Five defining cases from the May 1950 UFO record, headlined by the McMinnville, Oregon Trent photographs.
1950: May UFO|UAP & Entity Sightings Archive
May 1950 delivered fewer reports than the enormous March and April waves, but the month is disproportionately significant: it produced the McMinnville, Oregon Trent photographs — one of the most analyzed UFO images ever taken — alongside a close encounter with a paralyzing “Michelin man” entity in rural France, a claimed landed-saucer-with-dead-crew story from Argentina, a violent physical assault claim near the Loire, and a near-collision between an American Airlines DC-6 and a glowing spindle-shaped object over Virginia. It also holds two instrument-recorded cases: twin cinetheodolite tracking of unidentified objects at Holloman AFB, New Mexico, and a radar-visual pursuit by F-80 pilots east of Honshu, Japan, that Air Force intelligence could not tie to the weather dropsonde it resembled. Several of the month’s strongest cases are documented in full via the standalone reports linked below.
Date: May 1950
Location: Florence, Tuscany, Italy
Time: Unknown
Summary: Two discs were observed by one male witness (Donnini).
Source: Newspaper
Date: May 1950
Location: Albany, New York
Time: Unknown
Summary: A daylight disc was observed by a female witness.
Source: Eberhart, George M. A Geo-Bibliography of Anomalies Greenwood Press, Westport, 1980. ISBN: 0-313-21337-2
Date: May 1950
Location: Navasota, Texas
Time: Unknown
Summary: More than three objects were observed by several witnesses for over one minute (Miguez).
Source: Unknown
Date: May 1950
Location: Vaux-en-Dieulet, near Buzancy, Ardennes, France
Time: 06:30
Summary: Fourteen-year-old Madeleine Pierrard was crossing a meadow to check on the cows, accompanied by a family dog, when she cried out and pointed at what she first took for the sun. A strange noise — “hou, hou, hou” — accompanied a ball of fire that approached and passed in front of her before stopping and hovering. It resolved into a saucer-shaped object made of a completely translucent, glass-like material. Inside, motionless, stood a small being about 1.40 meters tall, arms at its sides, wearing a tight-fitting diving-style suit resembling the “Michelin Man,” with a motorcycle-style helmet and a clear Plexiglas-like visor connected by two pipes to bottles above its shoulders. Both witnesses felt completely paralyzed and enveloped in a wave of heat throughout the roughly two-minute observation. The object then rose, turning slightly on itself in successive steps while repeating its earlier noise, and departed in the direction of Buzancy. A scorched patch was later found on the ground. Accounts of the case differ on whether Madeleine was accompanied that morning by her father or by an uncle (a Mr. Pierrard) — the surviving sources are inconsistent on this point, and it is noted here rather than resolved.
Source: Jean-Michel Ligeron, UFO in the Ardennes, 1981
Date: May 1950
Location: Desierto de los Leones, Distrito Federal, Mexico
Time: Evening
Summary: Samael Aun Weor (Victor Manuel Gómez Rodríguez), later the founder of a prominent Gnostic religious movement, reported watching a spherical craft, flattened at the top and resting on tripod-style landing gear, descend into a clearing. A thin, bronze-skinned, blue-eyed man of medium build emerged via a small metal ladder, followed by several similar male and female figures. The witness approached and greeted them in Spanish, which they answered fluently; they told him they knew every language on Earth. He asked to be taken to Mars; their leader, apparently puzzled by the request, convened the group in a brief discussion before one of the women offered a parable about worlds absorbing the “positive vibrations” of others, adding that Earth alone seemed resistant to the effect. Told only “we will watch you along the way,” the witness understood he was not yet deemed ready, and watched the group re-board and the craft rotate and depart at high speed. This entry is preserved as a self-reported esoteric contact narrative from a figure later well known in independent religious history, rather than as a corroborated sighting.
Source: Samael Aun Weor, AGEACAC
Date: May 1, 1950
Location: Filer, Idaho
Time: Unknown
Summary: An object was observed and photographed; one banana-shaped object was observed by a male witness (Mueller, W).
