The Baku Train Launch (1955)

Two hours and forty minutes out of Baku, a man from the next compartment came in and said: "Did you see that out there? I just saw a flying saucer." Then they all saw it. On the left of the train, between the line and the Caspian coast, a huge searchlight on an airfield shone on a triangular object on the ground, about the size of a US jet fighter, with a light at each point. It "was ejected from its launching site", the report says, and made three to seven fast spirals before climbing "extremely fast at about a 45 degree angle". "This was no ordinary take-off but a launching procedure more like a missile ejection." Their companion said it was the second in rapid succession. While the four of them watched, the steward pulled the blinds and indicated that the MVD man who had boarded at departure had ordered it.

What is on the record

The document is a CIA Information Report, "Sighting of Unconventional Aircraft" (CIA-UAP-006), distributed on 15 November 1955. It is marked "unevaluated information" and names no one. The source is described only as a 41-year-old advertising vice president of a large US corporation with no aviation training. He put the train 50 to 65 miles south of Baku with the Caspian still in view.

A handwritten note on the first page reads "Sen. Russell UFO file". Senator Richard Russell and his party reported objects rising beside the same railway that evening. In the CIA's interview memo, published by The Black Vault, Russell saw "a greenish-yellow ball rising rapidly" and then a second. Secondary accounts say the CIA also interviewed a fourth American, and this source travelled with three others, so the report appears to belong to that sighting. The descriptions differ. Russell's account as published describes glowing balls, not a searchlit triangle on the ground, and his memo puts the moment about an hour and a half out of Baku.

Herbert Scoville of the CIA's Office of Scientific Intelligence suggested the Russell objects could have been "the exhausts of normal jet aircraft in a steep climb". This report itself offers no explanation.

Why it sits where it does

The report names no witness and is one document from one agency. That places it at L0. The tier measures sourcing rather than truth. What climbed away from the airfield is not resolved here.