The Blinking Light over Osborn

First Lieutenant Clarence Glazebrook was in the north end of Osborn, looking north, when the light appeared. His memo describes "a pale yellowish white light that seemed to glow. It was not a direct beam." It moved east to west at what he judged three or four thousand feet and five or six hundred miles an hour. It showed for one to two seconds and went out. After a pause of three seconds it came back for the same length of time, and then again. "The intermittent appearance of the light was at a regulated interval." After the third showing it was gone, last seen just above the western horizon north of Patterson Field. There was no sound and no trail.

What is on the record

Glazebrook was an Air Technical Intelligence investigator at Air Materiel Command headquarters. The next morning he was out interviewing other witnesses for Project Sign. His memo of 16 July says he was a reconnaissance pilot in the war, served eight months with the 160th Reconnaissance Squadron flying FP-80s, and that his estimates of speed "can be considered to be fairly accurate". The Department of War released the check-list for Incident 139 and his memo in the Incident Summaries 101-172 in May 2026. A second copy of the check-list appears in DOW-UAP-D088.

J. Allen Hynek's evaluation in the Blue Book file opens: "There is no obvious astronomical explanation for this incident." He then showed that the report's "quarter moon rising in the east-southeast" was impossible at that hour. The moon was setting in the west-north-west. "This, oddly enough, is the quadrant of the sky in which the object was reported to be seen. In what direction, then, was the observer really looking?" He wondered whether fast clouds were hiding and uncovering the setting moon, "a moon which, incidentally, does have a pale yellowish-white light". He also raised auroral streamers and searchlights playing on the sky. His index filed the case as unexplained for lack of evidence.

Why it sits where it does

L4 · OFFICIAL RECORD — a released government record names who saw it. The witness is a named Air Force officer, and he is the only one. No independent testimony sits beside his memo in the archive. The tier measures sourcing rather than truth. What blinked over Osborn is not resolved here.