Pulp Magazine Cover, July 1948

This document comprises official Air Force correspondence regarding unidentified aerial phenomena reports from 1949. It includes a letter from Colonel J. J. Herstrey Jr. of the Air Force Intelligence Department acknowledging receipt of a flying saucer report dated June 25, 1949, and incorporating the submission into an ongoing study of unidentified aerial phenomena. The bulk of the material is a detailed firsthand account from a pilot who departed Woodrum near Roanoke, Virginia, in a Bellanca Cruiser aircraft in July or August 1948. Flying solo near Marion and Wytheville at approximately 6,500 feet, the pilot observed a bright light resembling a locomotive headlight moving along a ridge at roughly his altitude and direction. The light flickered on and off like a commercial aircraft tail light but with greater brilliance, eventually disappearing as the pilot neared Marion. The pilot speculates it may have been an aircraft with its light extinguished, though he finds no reasonable explanation for the light's behavior and reports no orange or red exhaust visible.