An Airport Operator Chases a Silver Sphere at Myrtle Creek

Ray Hatfield was instructing a student on a take-off at the Tri City Airport at about 18:15 on 6 August 1947 when he saw something glisten east of Myrtle Creek. It looked like aluminium sheeting, somewhere between 5,000 and 8,000 feet up. Hatfield was a former Navy pilot who had held the rank of lieutenant (junior grade). He took over the controls and went after it. He chased it for about ten minutes. By his estimate it was spherical and perhaps 30 feet across, climbing east at about 1,000 mph with no vapour trail and no sound. On a second take-off both of them saw it again in about the same place. The student called it a "silver ball or balloon" about 50 feet across. In his account it climbed very fast and vanished in about 45 seconds.

What is on the record

The account is a memo from the FBI's Portland office dated 23 August 1947. It sits in section 2 of the bureau's flying-disc file 62-HQ-83894, which the Department of War released in 2026. Agents interviewed both fliers on 12 August. The typist garbled the operator's first name, but the memo calls him Hatfield throughout. The FBI found no other witnesses and closed the inquiry. It made no evaluation.

The two accounts differ on size, 30 feet against 50. The student's own words leave a balloon explanation open, and nothing in the memo tests one. Outside the FBI file the Hatch database records the sighting as an airport manager in a light plane chasing a round metallic object, seen twice over ten minutes. It gives no Blue Book number.

Why it sits where it does

L4 · OFFICIAL RECORD: a released government record names who saw it. Hatfield is the identified witness. The memo names his student as well, but it gives no age, so this page refers to him only as the student. Nothing outside the memo adds to their account in the archive. An L4 page has good paper behind it, and that is all the grade claims. What Hatfield chased east of the airfield is not resolved here.