Ellsworth UFO Sighting

I first heard about the sighting about two o'clock on the morning of August 11,1953, when Max Futch called me from ATIC. A few minutes before, a wire had come in carrying a priority just under that reserved for flashing the word the U.S. has been attacked. Max had been called over to ATIC by the OD to see the report, and he thought that I should see it. I was a little hesitant to get dressed and go out to the base, so I asked Max what he thought about the report. His classic answer will go down in UFO history, "Captain," Max said in his slow, pure Louisiana drawl, "you know that for a year I've read every flying saucer report that's come in and that I never really believed in the things." Then he hesitated and added, so fast that I could hardly understand hini, "But you should read this wire." The speed with which he uttered this last statement was in itself enough to convince me. When Max talked fast, something was important.

On August 5, 1953, at 08:05 PM shortly after dark, a woman, Mrs Kellian, voluntary member of the Ground Observer Corp, was on her post at Blackhawk, in the Black Hills, South Dakota, about 10 miles west of Ellsworth AFB. She was the first person to see a red glowing light in the sky.

The weather was clear with an excellent visibility, it was a dark moonless night, with stable conditions, a slight temperature inversions and radio surface ducts prevalent.

She saw that the light was low on the horizon to the north-east of her position. She reported by phone through the local Ground Observer Corps Rapid City Filter Center about her sighting, exactly in the way GOC members are supposed to. Her call was put through to the radar controller at Ellsworth AFB, and during the rest of her observation she was on the phone with the duty radar operator, to which she described the moves of phenomenon.

She reported that the object was a stationary "red glowing light", that soon began to move some 30 degrees to her right, then shot "straight up", then moved to the left and returned to its original position, and then started to move south toward Rapid City.

Later, the investigator for the Condon Report stated that a person that was observing the sky with her was said to have thought that it was "just the red tower light, the warning light of the FM radio transmitter tower normally just visible from their location." No indication is given in the Condon Report about the source of this, there is not mention of it in the Air Force report or Air Force's Ed Ruppelt memoir.