Santa Ana, California UFO Sighting (August 3, 1965) — FBI Files
A cold war / blue book era case from Santa Ana, California. Rex Heflin, a project inspector, took a photograph of a UFO near the Santa Ana freeway.
Background
On August 3, 1965, in Santa Ana, California, 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
Rex Heflin, a project inspector, took a photograph of a UFO near the Santa Ana freeway. A University of Colorado professor studying UFOs considered the photo to be among the most convincing pieces of photographic evidence available. The Air Force had previously discredited the photo.
The number of witnesses is not specified in the released document.
Verbatim from the file
“Robert J. Low, project co-ordinator of a Government-sponsored UFO study, is in Santa Ana to study a controversial 1965 UFO photo previously discredited by the Air Force.”. “Low termed the picture, taken by Rex Heflin of Santa Ana, as ’’among the top four or five’ items of photographic evidence of UFOs.”. “Heflin, 37, a project inspector for the Orange County Highway Department, took his picture August 3, 1965, just off the Santa Ana freeway.”
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.