The year the Martians took a couple of spins around the Hancock weather beacon

In the 1950s and 1960s, a unit at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, collected and investigated UFO sightings - including a number in the Boston area (two in one small section of West Roxbury alone).

The Air Force concluded that most of the reports from around here, like most of the reports everywhere, were due to easily explainable non-Little-Green-Men reasons: What people thought were visitors from somewhere else were planes landing at Logan, weather balloons, reflections from the setting sun on planes high in the sky, or reflections from lights inside buildings, ground-based spotlights being bounced off low-hanging clouds and the like.

Sometimes, people were trying to have some fun with the Air Force, or in one case, on June 27, 1960 in Danvers, failing to look away from the sun - an Air Force investigator concluded a man who had been watching a plane fly into the setting sun didn't see an other-worldly spacecraft soon after but instead either saw a rising Venus or, more likely, "an optical phenomenon associated with staring at the sun (after image)."

But in 1964, the Air Force investigated two cases, one on the Boston side, one on the Cambridge side of the Charles River, that caused them to take a deeper look. The reports come from the files of Project Blue Book, the name for the UFO unit, most of which are available through the National Archives Web site (Massachusetts files).

On Sept. 9, 1964, starting around 8:30 p.m., people on either side of the Charles River basin and, later, north of the city, began spotting an illuminated elliptical object. Some called State Police, as one did, and they promptly concluded it was just yet another case of a company up at Beverly Airport, Ski-Lite Advertising, flying a plane with an illuminated banner behind it (in this case, promoting Republican Gov. John Volpe's reelection campaign). The company and its illuminated night banner "had caused many false UFO reports in the past," an Air Force investigator wrote.

After plotting out the route of the plane to and from Beverly and around the Boston area - using road maps it got for free from a Boston-area Sunoco station - the investigator concluded the Ski-Lite plane and banner was definitely what nine of the eleven people from whom it got its own reports had seen.

Part of the map showing the paths of the UFO (zig-zag line, from A to C) and the banner-pulling plane (the straighter lines, showing the plane coming from the north, curving over Beacon Hill and Back Bay, then heading north on the Boston side of the river, including near WBZ). See it larger:

But then there were two reports from people who had spotted both the banner and the UFO at the same time, including one from an MIT engineering student driving who had been driving across the Harvard Bridge:

James and his friend were driving across the Harvard Square [sic] Bridge from MIT. They noted an advertising plane carrying an illuminated sign which flashed the words "Bring back Volpe" - Volpe being a candidate for Governor. Almost at the same time, they notice an elliptical-shaped object coming down the Charles River toward the bridge. It is important to note that both the advertising plane and this object were seen in the air at the same time thus eliminating the plane being mistaken for a UFO.

The object proceeded over the bridge causing both them and other motorists to stop in order to see the object. Just after the object passed over the bridge, it executed a sharp turn having no curve radius. It headed straight for the large light on top of the John Hancock building [Ed note: the weather beacon atop what we now call the old Hancock building] and made 2 - 3 90-deg "square" turns around this light. It then came back over the river and suddenly ascended vertically at high speed.

James gave the following description of the object: It was solid and elliptical-shaped. Its edges were fuzzy. No noise could be heard. The bottom of the object was glowing with a pale gray diffused light which changed to a yellowish color.

Before they watched whatever it was zipping across the Charles, a Wellesley couple who happened to be near Fenway Park reported "an inverted saucer with a round circular white light which glowed like a house-lamp:"

No noise was heard. Its light was stead except for an occasional blink. It hovered momentarily at one point. It was last seen heading for the Charles River. It was insisted that what was seen was not an advertising plane.

Not long after taking note of the impending weather from atop the old Hancock building, the thing showed up upriver, above the studios of WBZ on Soldiers Field Road - where news anchor Streeter Stuart would report on the object on his 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. newscasts - which isn't very surprising, given that he was a member of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, and by phenomena, they meant UFOs.

