20th Air Division History, Late 1957: 'Flying Saucers (?)' in the Heartland
An air defense division's history for July–December 1957 gives one paragraph to UFOs: more than 20 reports reached its intelligence officer, some identified as natural phenomena and the rest filed away.
What this record is
This is Volume I of the history of the 20th Air Division (Defense), an Air Defense Command division under the Central Air Defense Force, headquartered at Richards-Gebaur Air Force Base, Grandview, Missouri. It covers 1 July to 31 December 1957 and is the division’s fifth history since its activation in October 1954. T/Sgt. Mitchell W. Kolowajtis compiled it, the division historical officer edited it, and it went out under the name of the commander, Brig. Gen. Gordon H. Austin. It runs to 192 pages and was classified SECRET. The contents are what one would expect from an air defense unit in the Midwest: fighter-interceptor forces, the arrival of the F-102, exercises with code names such as HOUR HAND, RED CAP and SPEEDUP, and radar and communications networks, including aircraft control and warning squadrons at Olathe, Kansas, and elsewhere, plus the Ground Observer Corps and construction and maintenance. It is in the UAP transfer because of one short section titled “Flying Saucers (?)”.
What it says about UFOs
Three pages of 192 mention UFOs, and only one says anything. Page 9 of the PDF is the table of contents, which lists “Flying Saucers (?)” under the chapter on air surveillance and communications. Page 183 is the glossary, which defines “UFOB” as “Unidentified Flying Object(s).”
The section itself is one paragraph on page 147. It follows a list of occasions when the division’s radar squadrons had given navigational help to lost or troubled aircraft that autumn. It begins by noting that, “with the space age upon us, satellites in orbit, and talk of travel to the moon being spoken of in serious tones by serious men,” flying saucers and other UFOBs crossing the division’s area had earned at least consideration and responsible people to evaluate them. During the six months covered, more than 20 such reports reached the Division Air Intelligence Officer. They came from people “in all walks of life from housewives to students,” alone and in groups, and were made with the naked eye and with telescopes and binoculars. The history says every report was seriously considered and evaluated. Some were identified as natural phenomena and the rest were “filed for future reference.” It ends: “None were ignored.” No individual sighting is described, dated or located.
Context
The second half of 1957 opened the space age. Sputnik 1 went up on October 4 and Sputnik 2 on November 3, and the United States saw a sharp wave of UFO reports in early November, led by the Levelland, Texas, sightings of November 2 and 3. That explains the historian’s reference to satellites in orbit. “UFOB” was the Air Force’s term under AFR 200-2, the regulation that told air defense units how to report sightings to the Air Technical Intelligence Center and Project Blue Book. See the Levelland sightings and the history of Project Blue Book.
Status
This record gives a count and an attitude, not cases. More than 20 reports in six months across one air defense division is useful as a rough measure of how the 1957 wave landed in the central United States. The paragraph’s tone, with its question mark in the heading and its insistence that “none were ignored,” reads like a unit keen to show it was following the regulation. The history does not say which reports were explained or how, and it doesn’t reproduce any of them. The supporting volumes it mentions might hold the individual reports, but they are not part of this record.