1942 ⟶ Today
Eight decades of unresolved aerial phenomena, organized by date. Click any plaque to open its exhibit.
The Battle of Los Angeles
In the early hours of February 25, 1942 — eleven weeks after Pearl Harbor — the U.S. Army's 37th Coast Artillery Brigade fired approximately 1,400 rounds of anti-aircraft ammunition at one or more unidentified slow-moving objects over Los Angeles. Six civilians died, most from heart attacks or traffic accidents during the blackout. The U.S. Navy attributed the alarm to a 'false alarm'; the Army to 'unidentified airplanes.' The official explanation evolved across decades and remains formally unresolved.
OPEN EXHIBIT →Foo Fighters
From 1944 onward, Allied bomber and fighter crews — initially the 415th Night Fighter Squadron over the Rhine valley — reported luminous spheres that paced their aircraft at night. The phenomenon was given the name 'foo fighters,' borrowed from the Smokey Stover comic strip. The Eighth Air Force convened a quiet inquiry; no conventional German weapon was ever identified, and post-war Luftwaffe records contained no equivalent report.
OPEN EXHIBIT →The Ghost Rockets
From May 1946, Swedish, Finnish, and Norwegian witnesses reported some 2,000 sightings of cigar- or rocket-shaped objects, many entering and overflying the Gulf of Bothnia. The Swedish military launched a still-partially-classified investigation, working closely with British and American intelligence. No conventional Soviet missile programme has been identified that matches the volume, geography, or duration of the reports.
OPEN EXHIBIT →Kenneth Arnold over Mount Rainier
A private pilot searching for a downed Marine transport described nine bright crescent-shaped objects flying in formation near Mount Rainier, estimating their speed at over 1,200 mph. Arnold's comparison — that the objects moved 'like a saucer if you skip it across the water' — was condensed by a newspaper headline writer into 'flying saucers.' The story ran on June 25, 1947, and the modern era of the phenomenon began.
OPEN EXHIBIT →Roswell and Project Mogul
On July 8, 1947, the 509th Bomb Group issued a press release announcing the recovery of a 'flying disc' on a ranch near Roswell. The release was rescinded within hours and the debris re-identified as a conventional weather balloon. In 1994 and again in 1997, the U.S. Air Force published reports attributing the debris to Project Mogul — a then-classified array of high-altitude balloons designed to detect Soviet nuclear tests. The original eyewitness accounts and the gap between the two USAF reports continue to fuel debate.
OPEN EXHIBIT →Project Sign and Project Grudge
Established in January 1948 in response to the wave of sightings the previous summer, Project Sign was the first formal United States Air Force investigation. Its 'Estimate of the Situation' — which is believed to have concluded the phenomenon was interplanetary — was rejected by Chief of Staff Hoyt Vandenberg and reportedly destroyed. Sign was renamed Project Grudge in 1949 with an explicitly debunking posture, and folded into Blue Book in 1952.
OPEN EXHIBIT →Capt. Thomas Mantell
Kentucky Air National Guard pilot Capt. Thomas F. Mantell pursued an object reported by control-tower personnel at Godman Field. His F-51D climbed beyond its safe operating altitude without oxygen; the aircraft crashed and Mantell was killed. The Air Force ultimately attributed the object to a high-altitude Project Skyhook research balloon — a classified program at the time, which is why the initial investigators could not name it.
OPEN EXHIBIT →Chiles–Whitted
Captain Clarence Chiles and First Officer John Whitted, flying a Douglas DC-3, reported a wingless torpedo-shaped object passing their aircraft within 700 feet. The incident is reputed to have contributed to Project Sign's withdrawn 'Estimate of the Situation'. A ground witness in Robins, Georgia, had reported a similar object an hour earlier.
