The Silver Sphere over the Antigua

At 16:30 on 6 February 1949 the S.S. Antigua was making 16 knots on a course of 152 degrees, bound for the Canal Zone from New Orleans. Her position was 12°30' north, 81°10' west, "in the close vicinity of the San Andres Islands". Her officers saw an object 60 degrees above the horizon, measured with the ship's sextant. At first it looked like a disc. As it passed directly over the ship, several officers described "a round, silver-colored sphere". Overhead on a bearing of 310 degrees it changed colour "from silver to yellow to red" and went out of sight in the dusk. At 17:00 two more objects appeared, one off each bow, and both disappeared abeam. None showed "any luminousity or motivating power".

What is on the record

Caribbean Air Command intelligence interviewed the master, Captain McBride, when the ship berthed at Cristobal two days later. The released account is a letter of 17 February 1949 from the 6th Weather Squadron at Albrook Air Force Base in the Canal Zone to the Military Air Transport Service, signed by Major George W. Moxon. It is filed in an Air Force file of 1949 "Flying Discs" reports (342_HS1-416511228) released by the Department of War on 8 May 2026. McBride put the sphere at 12 to 14 inches across while admitting he could not judge its height.

The squadron leaned towards balloons and then qualified it. Its study of the winds "virtually" ruled out a radiosonde, and the only release point that could have carried a balloon there was Managua. A stray leaking balloon was possible. "However, none of these possibilities account for the sighting of three objects within a thirty minute period." The letter then notes two Russian 300-ton sloops, Omar and Blesk, which had reached Colón on 7 February from St Thomas. Wind and course left open that the sloops had released the objects.

Project Blue Book's copy of the case adds a record card for Incident 253, marked "Balloons", and a summary that puts the colour changes down to the setting sun.

Why it sits where it does

L4 · OFFICIAL RECORD — a released government record names who saw it. Captain McBride is named; his officers are not. No independent testimony sits beside the report in the archive, and the tier measures sourcing rather than truth. What crossed the Antigua that afternoon is not resolved here.