I first heard about the sighting about two o’clock on the morning of August 13, 1953, when Max Futch called me from ATIC.  A few minutes before a wire had come in carrying a priority just under that reserved for flashing the word the U.S. has been attacked.  Max had been called over to ATIC by the OD to see the report, and he thought that I should see it.  I was a little hesitant to get dressed and go out to the base, so I asked Max what he thought about the report.  His classic answer will go down in UFO history, “Captain,” Max said in his slow, pure Louisiana drawl, “you know that for a year I’ve read every flying saucer report that’s come in and that I never really believed in the things.”  Then he hesitated and added, so fast that I could hardly understand him, “But you should read this wire.”  The speed with which he uttered this last statement was in itself enough to convince me.  When Max talked fast, something was important.

A half hour later I was at ATIC—­just in time to get a call from the Pentagon.  Someone else had gotten out of bed to read his copy of the wire.  I used the emergency orders that I always kept in my desk and caught the first airliner out of Dayton to Rapid City, South Dakota.  I didn’t call the 4602nd because I wanted to investigate this one personally.  I talked to everyone involved in the incident and pieced together an amazing story.

Shortly after dark on the night of the twelfth, the Air Defense Command radar station at Ellsworth AFB, just east of Rapid City, had received a call from the local Ground Observer Corps filter center.  A lady spotter at Black Hawk, about 10 miles west of Ellsworth, had reported an extremely bright light low on the horizon, off to the northeast.  The radar had been scanning an area to the west, working a jet fighter in some practice patrols, but when they got the report they moved the sector scan to the northeast quadrant.  There was a target exactly where the lady reported the light to be.  The warrant officer, who was the duty controller for the night, told me that he’d studied the target for several minutes.  He knew how weather could affect radar but this target was “well defined, solid, and bright.”  It seemed to be moving, but very slowly.  He called for an altitude reading, and the man on the height-finding radar checked his scope.  He also had the target—­it was at 16,000 feet.

The warrant officer picked up the phone and asked the filter center to connect him with the spotter.  They did, and the two people compared notes on the UFO’s position for several minutes.  But right in the middle of a sentence the lady suddenly stopped and excitedly said, “It’s starting to move—­it’s moving southwest toward Rapid.”

The controller looked down at his scope and the target was beginning to pick up speed and move southwest.  He yelled at two of his men to run outside and take a look.  In a second or two one of them shouted back that they could both see a large bluish-white light moving toward Rapid City.  The controller looked down at his scope—­the target was moving toward Rapid City.  As all three parties watched the light and kept up a steady cross conversation of the description, the UFO swiftly made a wide sweep around Rapid City and returned to its original position in the sky.