Source: Arnold, Kenneth Coming of the Saucers Authors, Amherst, 1952
Date: May 1, 1950
Location: Boux-sous-Salmaise & Dijon, Burgundy, France
Time: 15:00
Summary: One object was observed by multiple witnesses.
Source: Plantier, Jean La Propulsion des Soucoupes Volantes Mame, 1955
Date: May 1, 1950
Location: Kirtland AFB, New Mexico
Time: 15:10
Summary: Two observers saw a silver, lucid, metallic, cylindrical object moving from southwest to northeast at an altitude of a few thousand feet, angling downward, at tremendous speed, for less than a second before it vanished in a flash of brilliant white light. No sound was heard.
Source: AFOSI
Date: May 3, 1950
Location: Savoyeux, Haute-Saône, France
Time: 15:00
Summary: Several girls saw a large cylinder shooting silvery rays fly rapidly from south to north; observed in a residential area for over one minute.
Source: Lumières Dans la Nuit
Date: May 3, 1950
Location: Neuville-sur-Sarthe, Pays de la Loire, France
Time: 16:30
Summary: Four flying discs were observed by numerous witnesses in the city for 30 minutes.
Source: Vallee, Jacques
Date: May 3, 1950
Location: Louisa, Kentucky
Time: 21:00
Summary: One object was observed by several witnesses on a river for a few seconds (Vinson).
Source: Newspaper
Date: May 4, 1950
Location: Birmingham, Alabama
Time: Evening (exact time not given in the Air Force file)
Summary: D. L. Reid, a Birmingham businessman and former newspaperman, and Charles Bellsnyder, a Navy veteran, were among at least seven people who saw a glowing object in the sky. Reid described an elliptical object that appeared to revolve and became bullet-shaped, stationary for about 15 minutes: luminous white for the first minute and a half, then bluish-white, with a long fiery tail that brightened and dimmed. Bellsnyder put the tail at about 150 feet and said it was neither a searchlight nor a furnace reflection. At the end the object turned vertically and disappeared straight up. Third Army headquarters forwarded the clipping to Air Materiel Command on May 10, 1950, with no further information; the Air Force card reads Insufficient Data.
Source: Birmingham Post, May 5, 1950; Project Blue Book (Insufficient Data)
Date: May 5, 1950
Location: Elmendorf AFB, Anchorage, Alaska
Time: Unknown
Summary: Several witnesses reported to the 57th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron a hovering, intense reddish-orange light overhead, beneath an overcast at about 7,000 feet. It hovered for about five minutes, then left at high speed, with no noise and no acrobatic maneuvers.
Source: Sparks; AFHRA index to the 57th FIS history
Date: May 6, 1950
Location: Rome, Lazio, Italy
Time: 16:30
Summary: A daytime disc was reported in the city for ten minutes.
Source: Boncompagni, Solas UFO in Italia, Volume I (Periodo 1907-1953) Tedeschi, Firenze, 1974
Date: May 7, 1950
Location: English Channel
Time: Unknown
Summary: One disc was observed by one witness.
Source: Weinstein, Dominique Aircraft UFO Encounters Project ACUFOE, Paris, 1999
Date: May 7, 1950
Location: Llantarnam, Wales, United Kingdom
Time: 09:45
Summary: A daytime disc was reported.
Source: Hill, H. Edward Catalog Through 1950
Date: May 7, 1950
Location: Lyon, Rhône-Alpes, France
Time: 13:30
Summary: One object was observed.
Source: Vallee, Jacques
Date: May 7, 1950
Location: East Ely, Nevada (about 9 miles south of Ely)
Time: 18:45
Summary: A woman, her husband and her grandson, returning from a picnic, saw a silvery-white object hovering about 100 feet above the ground, roughly 2.5 to 3 miles away. It moved back and forth for about ten minutes as though trying to gain altitude, then shot upward and was out of sight in less than a minute. The family did not report it until a June 28, 1950 letter to the Air Materiel Command; the case file notes no investigation was made, and the Air Force card reads Unidentified. See the Full Report.
