Don Berlinner’s list summarizes the case as follows:

Sept. 6, 1952; Lake Charles AFB, Louisiana. 1:30 a.m. Witnesses: T/Sgt. J.E. Wilson and two enlisted men. One bright star-like light moved about the sky for 2 hours.2

Anytime I see a star-like object being in the sky for more than a few minutes, I begin to suspect there might be an astronomical explanation. Was this the case here?

Blue book investigation

Blue book did investigate to some extent but it seems that the individual performing the investigation did not put all the informa- tion together to solve the puzzle. Dr. Hynek, who probably would have solved this one, appears to have never seen this file or did not comment.

An interview with the witnesses was performed on 9 September but the interviews are not part of the file. The summary is missing a lot of key information that should have been obtained. That being angles of elevation and azimuth. Fortunately, there is also a flying object report message that provides additional details regarding the sighting. Based on these two documents, we can piece together most of the event.

Around 0130, one of the witnesses saw a UFO to the northeast. It was described as “glowing white” and “blinking”.3 While the speed was described as being approximately 1000 mph, the object did not really seem to stray very far from one position in the sky. Instead, these speeds seem to have been used to describe the random motion of the UFO as it performed maneuvers that were described as, “circular motion in one area then suddenly change to another area and repeat the motion. It would seem to change alti- tude at no particular time, but at anytime”.4 The air intelligence report described it as moving “around in a circle from a definite area. It appeared to rise and drop, it set (sic) still for an unknown length of time and then move very fast to the left or right not always in a straight line”.5 Two other airmen also saw the UFO that night. The primary witness watched this for an hour. After that, the witness seemed to have lost interest. He went to bed with the UFO still up there darting around.

An important point that was not mentioned in Berlinner’s or Spark’s description of the incident was that the same witness saw the same UFO (or one like it) the next night in the same area of the sky at 0230!6

The source of this UFO is not hard to determine. There were two excellent candidates in the sky that night (see Stellarium im- age above). The first was the star Capella. At 0130 on the 6th, it was an azimuth of 52 degrees and an angle of elevation of 32 degrees. By 0230, it had moved to 53 degrees azimuth and 42 degrees elevation. The other candidate was Jupiter. It was more towards the east at azimuth 98 degrees and an elevation of 47 degrees at 0130. By 0230, it had moved to 110 degrees azimuth and 60 degrees altitude. Both are very bright astronomical objects. In my opinion, Capella is the better match. It was in the northeast sky and, unlike Jupiter, would be more likely to scintillate wildly. The moving back and forth is best attributed to autokinesis effects as the witness stared at a point of light against a dark sky.

It was 1952 and Blue Book was swamped with UFO reports. They did not have the time or the resources to investigate all these cases properly. There were thirty-four cases that occurred between 1 and 8 September. There were an additional forty-one cases between 9 and 16 September. This does not even include about 250 cases from August. To declare this case “unidentified” , even though it had a very likely astronomical solution, indicated that the AF simply spent very little time pursuing a solution.

There is no good reason to reject the astronomical explanation here. All of the characteristics of a classic misperception of a bright star/planet are there. The clincher has to be the witness seeing the same object around the same time in the same part of the sky on the following night. This one can be classified as “Probably Capella” and removed from the list of 701 unknowns.

Quelle: 5/2014