OPEN EXHIBIT →The Washington National Flap
On two successive weekends in July 1952, unidentified blips appeared on radar at Washington National Airport, at Andrews Air Force Base, and aboard pursuing F-94 fighters scrambled from New Castle AFB. The objects vanished when fighters approached and returned when they departed. The Air Force convened the largest press conference since World War II to attribute the events to temperature inversions; the explanation did not satisfy the controllers and pilots involved, and the flap directly precipitated the Robertson Panel.
OPEN EXHIBIT →The Robertson Panel
A five-member panel of physicists, chaired by H.P. Robertson, was convened by the CIA to review the UFO problem after a wave of sightings over Washington, D.C. in 1952. The panel's classified report recommended that public interest in the subject be reduced through a program of 'training and debunking' — a policy posture that would shape U.S. government communications for the following two decades. The report was declassified in 1975.
OPEN EXHIBIT →Lakenheath–Bentwaters
Over several hours on the night of August 13, 1956, ground radar at Bentwaters and Lakenheath tracked objects at speeds of up to 4,000 mph; airborne radar on a scrambled RAF Venom jet locked on, was overflown, and tracked the object as it took up station behind the fighter. The Condon Report later treated the case as 'the most disturbing UFO incident on record' from a radar-evidence standpoint.
OPEN EXHIBIT →The Levelland Sightings
Across one night, at least fifteen independent motorists in and around Levelland reported a glowing egg-shaped object and the simultaneous failure of their vehicle's headlights and ignition systems — engines restarting only after the object departed. The Levelland sheriff's department logged the reports in real time. Project Blue Book attributed the events to a 'severe electrical storm' that local weather data did not support.
OPEN EXHIBIT →Trindade Island
A civilian photographer aboard the Brazilian Navy research vessel Almirante Saldanha captured four photographs of a Saturn-shaped object passing the island. The negatives were developed onboard, examined by Navy officers, and released to the press at the personal direction of President Juscelino Kubitschek. The Brazilian Navy's investigation file was declassified in 2010 and made publicly available through the National Archives of Brazil.
OPEN EXHIBIT →Kecksburg
Following a fireball seen across six U.S. states and Ontario, residents of Kecksburg reported an acorn-shaped object descending into nearby woods. Military personnel cordoned the area; witnesses described a flatbed truck departing under tarpaulin. NASA stated in 2005 that the object was likely a Soviet satellite (Kosmos 96); the agency settled a 2003 lawsuit by journalist Leslie Kean in 2009, releasing records but stating that boxes of original documents could no longer be located.
OPEN EXHIBIT →Westall
Roughly 200 students and staff at Westall High School and the adjacent primary school reported a silver disc-shaped object that descended into a paddock behind the school, hovered, and departed at high speed. The case was investigated by the RAAF; the relevant files were among those released by the National Archives of Australia in 2014. Witnesses describe being instructed by school authorities and uniformed personnel not to discuss the incident.
OPEN EXHIBIT →Tully Saucer Nest
Banana farmer George Pedley reported a saucer-shaped craft rising from a swamp; on inspection he found a 30-foot circular area of flattened, swirled reeds floating on the water. The Royal Australian Air Force investigated and produced a report classified at the time and now held by the National Archives of Australia. The site remains a touchstone case in Australian aviation history.
OPEN EXHIBIT →Malmstrom AFB — Echo Flight
Deputy Crew Commander Capt. Robert Salas and Crew Commander Lt. Col. Frederick Meiwald reported that ten Minuteman I intercontinental ballistic missiles under their control simultaneously dropped to 'No-Go' alert status as security personnel above ground reported a luminous object hovering over the front gate. The Air Force has acknowledged the missile shutdowns but disputes the UAP correlation. The associated communications logs were obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.
OPEN EXHIBIT →The Condon Report
Commissioned by the U.S. Air Force and directed by physicist Edward U. Condon, the 1,485-page Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects concluded that further study was unlikely to yield scientific discoveries. The report's conclusion provided the formal justification for closing Project Blue Book. Critics, including project members themselves, noted that roughly one-third of the cases reviewed were left unexplained.