Source: Project 10073 Record Card (Unidentified); witness letter to Air Materiel Command, June 28, 1950; Vallée, Magonia 79 (BBU #721)
Date: May 10, 1950
Location: Bahía Blanca, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Time: Unknown
Summary: A 35-year-old male witness observed an object on a highway; physical traces were reportedly found at the scene, and the witness is said to have later died. No further detail on the cause or timing of death, or on the nature of the traces, survives in the available record.
Source: Stringfield, Leonard H.
Date: May 10, 1950
Location: Ladd AFB, Fairbanks, Alaska
Time: Unknown
Summary: Many Air Force personnel saw two apparently spherical gray objects at very high altitude that seemed to float in a fixed area, with observations lasting from a few minutes up to 1 hour 45 minutes. The Alaskan Air Command Directorate of Intelligence prepared an Air Intelligence Information Report on the sighting on August 9, 1950, from an interrogation report.
Source: Project 10073 Record Card; Air Intelligence Information Report, Hq Alaskan Air Command, August 9, 1950
Source Status: The Blue Book card’s time window is only partly legible (about 21:45Z to 24:00Z), the report’s cover sheet may give May 12 rather than May 10, and the body pages of the archive scan are largely unreadable.
Date: May 11, 1950
Location: McMinnville, Yamhill County, Oregon
Time: Early evening, just before sunset
Summary: Farmers Paul and Evelyn Trent photographed a large, silvery, metallic disc gliding silently over their farm, taking two frames before it tilted and departed to the west. The negatives, published in Life magazine weeks later, were formally analyzed seventeen years later for the Condon Committee by astronomer William K. Hartmann, who found the photometry consistent with a real, distant, artificial object — though skeptics have since argued the images show a small model suspended from the power lines visible in frame. The case remains unresolved to this day. See the Full Report.
Source: McMinnville Telephone-Register; Life magazine, June 26, 1950; Condon Committee (William K. Hartmann)
Date: May 11, 1950
Location: Kirchberg, Austria
Time: Unknown
Summary: Nocturnal lights were reported.
Source: Schoenherr, Luis
Date: May 13, 1950
Location: Sutter Buttes, California
Time: Unknown
Summary: Several white objects were observed for five minutes.
Source: Gross, Loren E. UFOs: A History. 1950: April-July Author, Fremont, 1982
Date: May 13, 1950
Location: Wilmette, Illinois
Time: 20:50
Summary: Nocturnal lights were reported for over one minute.
Source: Gross, Loren E. UFOs: A History. 1950: April-July Author, Fremont, 1982
Source Status: The Air Force record of the Wilmette sighting is dated May 16, 1950, at 20:45, with a duration of three to four seconds; see the May 16 entry below. Whether this listing is a misdated version of that case or a separate event is not established.
Date: May 14, 1950
Location: St. Louis, Missouri
Time: 14:30
Summary: A cream-colored, disc-shaped UFO about ten feet in diameter flew at 1,500 feet altitude; observed by four witnesses for over one minute.
Source: Newspaper
Date: Mid-May 1950
Location: Cheyenne, Wyoming
Time: 08:30
Summary: 20 objects were observed by a male witness for ten minutes (Mitchell).
Source: Bloecher, Ted R.
Date: May 15, 1950
Location: Near Epu Pel / General Acha, La Pampa, Argentina
Time: Afternoon
Summary: An Italian-born architect driving alone across La Pampa reported spotting a silver disc tilted on a rise of ground and entering it to find three small humanoid occupants, all apparently dead, amid a strong ozone-and-garlic odor. Returning the next day with friends, they found the craft gone, replaced by a smoking pile of silver-red ash, and reported seeing identical discs and a cigar-shaped carrier departing overhead. The account did not surface publicly until an anonymous 1955 Caracas newspaper item. See the Full Report.