Stuart, who did not see the object himself, told an Air Force investigator he had gotten a dozen or so calls about it - and direct reports from some WBZ employees, one who was in the parking lot and two others who went outside to see what was going on:

Robert was in the WBZ parking lot when a bright light illuminated the lot. he looked up and was amazed to see a large circular light above him. He ran into the WBZ lobby and brought Mrs. Doris Sinclair, the TV station receptionist, out to see it. A film technician came out to see it as well. Robert's sketch and descriptions are as follows: It made no noise, hovered, moved slowly, and suddenly sped off and disappeared when the lights blinked off completely. It had one bright white light which flashed on and off and moved from one point to another with great speed.

A Lynn resident reported the object around 9:45 p.m., an investigator wrote. She described it as " a dull-metallic colored spherical object carrying a big round white light which alternatively dimmed and brightened." Also: "The object moved in spurts, i.e., very slowly and then darting ahead. There was no noise associated with the object. Its size was about the size of an automobile."

The Air Force ultimately concluded that based on the path of the airplane, that's probably what the WBZ workers saw. The MIT students' reports was more curious; the Air Force speculated it was perhaps spotlights from the ground bouncing off clouds, but said it didn't have the weather conditions for the area of the Charles, Back Bay and Cambridge.

This was only the second detailed UFO report that year. Around 3:43 p.m. on May 26, a man with some of the best credentials for identifying things in the sky reported a UFO over the Sears & Roebuck store on Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge's Porter Square (today's Porter Exchange).

Man's sketch of what he saw:

The man, whose name is blacked out in the records, served as an RAF pilot in 1945, had a private pilot's license and had spent three years in Iran running a US station with a specialized camera for photographing Soviet satellites.

On that afternoon, he was parked in his car in the Sears parking lot looking up at some Fairchild military transport planes, possibly getting ready to land at Hanscom Field through a sky that was clear save for some cumulus clouds. His two-year old son, in the back seat, though, was pretty restless, so the man brought him up front and pointed out the planes. And then at precisely at 3:43 p.m. according to his wrist watch (which he later confirmed was accurate by tuning into a "WCRB time signal," back when WCRB did time checks), he saw:

Very thin ellipsoid as seen major to minor diameter ratio approximately 3.5:1 Would estimate length of major axis between 1/3 to 1/3 full-moon diameter but did not see moon out at the time so it is a memory comparison.

Object definitely was above the cumulus. Object was dead white, indicating reflection of cloud upper boundary, also I saw it disappear behind cloud. As base of cloud was definitely gray,were the object to have passed below the cloud it would have shown white against the background.

He wrote it was moving from the northeast to the southwest and appeared to be going "equivalent to 200 mph at 1,000'," at least until he lost sight of it behind the roof the Sears building. He wrote:

I had sufficient time for observation to determine that the object was not a paper plate or cup being carried up in a thermal nor that it was an aircraft. During the entire time of observation the outlines of the object did not change indicating that it was maintaining its orientation in space. Its course was parallel to the major axis of the ellipsoid - this destroyed my initial hypothesis that it was a seal-gull in a thermal.

The dotted line is a suggestion of an edge or something and was in the position shown. It was not of great contrast to the rest. Generally the small visual angle of the object and the brightness of the white coloring or reflection was such that detail was difficult if not impossible to see. The whiteness was of the same quality as the bottom of an aircraft over snow or clouds; I saw a jet high up (leaving a contrail a few minutes before the sighting) with the same brilliant white reflected and had similar difficulty in trying to pick out engine pods.

He added:

There was no smoke trail from the object, nor did I hear any unusual sound. There was somewhere within the aural range a reciprocating engine aircraft which I didn't see, but which was the cause of my looking up.

Several months later, he was interviewed by J. Allen Hynek, a Northwestern astronomy professor who had worked closely with the Air Force on its UFO tracking - and who, in his own report, said he was himself very familiar with the Sears in question, because it was just a few blocks from the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory where he had done work.

