A Green Light over the Chamblee Naval Air Station

At about 20:45 on 26 July 1948 five residents were out on the lawn of the Georgia Tech housing project in Chamblee, Georgia. They saw a green light about the size of a football, fading into a silver tail. It travelled south-east, slowly losing height, and then faded out. It made no sound at all. At about 21:30 the observer on duty in the tower of the Atlanta Naval Air Station saw a blue-white light coming from the north-east and heading south-east. It was very high and very fast, like a shooting star except that it held a uniform altitude. He turned to get his field glasses. When he looked again it seemed to gain height and turn sharply south. Several residents phoned the tower that evening. No flights were scheduled in the area.

What is on the record

The Blue Book folder holds a Project Sign special investigation: a Counter Intelligence Corps report dated 16 August 1948, filed as Incident 165. The tower observer was Navy-trained. The folder also covers reports from Augusta and elsewhere in Georgia that same night, and the Atlanta Constitution ran "Mysterious ball of fire" on 27 July. The sightings came two days after the Chiles-Whitted report.

Hynek reviewed the incident for Project Grudge and classed it as astronomical, a meteor, at fair or low probability. The Johnson catalogue gives the Air Force's explanation as a meteor too, and counts six witnesses at 9:30 p.m. NICAP records the green light with a silver tail "about the size of a football", and Hatch lists the case. The residents' names are illegible or blanked in the copy the archive holds. This page names none of them.

Why it sits where it does

L4 · OFFICIAL RECORD: a released government record carries the sighting and the people who made it. This file is thinner on names than most. It identifies the tower's duty observer by his post, and the residents' names cannot be read. Nothing beyond the file speaks for them in the archive, and the tier rates only that paperwork. The meteor is the Air Force's answer, given at low confidence, and it stands here unchallenged.