Source: El Universal (Caracas), 1955; Le Courrier Interplanétaire; Leonard H. Stringfield
Date: May 16, 1950
Location: Zaragoza, Spain
Time: 20:50
Summary: Nocturnal lights were reported.
Source: Ballester Olmos, Vicente-Juan
Date: May 16, 1950
Location: Wilmette, Illinois (Washington Park, south of Wilmette Beach, Lake Michigan)
Time: 20:45
Summary: An Evanston, Illinois doctor and his wife, seated in their parked car on the lakeshore, saw an elliptical object — about 50 to 100 feet across by his estimate — cross the sky over the lake, traveling south at tremendous speed. He first took it for a shooting star. It was in sight three or four seconds, covered an estimated 50 to 60 miles about 25 degrees above the horizon, then changed course and headed out over the lake, fluorescing with a pink hue. Occupants of another car also saw it. Fifth Army headquarters interviewed the doctor on May 31 and forwarded the report to Air Materiel Command on June 26, 1950; the Air Force card evaluates it as Astro (Meteor).
Source: Project 10073 Record Card (Astro — Meteor); Headquarters Fifth Army letter, June 26, 1950
Date: May 17, 1950
Location: Kenosha, Wisconsin
Time: 20:30
Summary: Two 13-year-olds saw a brightly shining light at an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 feet move in a direct arc from north to south, stop at the southern horizon, then resume moving southeast. They watched for five to ten minutes under slightly cloudy skies with a light northeast wind, with no sound, flashes or exhaust, and nothing trailing it. One wrote to the Air Materiel Command Technical Intelligence Division, asking not to be named or answered; the Air Force card reads Insufficient Data, with the time and motion sequence omitted.
Source: Project 10073 Record Card (Insufficient Data); witness letter to Air Materiel Command
Date: May 18, 1950
Location: Cañon City, Colorado
Time: Around 22:00
Summary: Physiological effects were noted; more than one object was observed by two witnesses.
Source: Data-Net Report
Date: May 19, 1950
Location: 100 miles east of Misawa AB, Honshu, Japan (40°30’N, 143°26’E)
Time: 10:30 (radar pickup); pilots’ contact 10:40–10:52
Summary: Ground radar picked up an object, and two F-80 pilots from Misawa Air Base, vectored to the area, made six or seven passes at a stationary, kite-like object about 30 by 24 inches (36 by 24 on the Blue Book card) with no visible means of support. Radar tracked it for 22 minutes and the pilots watched it for 12. A weather-reconnaissance WB-29 had released a dropsonde nearby that reached the surface at 10:15, and the Air Force card lists the case as Other (Dropsonde); but the approving intelligence officer wrote that the object could not be positively identified as the dropsonde because of the incongruity of the time element. See the Full Report.
Source: Air Intelligence Information Report IR-132-50 (Hq FEAF, June 20, 1950); Project 10073 Record Card (Other — Dropsonde); Project 1947; McDonald list
Date: May 19, 1950
Location: Loire River, France
Time: 16:00
Summary: One object was observed by one witness.
Source: Vallee, Jacques Passport to Magonia Henry Regnery, Chicago, 1969
Source Status: This entry shares its time (16:00), region and source with the May 20 Cours-les-Barres entry below, which is on the Loire. Whether the two are the same event under different dates is unresolved.
Date: May 20, 1950
Location: Flagstaff, Lowell Observatory, Arizona
Time: 12:15
Summary: Dr. Seymour L. Hess, an astronomer and meteorologist at Lowell Observatory (later head of the Department of Meteorology at Florida State University), saw a dark object against a bright cloud, moving southeast to northwest, perpendicular to the cloud drift, at roughly 100 mph. The sphere- or disc-shaped object, partially lit by sunlight, was estimated at 3 to 5 feet in diameter and was observed with optical instruments.
