The 701 Club: Case 6409 June 30, 1959 Patuxent River NAS, Maryland.

Don Berlinner lists the case as follows:

Witness: USN Cdr. D. Connolly. One gold, oblate-shaped object, nine times as wide as it was thick, metallic and with sharp edges, flew straight and level for 20-30 seconds.1

The description by Sparks is essentially the same. 2

The Blue Book file

The file consists of a single message describing the sighting.3 The highlights of the message were:

Generally oblate shape

Ratio length to depth: Approximately nine to one

Uniform brilliant gold in color

Metallic, sharp edges, single object

Negative on sound or exhaust

Speed <100 knots

Straight and level flight at approximately 4000 feet. Distance from observer was estimated at one mile.

Visually observed from ground at approximately 2023 EDT on 30 June 1959.

Observed for approximately 20-30 seconds.

Object was to the north.

Blue Book also mentioned that there were four aircraft in the traffic pattern. An RD-6/R-6D (top left), a P2V (top right), a WV (bottom left), and a WF2 tracer aircraft (bottom right). The witness stated it was not the WF-2. They also stated that it was not the “evening star”, a meteor, balloon, afterburner, or the setting sun. 

Analysis

The time of the sighting, was at 8:24 PM EDT. The sun set at 8:34 PM EDT on June 30th. Patuxent river is about halfway between Newport News, Virginia and Baltimore, Maryland. The location is under the airway between Norfolk/Newport News towards Washington DC/Baltimore/Philadelphia. In addition to civilian air traffic there probably were aircraft flying routinely from the military bases in the Tidewater region towards the various military bases in the Washington, DC and Maryland area. It seems that the region had a lot of potential air traffic for the time in question.

It seems likely that a naked eye sighting of an aircraft reflecting the sun and seen from a long distance would give the impression of a cigar-like object without wings. These images were taken by me before sunset showing an aircraft reflecting the sun. It was in the east and traveling northward. The 18mm lens shows a cigar like object with the hint that it is an aircraft. When zoomed in to 200mm, the aircraft is clearly visible. 

Conclusion

This report is an interesting one but the file has limited information. Considering the fact that the witness was the only one who noticed the object indicates it was small and not that impressive. Despite the witness’ military background, they really did not provide a very thorough report. We have no real positional data or direction of travel. It is too bad the investigating officer did not ask for it. It is also disheartening to see that the investigating officer did not look beyond the immediate aircraft that were in the vicinity of the base. 

One must remember that the definition of unidentified/unknown in 1952 was:

If the report contains a relatively good amount of data, it is then checked against the location of known objects, phenomena, etc. If none of these explain the sighting, it is classed as unknown4

Quintanilla would later clarify this statement to mean:

A sighting was considered UNIDENTIFIED when a report apparently contained all the data necessary to suggest a valid hypothesis, but its description could not be correlated with any known object or phenomenon.5

The important factor to note is that the report needed to contain the necessary data to make an evaluation. This case does not have any good positional data or direction of travel. Based on the lack of information from the observer, I would list this as “insufficient information” with a potential of this being an aircraft reflecting the setting sun (i.e. possible aircraft). 

Quelle: SUNlite 3/2020