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

Grand Blanc, Michigan UFO Sighting (May 3, 1960) — FBI Files

UFO Photographic / Video Evidence

A cold war / blue book era case from Grand Blanc, Michigan. On May 3, 1960, Joseph Perry of Grand Blanc, Michigan, received a slide from Selfridge Air Force Base purportedly showing a flying object near the moon.

May 3, 1960
Grand Blanc, Michigan
Source document: 65_HS1-834228961_62-HQ-83894_Section_9
Source document: 65_HS1-834228961_62-HQ-83894_Section_9 · Source: declassified document

Background

On May 3, 1960, in Grand Blanc, Michigan, U.S. government investigators recorded an unidentified-object incident later released to the public on May 8, 2026 as part of the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE). The incident is a Cold War-era case investigated under the Air Force’s Project Blue Book or its predecessors. The case was filed with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, whose Knoxville, Albuquerque, Los Angeles, and other field offices routed UFO reports to headquarters under the Bureau’s standing protocols for the protection of vital installations.

What the document records

On May 3, 1960, Joseph Perry of Grand Blanc, Michigan, received a slide from Selfridge Air Force Base purportedly showing a flying object near the moon. The Air Force claimed the object was a flaw in the negative, but Perry believed it was a genuine UFO due to his meticulous photography skills. He intended to send the slide to Eastman Kodak for analysis.

The number of witnesses is not specified in the released document.

Type of case

The case includes photographic or video evidence of the unidentified object.

Status

All records released under the PURSUE program are designated unresolved by the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) by default. The federal government has not concluded that the events were anomalous, has not concluded that they were conventional, and has not ruled out either possibility. Conventional candidates for sightings of this period include experimental aircraft, weather balloons (especially the Project Mogul series in the late 1940s), atmospheric optical phenomena such as sundogs and lenticular clouds, and astronomical objects including Venus, the Moon, and meteors near the horizon.

Sources