Sighting Of Unconventional Aircraft, November 1955 — CIA File
This CIA information report from November 1955 describes a US national's eyewitness account of triangular aircraft with wing lights launch at a steep angle from an airfield near Baku, Azerbaijan on October 4, 1955. A redacted version of this report has been available on CIA's public website.
Incident Overview
November 1955, in Baku, Azerbaijan, CIA preserved a documentary record that was declassified and published on June 12, 2026 as part of the third tranche of the Department of War’s Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE).
What the government released
This CIA information report from November 1955 describes a US national’s eyewitness account of triangular aircraft with wing lights launch at a steep angle from an airfield near Baku, Azerbaijan on October 4, 1955. A redacted version of this report has been available on CIA’s public website.
Status of the case
Records released under the PURSUE program are designated unresolved by the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, which means the federal government has not concluded the events were anomalous, has not concluded they were conventional, and has not ruled out either possibility. Where AARO has offered a likely source for an item — an infrared sensor aboard a military aircraft, a commercial camera, or a known optical effect — that attribution is the agency’s working assessment rather than a final determination. Conventional candidates such as drones, balloons, flares, satellites, parallax and forced-perspective artifacts, and ordinary aircraft remain on the table for any unresolved case absent better data than a single sensor pass or a witness recollection.