The Colour-changing Lights over Mobile Bay Seen from Brookley Tower

The first reports came from three residents of Chickasaw, north of Mobile, who saw lights to the south at about 21:30 on 28 August 1952. Special Agent Charles A. Robinson of the Office of Special Investigations drove out and saw them himself. At Brookley Air Force Base the officer of the day, Captain William E. Edwards, a pilot, watched with three control tower operators and the radar operator on duty at the ground-controlled approach set. About six objects hung over the south-south-west horizon, two large and four small, at an estimated seven to ten miles and up to 45 degrees high. Their lights changed from fiery red to a blue "similar to a diamond". Some hung still for fifteen or twenty minutes. One large object moved with a hopping motion. A small one swung through a 30-degree arc, dropped straight down to treetop level, hovered and rose directly away. One carried a red light above a green one. There was no sound and no exhaust. The lights went out suddenly, and by about 22:45 it was over.

What is on the record

The report is filed as Blue Book case 2006. The tower operators were Staff Sergeant Robert B. Calkins and two airmen of the 1919th AACS Squadron, Edward O. Smith and Earl A. Whittaker. Whittaker's first name also reads as Irl in the scan's text. Charles T. Goetz is named as well. The GCA radar held one weak, stationary return at four miles for about half an hour, and a second radar showed nothing. The reporting unit said no aircraft were in range and did not consider the sightings meteorological. The weather office allowed that balloons might drift in from Eglin or Pensacola.

The record card's evaluation is Unknown. ATIC's Captain R. L. James called the radar sighting insignificant because only one weak stationary target was seen. Berliner lists it among the Blue Book Unknowns, NICAP files it as a radar case, and Eberhart, Hatch and Johnson carry it too.

Why it sits where it does

L4 · OFFICIAL RECORD: a released government record names who saw it. The file names Edwards, Robinson, Calkins, Goetz, Smith and Whittaker, and identifies the GCA operator by his post. The Chickasaw residents' names were sanitised and stay that way here. Nothing outside the report reaches the archive, and the grade makes no claim about the lights. What hung over the horizon that night is not resolved here.