OPEN EXHIBIT →Project Blue Book
Project Blue Book, and its predecessors Sign and Grudge, formally investigated 12,618 UFO reports between 1947 and 1969. The program concluded that no investigated sighting indicated a threat to national security and that no evidence suggested extraterrestrial origin. Seven hundred and one cases were classified 'unidentified.' The complete project files are held by the National Archives and are accessible online.
OPEN EXHIBIT →The Coyne Helicopter Incident
Capt. Lawrence Coyne and three crewmen aboard a U.S. Army Reserve UH-1H Huey reported a cigar-shaped object that approached at high speed, hovered above the helicopter, and bathed the cabin in green light. The helicopter's collective pitch remained at descent yet the aircraft climbed several hundred feet. Mansfield Tower lost contact with the helicopter during the encounter; ground witnesses on the road below corroborated the lights.
OPEN EXHIBIT →Tehran 1976 — the IIAF F-4 Pursuit
In the early hours of September 19, 1976, the Imperial Iranian Air Force scrambled two F-4 Phantoms toward a luminous object reported by civilians and confirmed on Mehrabad approach radar. Both aircraft suffered communications and weapons-systems failures as they neared the object; the pilots reported smaller objects detaching from the primary. The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency's four-page summary of the incident — written by the U.S. Defense Attaché to Iran — was distributed to NSA, CIA, and the White House.
OPEN EXHIBIT →GEIPAN
GEIPAN — Groupe d'Études et d'Informations sur les Phénomènes Aérospatiaux Non-identifiés — operates inside France's national space agency CNES. It is the only civilian government agency in the world with a standing mandate to receive, investigate, and publish UAP reports. As of 2024, its public database contains roughly 3,000 cases, of which approximately one in three is classified 'D' — phenomena not explained by known aerial activity.
OPEN EXHIBIT →Operação Prato
After Amazonian villagers in and around Colares reported beams of light from the sky producing burns, fainting, and lasting medical effects, the Brazilian Air Force's First Air Command dispatched a research team for a four-month investigation. The unit produced 500 pages of reports, hundreds of photographs, and six hours of film. The dossier was declassified in 2005 and is held by the National Archives of Brazil.
OPEN EXHIBIT →Petrozavodsk
Witnesses across northern Europe — from Karelia to Finland and Sweden — reported a luminous, jellyfish-like object that hovered over Petrozavodsk for ten to twelve minutes. The Soviet Academy of Sciences opened a dedicated scientific study (Setka-AN) and a parallel Ministry of Defence programme (Setka-MO) in direct response. The most likely conventional explanation — the launch of Kosmos 955 from Plesetsk — does not fully account for the duration or the witness geography.
OPEN EXHIBIT →Kaikoura Lights
Over two nights, an Australian television crew aboard a Safe Air Argosy filmed luminous objects off the Kaikoura coast as Wellington Air Traffic Control tracked corresponding radar returns. The Royal New Zealand Air Force investigation file, declassified in 1984, remains the most extensive sequence of unexplained radar–visual–film correlations in the Southern Hemisphere record.
OPEN EXHIBIT →Rendlesham Forest
Over three nights, U.S. Air Force personnel stationed at the twin NATO bases reported a luminous craft in adjacent woodland. The 'Halt Memorandum,' a one-page report by Deputy Base Commander Lt. Col. Charles I. Halt, was released by the U.K. Ministry of Defence in 2001 and describes ground-trace indentations, elevated radiation readings, and a beam of light directed at the base's weapons storage area. The MoD released its complete Rendlesham file in 2008.
OPEN EXHIBIT →The Cash–Landrum Incident
Betty Cash, Vickie Landrum, and Landrum's grandson Colby reported a diamond-shaped object emitting flame and heat over a country road outside Houston, accompanied — according to the witnesses — by twenty-three CH-47 Chinook helicopters. Cash and Landrum subsequently developed symptoms consistent with acute radiation sickness. Their lawsuit against the U.S. government was dismissed because no U.S. military or NASA asset matching the description could be identified.