Source: Michel, Aimé The Truth About Flying Saucers Pyramid T1647, New York, 1967; NICAP, The UFO Evidence, 1964; Flying Saucers, Flying Saucers Magazine (Palmer)
Date: May 20, 1950
Location: Cours-les-Barres, Cher, France
Time: 16:00
Summary: A woman walking along the steep banks of the Loire was suddenly engulfed in a blinding light and seized from above by two enormous, cold, black hands with no visible arms attached, which pressed violently over her eyes, nose, and mouth and dragged her backward through brush at great speed while a voice above her said “There she is. We’ve got her.” After roughly fifteen to twenty minutes she was released among brambles, badly lacerated, as a violent wind and a second blinding light accompanied the assailant’s sudden departure. Investigators later found scorched and flattened brush and damaged fencing at the site; the witness had reported a stopping, ascending “shooting star” the previous evening. See the Full Report.
Source: Joel Mesnard, MUFON UFO Journal #309; Vallee, Jacques Passport to Magonia
Source Status: Vallée’s catalogue also lists an unlocated Loire River entry on May 19 at 16:00 (see above). Whether it is the same event is unresolved.
Date: May 21, 1950
Location: Montrose, Colorado
Time: 07:30
Summary: Felix Zanon, 60, who ranches on a mesa five miles east of Montrose, stepped out his back door and saw a huge silver disc hovering over the city. A second object of the same size, shape and color joined it almost immediately, and both moved east toward Cerro Summit in the Rockies. Zanon, who said he had not believed in flying saucers before that morning, called his wife, and his son Bill came up from the field; father and son watched the objects through field glasses.
Source: UP wire story, Dayton Journal-Herald, May 22, 1950
Source Status: Catalog listings add the witness names Linscott and Seevers and describe a north-then-east track lasting about five minutes. Those details do not appear in the UP clipping.
Date: May 21, 1950
Location: New Kensington, Pennsylvania
Time: 23:53 EDT
Summary: A sergeant at his bedroom window on a clear Sunday night heard a sound like heavy truck tires whining on a wet highway, then a roar like an aircraft engine in pre-flight warm-up. A round, flat object with three or four large, brilliant round lights and smaller lights between them, which appeared to rotate left to right, came due south down the Allegheny River and very quickly made a sharp right turn, heading due west. He saw no jet-like exhaust or trail; the whole event lasted about two minutes, at an estimated 20,000 feet. He mentioned three or four saucer reports that week at Springdale, Tarentum and Arnold, Pennsylvania, and guessed the object was a USAF radio-controlled interceptor. The Air Force card is marked A/C (aircraft).
Source: Project 10073 Record Card (A/C); letter to Base S-2 Officer, Wright Field, May 22, 1950; Air Materiel Command acknowledgment, June 1, 1950
Date: May 22, 1950
Location: Warren AFB, Wyoming
Time: 14:00
Summary: Four objects were observed by six witnesses at the airfield for two minutes (Duquoin).
Source: Newspaper
Date: May 23, 1950
Location: Loveland, Colorado
Time: 20:00
Summary: Two objects were observed by two witnesses for over one minute (Johnson).
Source: Newspaper
Date: May 24, 1950
Location: Holloman AFB, Alamogordo, New Mexico
Time: Morning (daylight; exact time not recorded)
Summary: During an MX-674 Tarzon controllable-bomb test, Land-Air, Inc. tracking crews — including Floyd Fannon, per Sparks — saw as many as eight unidentified objects at once and filmed two of them with Askania cinetheodolites down the North American Aviation missile range. Station P-8 followed one object moving south for six frames (about 1.0 second); station P-10, 5.68 miles north along the range, followed a different object moving north for 74 frames (about 14.6 seconds). Because the two stations filmed different objects, no triangulation was possible, and the Air Force card reads Insufficient Data. The officer who forwarded the film to the Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratory rated the observers’ reliability superior. See the Full Report.
Source: Project 10073 Record Card (Insufficient Data); Holloman Data Reduction Unit memo, May 31, 1950; Holloman letter to AFCRC, July 1950; Sparks (BBU)
Source Status: A True magazine extract in the file and an earlier NICAP listing date this tracking May 29; the card, memo and letter all say May 24.
