Case File · AARO · Cold War / Blue Book Era (1953-1969) Declassified May 8, 2026 · PURSUE Release 01

1956 UAP Sighting — AARO Records

UFO Entity Sighting

A KC-97 aircraft accident occurred in 1956, resulting in the deaths of 11 Air Force members. This incident was conflated with reports of “alien bodies” at the Roswell Army Air Force hospital.

July 8, 1947
Unknown location
Source document: PURSUE doc 196
Source document: PURSUE doc 196 · Source: declassified document

Background

A UFO/UAP incident extracted from page 22 of AARO Historical Record Report Vol 1 2024, an All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) document published in 2024-2025. The incident is dated 1956 and located in Unknown location.

What the document records

A KC-97 aircraft accident occurred in 1956, resulting in the deaths of 11 Air Force members. This incident was conflated with reports of “alien bodies” at the Roswell Army Air Force hospital.

Witnesses on file: Air Force members.

Status of the case

The page-level assessment recorded in the document is: no agency assessment. AARO designates unresolved cases as those for which the agency has not concluded the events were anomalous, has not concluded they were conventional, and has not ruled out either possibility. Conventional candidates for sightings of recent periods include drones, classified test platforms, satellite re-entry, balloon traffic, atmospheric optical phenomena, and astronomical objects.

Sources