OPEN EXHIBIT →The Hudson Valley Wave
Over four years, more than 7,000 reports were collected by Dr. J. Allen Hynek, Philip Imbrogno, and Bob Pratt of a large boomerang- or triangle-shaped craft moving silently at low altitude. Sightings clustered around Indian Point nuclear power plant. Local airports investigated the possibility of formation ultralight flights and could not reconcile the witness reports with that hypothesis.
OPEN EXHIBIT →The Hessdalen Lights
Since the early 1980s, residents of the Hessdalen valley in central Norway have reported anomalous lights — sometimes stationary for hours, sometimes pulsing or moving at speed. Project Hessdalen, a permanent automated observation station operated by Østfold University College in cooperation with Italian astrophysicists, has continuously recorded the phenomenon since 1984. The phenomenon is real and unexplained; no single hypothesis (combusting dust, piezoelectric effects, plasma) has accounted for the full range of observations.
OPEN EXHIBIT →Japan Air Lines Flight 1628
On a paris-to-tokyo cargo run, the crew of JAL 1628 reported being paced for nearly fifty minutes by two small craft and one larger 'walnut-shaped' object that the captain estimated to be the size of an aircraft carrier. Anchorage ARTCC observed an unidentified return on civilian radar; military radar at Elmendorf AFB produced ambiguous returns. The FAA investigation was led by Division Chief John Callahan, whose unedited radar data and crew interviews remain in the public record.
OPEN EXHIBIT →The Official Brazilian UFO Night
On the night of May 19, 1986, civilian and military radar tracked more than twenty unidentified objects across southeastern Brazil. The Brazilian Air Force scrambled three Mirage IIIs and three F-5s from São Paulo and Anápolis. The aircraft achieved visual and radar contact but were unable to intercept. Three days later, Aeronautics Minister Brigadier Octávio Moreira Lima held a public press conference acknowledging the events.
OPEN EXHIBIT →The Belgian UFO Wave
Between late 1989 and the spring of 1990, the Belgian gendarmerie collected roughly 13,500 sighting reports describing slow-moving, silent, triangular craft. On the night of March 30–31, 1990, two Belgian Air Force F-16s scrambled to investigate ground and radar contacts; the encounter produced brief radar locks and subsequent telemetry that was released to the public by then-Major General Wilfried De Brouwer.
OPEN EXHIBIT →Voronezh
On September 27, 1989, the Soviet state news agency TASS issued an English-language report of children and adults witnessing a sphere and three tall figures in a public park in Voronezh. The report — broadcast worldwide and confirmed by a senior physicist at the Voronezh Institute of Geophysics — was unique for being released by Soviet state media during glasnost. The local Soviet militia took soil samples that were studied by the Academy of Sciences.
OPEN EXHIBIT →Varginha
On the afternoon of January 20, 1996, three young women in Varginha reported encountering a small, dark, V-headed creature in a vacant lot. Independent witnesses described a Brazilian Army operation transporting a similar entity, and a military police sergeant who participated in the alleged capture later died of an undiagnosed infection. The Brazilian Army formally denied a recovery operation; declassified portions of the Brazilian Air Force's file on the case were released in 2010.
OPEN EXHIBIT →The Phoenix Lights
Two distinct events were reported on the night of March 13: a V-shaped formation of lights observed silently moving south over more than 300 miles of Arizona, and a separate set of stationary lights over Phoenix later attributed by the U.S. Air Force to A-10 illumination flares dropped at the Barry Goldwater Range. The first event remains unexplained; then-Governor Fife Symington publicly stated in 2007 that he had personally witnessed it.
