72d Strategic Recon Wing History, April 1953: The Fort Buchanan UFO File
A SAC wing history that bound in a complete Air Force UFO file: the intelligence report and five signed witness statements on a brilliant object seen over Fort Buchanan, Puerto Rico, on 8 April 1953.
What this record is
This is the monthly historical report of the 72d Strategic Reconnaissance Wing, Heavy, a Strategic Air Command unit flying RB-36 reconnaissance bombers out of Ramey Air Force Base on the northwest tip of Puerto Rico. It covers 1 to 30 April 1953. The title page (page 3 of the PDF) names the wing historical officer, 1st Lt Chester D. Harris, the historical technician, A/2C Edwin M. Freedman, and the commander, Brigadier General Alfred F. Kalberer. The wing belonged to Second Air Force.
The PDF runs to 598 pages. Only about 40 pages of the scan are narrative. The rest is the usual supporting material for a SAC unit history: general orders, teletype messages, operations plans, photographs of the flight line and the crash boat, and the monthly histories of the base’s staff offices. The history was classified SECRET and later RESTRICTED. It was declassified in 1979, and the last administrative restriction was lifted in 2004.
The reason it is in a UAP transfer is plain. The wing’s intelligence office investigated a daylight sighting over an Army post near San Juan, and the historians bound the entire case file into the history as Exhibits 35 to 40.
What it says about UFOs
The UFO material takes up one paragraph of narrative and six exhibits. The narrative begins at the foot of page 43 of the PDF and runs onto page 45, in the chapter on tactical operations. The exhibit index on page 93 lists items 35 to 40 as statements of “Flying Saucer” witnesses. The file itself fills pages 239 to 259.
The narrative says that at 1130 local time on 8 April 1953, several people at Fort Buchanan, Puerto Rico, saw an unidentified flying object described as a “bright star” and a “bright ball of fire” at a great height. Two of the wing’s RB-36s were in the area at the time, at 12,000 and 21,000 feet. The historian then added a comment of his own. Casual observers, he wrote, are “prone to exaggerate”, and one witness had put the B-36 he saw at 40,000 to 50,000 feet when no RB-36 in the area was above 21,000.
The central document is an Air Intelligence Information Report (AF Form 112) on page 241. It was prepared by the Wing Intelligence Office and approved by Major Bradford P. Shuman. It is dated 17 April 1953, gives 8 April 1953 as the date of the information, and is graded B-3. Its summary repeats the wording above and records that an inquiry at Ramey had found the two RB-36s. Copies went to the Office of Special Investigations, the Office of Naval Intelligence, the FBI, the Army G-2 at Fort Buchanan and the Provost Marshal.
The five witness statements are all dated 8 April 1953. M/Sgt Emilio Quinones of the Army dispensary (page 245) wrote that a noise overhead made him look up at an airplane at about 1120. Capt Eddie Fraticelli then pointed out a round object a short distance from the plane. Quinones said it sparkled, moved south and apparently upward with a spinning or waving motion, and gave off what looked like a ball of fire before it went behind a cloud.
Fraticelli, the post’s medical service officer (page 249), heard the sound of a B-36 passing and then noticed a very bright ball about the size of Venus. At first he and his men thought it was Venus, until they saw it moving south. He said it went in and out of the clouds, stayed still for a while, and then grew smaller until it could no longer be seen. He did not think it was a B-36, because it was very high and very fast. He then went to the depot headquarters to fetch the intelligence staff.
Capt Thomas P. Noble, the assistant S-3 (page 253), met Fraticelli outside post headquarters and saw an exceptionally bright object that seemed to be moving fast and was higher than a B-36 in the area. He declined to estimate its size, shape or speed, and he added that at that height almost any object would look round. Miss Lillian Milan, a civilian stenographer in the S-2 office (page 255), saw a very bright, apparently round object “very close to the sun”. She said it climbed until she lost it.
The longest statement comes from Capt Van F. Dittberner, the depot S-2 or intelligence officer (page 259). He put on dark glasses against the glare, identified a B-36 by sight and sound, and then watched what looked like a star moving in a straight line from north to south, higher and faster than the bomber. He followed it for about ten minutes. He listed his conclusions: the object was higher and faster than the aircraft, it must have been large to be visible at all, and it was brilliant although it sat so close to the sun. It could not have been a star, because no star could be seen at that hour or in that part of the sky. He also said he had no definite impression of its shape. His estimate of the B-36’s altitude is the one the wing historian singled out.
The accounts do not agree on direction. Dittberner and Quinones describe north to south, Noble west to east, and Milan north to east.
Context
In April 1953 the Air Force’s UFO program was Project Blue Book at Wright-Patterson AFB. Three months earlier the CIA-sponsored Robertson Panel had advised that sightings be demystified and played down. Reports like this one travelled on AF Form 112, and the B-3 grade was a standard intelligence rating: a usually reliable source, and information that is possibly true. The record contains no reply from Blue Book and no final evaluation of the case.
Status
As a record, the file is unusually complete. It holds five signed statements taken on the day, an intelligence report, and a check of friendly air traffic. It also shows the wing’s own skepticism, since the historian used one witness’s altitude error to warn against casual observers. What it does not contain is an explanation. The witnesses describe a brilliant point, near the sun, that was high above the aircraft, sometimes stationary, and that shrank as it climbed. That fits a high-altitude balloon catching sunlight, which is the obvious conventional candidate. Nobody in the file checked balloon launches, though, so the explanation remains untested. The record documents what a set of Army officers and a clerk said they saw and how the Air Force wrote it down. It does not establish what the object was.