The 701 Club - Case 2077: September 12, 1952 Allen Maryland

Don Berlinner describes this case as:

Sept. 12, 1952; Allen, Maryland. 9:30 p.m. Witnesses: Mr. and Mrs. David Kolb, of the Ground Observer Corps, using binoculars. One white light with a red trim and streamers flew northeast for 35 minutes.1

It does not sound that impressive and the Blue Book file contains very little extra information.

The Blue Book file

The first thing I noticed in the file was the date and time of the event seems to be incorrect. The Blue Book record card2 and ATIC

3
report state the even transpired around 0230Z on September 12. This is 2130 (0930 PM) on September 11. The sighting was

described in the ATIC sighting form and a transmitted message. It states that an object that was greenish-white with a red rim was moving northeast. This lasted for 35 minutes. There is no indication as to why the sighting ended. When asked if the witness still had the object in sight, the ground observer center reported the sighting simply lasted 35 minutes.4

Potential source

Anytime an object presents the characteristics of a multi-colored object that is visible for a long period of time, I look at astronom- ical objects as a potential source. On September 11, 1952, observers in Allen Maryland would have seen the bright star Capella in the northeastern sky at 9:30PM. It would have risen higher in the sky but weather may have resulted in the end of the “sighting”. At 11PM, the weather observations for nearby Salisbury, Maryland (about 10 miles away) recorded fog.5 It is possible that this fog appeared between 10 and 11 PM and played a role in Capella “disappearing” .