A Tumbling Object and Four White 'Parachutes' over March Field

First Lieutenant Marvin M. Van Salter and Second Lieutenant Edwin B. Reeser were flying instrument approaches on the Riverside radio range at about 14:45 on 7 April 1949. Both flew with the 196th Fighter Squadron of the California Air National Guard, out of San Bernardino. Their T-6 was at about 7,000 feet when Van Salter saw a red-and-grey object tumbling forward some 1,000 feet below. His first thought was a jet's tip tank falling away. Then he looked up. Four pure white objects like parachute canopies were floating about 1,000 feet apart, with no shroud lines and no bodies beneath them. Reeser came out from under the instrument hood and saw the four in the same place. He took them for parachutes. The pilots climbed to 9,000 feet for a closer look, and the objects vanished to the east.

What is on the record

Blue Book holds the case under San Bernardino as Incident 305, and the file gives Reeser's rank as second lieutenant. Van Salter stressed that it all happened directly over March Field. He also passed on a radio news item from the next day about three workers in Griffith Park who had seen a disc. That item is hearsay, and nothing in the file ties it to what the T-6 crew saw.

The conclusion is where the file falls short. The record card's evaluation is illegible in the scanned copy, so the archive cannot say what the Air Force decided. NICAP lists the case as a Blue Book Unknown under the heading "Four Dome-Shaped Objects Separate From Tank-Shape".

Why it sits where it does

L4 · OFFICIAL RECORD: a released government record names who saw it. Two officers stand behind the report, Van Salter and Reeser, both named in the Air Force's own file. The Griffith Park workers are unnamed and reach the file only through a radio report, and no outside telling joins the pilots' account. An L4 grade describes the source, not the object. What the pilots saw over March Field is not resolved here.