Balloon Trackers at Holloman Watch Objects Loop the Loop

The three men tracked balloons for a living, as observers in the Geophysics Laboratory section at Holloman. On the afternoon of 5 April 1948 they watched from the ground as very high objects moved faster than any aircraft they knew, for about half a minute. One observer saw a large grey-white rounded object of indistinct form come down, complete a large loop and soar upward before it disappeared suddenly. Mr Johnson saw one object make three vertical loops and then vanish in a large arc to the west. Mr Chance saw two golden objects. They were irregularly rounded and slightly concave on top, "like a major's insignia". One veered right and down, and the other arced west "at a terrific speed". Johnson said the desert was silent and his receiver picked up nothing. Winds aloft were light.

What is on the record

The three reports are Incidents 112, 112a and 112b in a US Air Force analysis of flying-object reports. The Department of War released it in 2026 as DOW-UAP-D088. The analysis gave its verdict plainly. The object "was definitely not a balloon, and apparently not manned, judging from the violent maneuvers".

The third observer's name is the gap. The pages of D088 read for this case do not show it legibly. Berliner's list of Blue Book Unknowns, where this is number 10, names the three as Alsen, Johnson and Chance. Eberhart gives Joseph Olson, Johnson and Chance, and says the observers worked on a balloon project for Watson Laboratories. NICAP files the case as Blue Book 139, and it appears in the Hatch database and the Johnson calendar.

Why it sits where it does

L4 · OFFICIAL RECORD: a released government record names who saw it. The Air Force's analysis gives Johnson and Chance by surname. The third man is left unnamed here because the outside catalogues disagree on who he was. The analysis is the archive's only source for what they saw, and the grade is about that provenance alone. What the trackers saw over the desert is not resolved here.