24.07.2025

Midwest flap July 31-August 5 1965

In SUNlite 14-3, I reviewed the July - August time period in the Blue Book records. One item I mentioned but did not examine closely was the “Midwest flap” during this time period. Blue Book listed it all as one case and gave the dates for August 31-September 3.

The actual dates ran from July 31 to about August 6. It included many Midwestern states and had many sightings. I went through the files and they are a real mess. There were some summary sheets that listed all the cases but I discovered that even they were wrong. Dates appear to be incorrect. A lot of the sightings were placed on August 5 but appear to have been the morning of August 2. The confusion was the result of the source documents, which were summaries written by duty officers, did not provide any dates. They just listed times. Another sheet gave the times in an odd format with 05 at the front of the time. I suspect those writing the tables thought this meant the 5th of August. However, examination of the sightings and putting them with sightings of known dates indicate these were on the 2nd of August. For the most part, the date does not matter unless a solution include a satellite. The

difference between the position on Jupiter on August 2 and August 5 at a given time is not significant..

A lot of the reports were very poor reports. The FE Warren AFB sightings were probably the worst. Quite a few were simple statements like “saw nine UFOs” and that was it. Others would be conflicting in their statements. They would refer to the object moving at high or tremendous speed and then state the object took minutes to cross the sky! It is apparent, after examining the reports, that many of the sightings involved scintillating stars and the bright planet Jupiter. However, identifying which stars/planets were seen was difficult since the descriptions were very brief. Apparently, the UFO officer did not bother to ever follow-up and interview all the airmen at this missile sites. After receiving the first night of UFO reports, Sergeant Moody responded that any follow-up data should include positional data and duration per standard procedure. Apparently, his request fell on deaf ears. The next night’s reports were just as bad. I suspect the officers did not like a sergeant telling them what to do. Blue Book provided no specific explanations for any of these cases.

Because of the way the files were laid out, I suspect there are probably errors in the table. Still it pretty much discusses most of the sightings and potential explanations for each event.

Quelle: SUNlite 2/2025