The B-29 and the Phoenix Object

The FBI's Phoenix office sent an urgent teletype the next morning. At 5:45 pm on 29 June an object "was observed by many citizens of Phoenix including FBI personnel". Herman Munroe of the Air Force's Office of Special Investigations at Williams Air Force Base said radar had picked it up at 6 pm at 30,000 to 35,000 feet. A B-29 from the 509th Bomb Group at Roswell was sent to follow it. Its pilot at 25,000 feet put the object another 10,000 to 20,000 feet higher. At 290 mph he could circle beneath it. The object moved west "in absence of wind" and was last seen at 8:55 pm about twenty miles north of Blythe in California, lost in a heavy thunderstorm. Munroe could easily see it through binoculars and judged it very large. The B-29, the teletype adds, "could not be observed with binoculars".

What is on the record

Two papers in the FBI's flying-disc file 62-HQ-83894 (Section 5) carry the case. The Department of War released them on 8 May 2026. One is that teletype of 30 June 1950. The other is a memo of 5 July from the Office of Special Investigations at Kirtland Air Force Base on its interview with First Lieutenant John D. Fink of the 93rd Fighter Squadron. At about 18:40 on 29 June Fink climbed an F-86 to 47,000 feet and saw "a bright balloon with instruments attached" floating at 50,000 feet. He called it slow and shaped like an "inverted tear drop". The memo says the object "has been positively identified as a balloon" and ends the inquiry.

The two papers do not quite meet. Fink's time falls inside the watch, but the memo never says where he was flying or that his balloon was the object the B-29 circled. A floating balloon also sits awkwardly with a westward track "in absence of wind". The crew's own account, promised in the teletype, is not among these papers. Brad Sparks's catalogue of Blue Book cases lists the sighting.

Why it sits where it does

L4 · OFFICIAL RECORD — a released government record names who saw it. Munroe and Fink are named and the B-29 crew is identified by its unit. No independent testimony sits beside the file in the archive, and the tier measures sourcing rather than truth. What the bomber circled is not resolved here.