Date: May 25, 1950
Location: Upton, Wyoming
Time: 03:00
Summary: Two objects were observed by numerous witnesses for several hours (Messersmith).
Source: Newspaper
Date: May 25, 1950
Location: Cañon City, Colorado
Time: 22:00
Summary: 11 objects were observed by two witnesses for 11 minutes (Herzel).
Source: Newspaper
Date: Late May 1950
Location: La Porte, Indiana
Time: 10:00
Summary: A hovering flying disc was observed by two male witnesses for 12 seconds (Gulledge).
Source: Hartle, Orvil R. A Carbon Experiment Author, La Porte, 1963
Date: May 29, 1950
Location: Sawbill Bay, Ontario, Canada
Time: Daytime
Summary: A four-foot-tall dwarf-like figure, wearing a shiny suit, was seen with a hose extending into the lake.
Source: Pereira, Jader U. Les Extra-Terrestres, Phenomenes Spatiaux, Paris, 1974
Date: May 29, 1950
Location: About 7 miles west of Mt. Vernon, Virginia
Time: 9:20 p.m.
Summary: Capt. Willis T. Sperry of American Airlines, with roughly 10,000 flying hours, and his DC-6 crew narrowly avoided a head-on collision with a 150-foot spindle-shaped object carrying an intense blue tail light. After an evasive turn, the object crossed in front of the moon at about 5 miles’ distance, clearly showing a submarine-like silhouette, then circled to pace the aircraft for 20-30 seconds before climbing away to the east at “fantastic” speed. Two or three passengers and a stewardess reported seeing a light or something pass by; the Washington tower and radar did not confirm the sighting. See the Full Report.
Source: Sparks Database of Bluebook Unknowns (BBU); W. B. Klemperer interview with Capt. Sperry, February 4, 1955
Date: May 29, 1950
Location: Trasimeno, Umbria, Italy
Time: Night
Summary: Nocturnal lights were reported (Donnini).
Source: Boncompagni, Solas UFO in Italia, Volume I (Periodo 1907-1953) Tedeschi, Firenze, 1974
Date: May 30, 1950
Location: Anadarko, Oklahoma
Time: Daytime
Summary: One object was observed by one witness (McCarland).
Source: Newspaper
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
A Quieter Month, Anchored by Landmark Cases and Instrument Records
May 1950 saw a genuine lull in overall report volume after March and April’s dense waves, but the month is remembered for the quality rather than the quantity of its strongest cases. The McMinnville, Oregon Trent photographs remain, three-quarters of a century later, one of the most rigorously and inconclusively analyzed UFO images ever taken. The Vaux-en-Dieulet, France encounter offers one of the era’s most detailed “small suited entity” descriptions, complete with paralysis and scorched ground. And the Mt. Vernon, Virginia DC-6 near-collision stands alongside April’s TWA Flight 117 case as one of the two strongest airline-crew sightings of the year.
May also preserves three cases where the Air Force’s own paperwork can be read side by side with the sighting. At Holloman AFB, two cinetheodolite stations filmed different objects, so no triangulation was possible. East of Honshu, two F-80 pilots circled a stationary kite-like object that the record card closes as a dropsonde even though the approving officer would not confirm the match. And at East Ely, Nevada, a family’s late letter produced a case the Air Force card labeled Unidentified and never investigated. The month also carries two of this archive’s most cautionary cases: the Epu Pel, La Pampa “burnt saucer” story, whose vivid interior detail rests entirely on a single witness’s account that did not surface for five years, and the Bahía Blanca, Argentina entry, whose claim of a witness’s later death is recorded without any surviving detail on its circumstances. Both are preserved honestly as documented claims rather than verified events.
“professional observers therefore I would rate their reliability superior.”
— Holloman AFB letter to the Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratory on the Land-Air tracking crews, July 1950
