 150 meters seem to have been around 10 knots, which present something of a problem with the wind driven theory. It would take about 6 minutes for an object to travel 1 nautical mile, which means it should not have been visible for more than 10 or 15 minutes.
However, the summary report states it was only visible for 15 minutes and the observer stated it kept turning around in circles. If we assume that the object was moving in a manner because of crosswinds, the displacement would have been much more than 1-2 nautical miles and could be visible for a longer period of time.
The initial direction of observation was towards the airport/air base (they share a common strip), the military golf course, and the Navy base facilities. It seems odd that this officer was the only person, who saw the object. Is it because others did see it and noted that it had an explanation?
All of this suggests that the object could have been a balloon of some kind. Perhaps there was an unusual object below the balloon that gave it the “white cardboard” appearance.
Conclusion
In my opinion this object was a possible balloon. It was moving in the direction of the wind, it acted like a balloon with an oscillating motion, and it eventually rose out of sight. Other than the duration of the sighting (15-23 minutes depending on what part of the case file you read), there seems to be no reason to reject this explanation. It should be removed from the list of unknowns.
Quelle: SUNlite 1/2021