A Moline Policeman Films Two Silver Objects

Patrolman William P. Fisher Sr. was on traffic duty near Sacred Heart School in Moline at about 13:30 on 9 March 1967. He saw a silvery-grey metallic object, slightly U-shaped and "like a pickle", with no propeller. It hovered and then moved off to the north-west, tipping and stopping at times. Fisher filmed it in colour on 8mm with a telephoto lens. A second object, identical to the first, then followed the same path. Pupils at the school saw objects too, as did nuns and a woman standing beside him. While it was happening his police radio stopped receiving. That was later traced to a loose antenna.

What is on the record

The Blue Book folder for Galesburg and Moline holds Fisher's statement, the film evaluation and newspaper clippings. Investigators from Chanute Air Force Base watched the film four times. They called it "essentially nondescript": a hand-held shot of a silver-white oblong on a blue sky with no reference points. They noted a strobe effect that a rotor might cause, and they checked helicopters. The only Guard helicopter had landed at 12:50. Blue Book's summary says the description, duration and flight characteristics were similar to a balloon, and that nothing in the film disputed it.

The nuns' statements support Fisher only in part. One saw a silver "sliver of light" in the west for about five seconds around 13:30, then three jets. Another saw three jets and a pink object at about 14:05. A third sighting came on 10 March, the next day. A clipping in the folder reports home-made hot-air balloons found near Monmouth on 11 March. The folder's card splits its several sightings between unidentified, insufficient data and identified. The archive's summary had wrongly given Fisher the number of Blue Book Unknown 11460, a separate 6 March sighting in the same folder. NICAP lists the film among its photographic cases.

Why it sits where it does

L4 · OFFICIAL RECORD: a released government record names who saw it. Among the adults, only Fisher is identified. The nuns' names are blanked in the file, and the pupils were children, so none of them is named here. Their accounts reach the archive only through the folder, and the grade is about that sourcing. The balloon reading is Blue Book's, and the film does not settle it either way.