OPEN EXHIBIT →The COMETA Report
Authored by a group of retired French general officers and senior scientists at IHEDN, the 90-page report 'UFOs and Defence: What Should We Prepare For?' reviewed major international cases and concluded that the extraterrestrial hypothesis, while unproven, was the most plausible explanation for a residual class of incidents. It was the first study of its kind to be written by individuals of that rank in any NATO country.
OPEN EXHIBIT →USS Nimitz — the 'Tic Tac' Encounter
Over several days the cruiser USS Princeton tracked anomalous returns descending from above 80,000 feet to sea level in seconds. On November 14, F/A-18F crews from VFA-41 — including Commander David Fravor — were vectored to investigate. They reported a smooth, white, oblong object approximately 40 feet long, with no visible means of propulsion, that responded to their approach and accelerated out of visual range. Forward-looking infrared (FLIR) footage from the encounter was later authenticated by the Department of Defense.
OPEN EXHIBIT →O'Hare Airport — Gate C17
At least a dozen United Airlines employees — pilots, ramp workers, and management — reported a disc-shaped object hovering over Gate C17 below the cloud layer, before it accelerated upward and punched a circular hole through the overcast. The FAA initially denied any reports, then released audio tapes confirming the sighting after a Chicago Tribune FOIA request.
OPEN EXHIBIT →Stephenville, Texas
Dozens of residents — including a constable and a pilot — reported a large, silent craft with rapidly reconfiguring lights. MUFON obtained FAA radar data via FOIA showing an unidentified return tracking toward President George W. Bush's Crawford ranch; the U.S. Air Force initially denied F-16 activity in the area, then revised the statement to confirm a training flight.
OPEN EXHIBIT →Aguadilla — the CBP Thermal Footage
A Customs and Border Protection DHC-8 surveillance aircraft recorded approximately three minutes of FLIR footage showing a small, fast-moving object that entered the Atlantic Ocean, continued underwater, and at one point appeared to split into two. The video was analysed by the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies, which estimated speeds inconsistent with any conventional birds, balloons, or drones, and ruled out flares, lanterns, and known military assets.
OPEN EXHIBIT →The UK MoD UAP Files
Between 2008 and 2013, the United Kingdom Ministry of Defence released, in ten tranches, the complete contents of its UAP files: more than 60,000 pages covering reports from 1950 to 2009, when the MoD's UFO desk was closed. The files include the 1980 Rendlesham incident, the 1956 Lakenheath–Bentwaters radar case, and a 2000 internal scientific study (the 'Condign Report') that concluded the phenomenon was real but most likely a poorly-understood atmospheric one.
OPEN EXHIBIT →Chilean Navy — the AS532 FLIR
A Chilean Navy Airbus Helicopters AS332 Cougar recorded nine minutes of forward-looking infrared footage showing a flat, elongated object that appeared to expel a luminous plume. Air-traffic control reported no corresponding transponder. The Chilean civilian UAP committee CEFAA released the footage in 2017 after a two-year analysis that ruled out conventional aircraft and atmospheric phenomena.
OPEN EXHIBIT →GIMBAL and GO FAST
Two short ATFLIR sequences recorded by F/A-18F aircraft assigned to Carrier Air Wing One. GIMBAL shows an oblong object rotating against the prevailing wind. GO FAST shows an object skimming low over the ocean at high apparent speed. Both videos were authenticated by the U.S. Navy in 2019 and re-released by the Department of Defense in April 2020. The pilots involved, including Lt. Ryan Graves, reported daily sightings during training exercises in the same airspace.
OPEN EXHIBIT →AATIP and the 2017 Disclosure
On December 16, 2017, The New York Times reported the existence of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), a $22 million Department of Defense effort that ran inside the Defense Intelligence Agency from 2007 to 2012. The story, accompanied by two authenticated Navy gun-camera videos, marked the first acknowledgment by the U.S. government in nearly fifty years that it was studying the subject.