Hynek reported the man had been a UFO skeptic who appeared to be an accurate observer. Hynek added: "Weight must be given to the excellence of the observer who, in this case, was trained for specific tracking of objects in the sky." Also: "He is a reliable fellow and not excitable."

"In my phone call he talked entirely from memory and had no notes since my phone call caught him by surprise," Hynek wrote. He noted the man did admit to a big mistake in calculating the speed of the object in "seconds of arc per second" but dismissed that as a simple error based on the way the camera the man used in Iran provided numbers for calculating speed being different from other such systems. One anonymous Air Force reviewer, however, scrawled at this point on Hynek's report: "He should have caught that himself! Perhaps not too reliable!"

Although in general, Air Force personnel maintained a calm demeanor in reviewing reports, as shown here, they could get snippy; perhaps no more so than about a report by photographer at MIT's Lincoln Labs, who went to the Air Force Cambridge Research Center at Hanscom Field in 1958 and handed over photos, from roughly May, 1956, of what he thought might be UFOs over the Charles River.

Those blobs at the top of the photo of the Charles looking towards Boston? Probably not UFOs, Air Force concluded:

The photographer explained he had waited so long for fear of ridicule. The Air Force did not disappoint him. After determining the blobs were, in fact, simple issues with "air bells" during photo development, not images of moving spacecraft, the Air Force added:

It appears odd that a professional photographer would ask the Air Force to identify what appears to be the result of emulsion, developing or camera-equipment flaws.

MIT has some of the finest equipment in the country for photo analysis, which apparently was available to source.

The fact that the source feared ridicule as the reason why he waited over two (2) years to submit the photos is questioned.

Previous experience with flying saucer photography submitted by professional photographers has resulted in some unfounded accusations against the Air Force.

The Air Force took no position on one East Weymouth couple's report of a flying saucer that roused them from their sleep around 1 a.m. on July 25, 1963.

The flying gray hamburger of East Weymouth:

The Gilbertis were sound asleep then, their bedroom window open and their bed rolled up to it so they could to catch any breezes when they heard "an un-godly sound - like a slow-moving jet." Both looked out the window, then Mrs. Gilberti, terrified, jumped under the covers while Mr. G kept looking out at the gray object:

"It," he said, was like "two hamburger buns one on top of another with a sandwiched piece of meat protruding around." Its outline was seen because of two lights on the object, one on the top and one on the bottom which were shaped like "Turkish Fez hats."

It flew relatively low over some trees about 300 feet away, then disappeared. The couple, of course, couldn't get to sleep and stayed up until 4:30 a.m. talking about the object. That morning, around 8:30, they drove to the South Weymouth Naval Air Station, where they were told, no, the airfield did not have any landings or takeoffs overnight.

In 1960, the Air Force tried to put one West Roxbury resident's mind at ease after the man, who lived on Oriole Street, reported seeing a bright-orange object, "appearing like the head of a missile on fire," moving from the northwest to the southwest for about 30 seconds around 11 p.m. on Aug. 29.

"This matter has become very important to me because what I saw wasn't any ordinary object," the man wrote the Air Force "I have discussed this with several people and now, to save face, I would like to see if there is an answer."

An Air Force officer replied he likely saw a meteor:

The absence of a trail is no reason to rule out a meteor, for some leave trails and others do not. It is also true that some of the trails which are left are faint and can only be seen with an optical aid. Further, most meteors are not very persistent and may not have endured long enough for detection.

And that was about four months after a 9-year-old boy, who also lived on Oriole Street, reported a silverish-white object, "like a plane without wings" with a dome on top and landing gear on the bottom that flew over the Randall G. Morris School [since torn down] on nearby Wren Street. The object had smoke coming out of its sides and "it made a noise like a plane in distress" and then just disappeared.

Almost the whole school saw it and two of the teachers saw it.