Flying Saucers made headline news in Cincinnati on 7 July 1947. The term “unidentified flying object” or UFO had not even been invented when Terrace Park housewife, Betty Stollmaier, spotted two gleaming disks sailing northward. According to the Enquirer, she

“ … described the objects as ‘shiny silver plates’ about the size of phonograph records. The visible surfaces gave off brilliant reflected light but there was no sign of flame associated with jet propulsion, she said.”

Five years later, In response to thousands of such accounts, the Air Force created Project Blue Book. From 1952 until 1970, the Project Blue Book collected thousands of civilian reports of unidentified flying objects and shipped them to Wright Patterson Air Force Base for analysis. Eventually, Project Blue book issued a set of official findings best summarized as “How should we know?”.

Many Blue Book reports originated from Cincinnati and some of them make entertaining reading. You may enjoy kibitzing as the Air Force’s investigators attempt to make sense of some of the Cincinnati incidents.

A 5 October 1959 report from Deer Park described a silent, 150-foot-long, cigar-shaped craft with several windows, glowing from within. This vehicle drifted straight toward the 13-year-old observer and then vanished. The young man sent a handwritten affadavit describing all this to the Air Force. The official file includes an interesting footnote:

“Subsequent rpts fm the same witness indicates that he rpts any obj or light in the sky w/his own interpretation that they are ‘flying saucers’. There is also the strong probability that some of these rpts are imaginary.”

Then there was the housewife “active in church and community affairs,” who, in 1968, reported a flying saucer chasing an airplane just east of where Northgate Mall is now located. According to the questionnaire she filled out for the Air Force, she:

“Saw aeroplane in full moonlight with unround circle of light trailing plane, some distance behind plane.”

TWA Flight 128 had recently crashed on approach to the Greater Cincinnati Airport and this observer thought there was a connection:

“I was alarmed when I saw the seemingly saucer chasing the jet plane. (Guess it was a jet.) A jet plane had crashed and I thought that this plane or jet might be in danger. This was the reason I called our airport. I thought this might be the reason some jets crash.”

It appears that this “seemingly saucer” was a small Cessna airplane towing an electric advertising sign. The Air Force found a local pilot who towed such signs and Blue Book investigators were able to match his flight schedules with several reports of unidentified flying objects.

Reading some Cincinnati UFO reports, you can just imagine the Air Force officers pulling their closely cropped hair out. A good example is provided by an advertising manager for Dubois Chemicals on 18 July 1957. Apparently located somewhere near Mount Healthy (Blue Book reports are redacted to remove names, addresses and telephone numbers), he reported that eight observers had witnessed two bright blue lights, trailed by a bright red light. Beyond that? Not much. A handwritten note in the file expresses the investigating officer’s frustration:

“With exception of statement that he saw UFO, he can give us nothing (or remembers nothing) on the size, shape, elevation, direction, and other basic data – generally remembered or given by UFO observers. Also contradicts himself.”

The questionnaire itself is scribbled on like a grade school essay. At one point the questionnaire requests a drawing of the object. The observer supplied only a weirdly curved line, almost as though his pen had accidentally slipped. The Air Force investigator wrote next to it, “Is this it?”

When a set of photographs landed on the Project Blue Book desk in 1967, the Air Force immediately sent off a questionnaire to the photographer in Pleasant Ridge. They wanted, obviously, to know more about this amazing sighting, despite the photographer’s admission that he was only 11½ years old:

“I am sending two pictures of what I saw Wednesday, Sept. 20, 1967, about 4:00 p.m. at [redacted], Cincinnati, Ohio, taken with a small camera. To me it looked about as big or a little bigger than a station wagon.”

The Air Force waited, and waited, and waited. Additional information and the original negatives were not forthcoming, so the file was closed. The typed summary merely notes that no requested information was submitted. A handwritten note suggests a little more skepticism:

“Photos are very similar to a Frisbee.”

The Air Force was less eager to dismiss a 5 April 1966 report from a Catholic priest teaching at Roger Bacon High School. On his way to church around 6:06 a.m., the priest reported:

“There, to the west, was a very bright orange object which appeared to hover 2,000 to 3,000 feet above the ground. It had the shape of a pancake, but thicker in the center with a definite bulge top-side.”

The priest himself was at first skeptical:

“Naturally, I thought it was a plane at first – banking and catching the early rays of the sun. Many things went through my mind … but especially the fact that, so I thought, the sun hadn’t risen enough by that time to reflect off the object – hence the object must be its own light source.”

The Air Force decided it must be sunlight reflecting off a normal aircraft.

The Norwood Searchlight incident of 1949, probably the most famous UFO recorded from Cincinnati, never made it into Project Blue Book.Most Cincinnati reports got filed as flights of birds, the moon, light reflecting from clouds, meteors, “other (confusing data),” and, of course, weather balloons.