OPEN EXHIBIT →The UAP Task Force
Formally announced by the Deputy Secretary of Defense in August 2020, the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF) was charged with detecting, analyzing, and cataloguing UAP that posed a threat to U.S. national security. It absorbed the Office of Naval Intelligence's earlier informal UAP cell and produced the data set that became the 2021 ODNI Preliminary Assessment.
OPEN EXHIBIT →ODNI Preliminary Assessment on UAP
Mandated by the Intelligence Authorization Act for FY2021, the nine-page assessment examined 144 UAP reports collected by the UAP Task Force between 2004 and 2021. Of these, 143 remained unexplained; eighteen displayed unusual flight characteristics. The report explicitly stated that the data was insufficient to attribute the events to any single explanation, including advanced foreign technology.
OPEN EXHIBIT →The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office
Established by the Deputy Secretary of Defense in July 2022, AARO consolidates and replaces prior task forces. Its mandate covers detection, identification, and attribution of unidentified anomalous phenomena across air, sea, space, and trans-medium domains. AARO publishes unclassified annual reports to Congress and operates a public reporting mechanism.
OPEN EXHIBIT →The 2023 Congressional Hearing
Three witnesses — former Navy pilots Ryan Graves and David Fravor, and former intelligence officer David Grusch — testified under oath before the House Subcommittee on National Security. Grusch alleged a decades-long government effort to retrieve and reverse-engineer non-human craft. The Department of Defense rejected the allegations; the hearing remains the most consequential public UAP testimony to date.
OPEN EXHIBIT →ODNI 2022 Annual Report on UAP
The first annual report mandated by §1683 of the FY2022 NDAA documented 366 newly catalogued UAP reports — bringing the post-UAPTF total to 510 — and acknowledged 'safety of flight' concerns including eleven instances categorised as near-mid-air collisions. Roughly half of the new reports were assessed as commonplace (balloons, drones, debris); 171 remained 'uncharacterised'.
OPEN EXHIBIT →NASA Independent UAP Study
Chaired by astrophysicist David Spergel, the sixteen-member panel reviewed unclassified UAP data and recommended that NASA play a coordinating role in collecting standardized, scientific-grade observations. The report concluded there was no evidence of extraterrestrial origin in the cases reviewed, while explicitly identifying the absence of high-quality data as the central obstacle to scientific evaluation. NASA simultaneously named its first Director of UAP Research.
OPEN EXHIBIT →UAP Disclosure Act of 2023
Authored by Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senator Mike Rounds, the amendment to the FY2024 NDAA proposed a presidentially appointed UAP Records Review Board modeled on the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act, plus federal eminent-domain authority over recovered 'technologies of unknown origin'. The eminent-domain language was stripped in conference; the records-board provisions were significantly narrowed. The fight over the bill's full text became a public marker of the dispute over UAP classification.
OPEN EXHIBIT →AARO Public Reporting Portal
AARO opened a secure web portal for current and former U.S. government employees, service members, and contractors to report direct knowledge of UAP and related programs. The site went live in October 2023; reports from members of the general public were initially routed through public affairs, with a broader public reporting mechanism added in 2024.
OPEN EXHIBIT →AARO Historical Record Report, Volume I
In March 2024, AARO published a 63-page review of the U.S. government's investigative effort from 1945 to the present. The report concluded that no verifiable evidence exists for the recovery of extraterrestrial technology, while acknowledging that a significant percentage of cases remain unresolved due to insufficient data. Volume II, still pending at the time of writing, will cover 1969 through the present.
OPEN EXHIBIT →November 2024 Joint UAP Hearing
The House Subcommittee on National Security held a second public hearing titled 'Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth.' Witnesses included former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Michael Gallagher, former AARO director Tim Phillips, retired Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet, and journalist Michael Shellenberger. Testimony focused on alleged restrictions on whistleblower disclosure and on naval encounters of 'transmedium' objects.
OPEN EXHIBIT →