1956: April UFO|UAP & Entity Sightings Archive

On the night of April 8, 1956, an American Airlines airliner climbing out of Albany, New York, changed course to chase a UFO. Captain Raymond Ryan and First Officer William Neff had watched a brilliant white light swing across their path at an estimated 800 to 1,000 mph, turn orange and hang in front of them. Griffiss Air Force Base told them it could see the orange object too. The Air Force then asked them to keep following it, and with passengers aboard, the crew flew past their scheduled Syracuse landing and trailed the light to Lake Ontario. The promised jet interceptors never showed up. The Ryan-Neff airliner chase is the anchor of the April 1956 UFO sightings archive, and one of the decade’s most striking civil aviation encounters.

On the ground, April brought several unusual reports. Two FBI agents on Route 1 near Henderson, North Carolina, watched a silent, top-shaped object as wide as the road pass over their car. Two men near McKinney, Texas, saw a silvery craft land in a field. A red-domed disc with rotating fins hovered at treetop height near Elbeuf, France. Witnesses in Birmingham, Alabama, described a silver, angel-like winged figure over an iron works. The month also includes Elizabeth Klarer’s claimed flight aboard a Venusian spacecraft from a hilltop in Natal, South Africa, one of the best-known contactee stories of the era.

Date: April 3, 1956
Location: Birmingham, Alabama
Time: Night
Summary: Witnesses described a winged humanoid that looked like a silver-colored angel. It flew over a coal and iron plant and disappeared to the north. It was reportedly seen again in the same area on April 5.
Source: G. E. Eberhart

Date: April 4, 1956
Location: McKinney, Texas
Time: 3:15 p.m. until dark (about 6 hours)
Summary: Local weather observer Capt. Roy Hall, U.S. Army (Ret.), reported a fat, bright silver object watched from two separate locations. Using a 3-mile triangulation baseline, Hall measured a convergence of about 3 degrees and estimated the object’s altitude at about 100,000 feet or higher. With a small 4x telescope he measured it at about 1 minute of arc, which would make it over 200 feet across. An amateur astronomer, Charles Anderson, put a 200x telescope on it and drew it as oblong, with a raised band of two lines around its middle that never changed position. The object stayed about 7 degrees north of Venus the whole time and disappeared at about the same time Venus set. Hall said observers 100 miles away also saw it, directly overhead.
Source: Don Berliner; Dan Wilson; NICAP 1956 UFO Chronology (BBU #4050)

Source Status: A very high, stationary object visible for hours, and seen overhead 100 miles away, is consistent with a large high-altitude research balloon. However, the Air Force listed the case as unidentified.

Date: April 6, 1956
Location: About 5 miles (8 km) east of McKinney, Texas
Time: Unknown
Summary: A man named Mitchell and a male companion were driving when they saw a silvery object slant down into a field. Blue Book puts it at about 5 to 8 feet across and 300 feet away; Vallée’s catalogue gives about 2 meters and 100 meters. They stopped the car to investigate, and the object took off at tremendous speed. The men thought it looked like a balloon. The Air Force listed it as unidentified.
Source: Jacques Vallée, Passport to Magonia, case 379; FUFOR Index; NICAP 1956 UFO Chronology (BBU)

Date: April 8, 1956
Location: Near Exauroux, Elbeuf (given as “Elboeuf”), France
Time: 11:45 p.m.
Summary: Two brothers, aged 18 and 20, saw a red ball descend on their left and hover at treetop height before leaving at tremendous speed. Three other witnesses reported it independently. The object was described as a disc about 7.5 meters across, with a red dome and rotating fins underneath, giving off a yellow-orange glow. [Full Report]
Source: Jacques Vallée, Passport to Magonia, case 380

Date: April 8, 1956
Location: North of Schenectady to west of Syracuse, New York
Time: 10:15 p.m. (EST)
Summary: American Airlines Captain Raymond E. Ryan, First Officer William Neff, flight attendant Phyllis Reynolds and passengers had taken off from Albany, heading north and then almost due west at 260 mph and 6,000 feet. North of Schenectady they spotted a brilliant white light about 2 to 3 miles away, 90 degrees to their left, looking like an airliner coming in to land at Albany. At high speed, estimated at 800 to 1,000 mph, it swung around to a position dead ahead about 8 to 10 miles away. There it turned orange and seemed to block the airliner’s path. It disappeared briefly, then reappeared as a stationary orange light ahead of them to the west. The crew contacted Griffiss AFB in Rome, New York. Controllers had them flash their lights on and off to identify the aircraft, then reported seeing both the airliner and the orange object to the south. The airliner was told to keep following the object west, and it skipped its scheduled Syracuse landing after nearly 30 minutes of pursuit. The promised jet interceptors never appeared. The object finally sped away to the northwest (or north) toward Oswego, New York. [Full Report]
Source: The UFO Evidence (NICAP), Sections V and IX; McDonald list; NICAP website; “Meet the Millers” interview, WBEN-TV Buffalo, April 16, 1956 (BBU)

Source Status: Ryan and Neff described the Air Force-ordered chase on Buffalo television eight days later. In the later CAB and CAA inquiries, Ryan and American Airlines denied any deviation from normal flight and pointed to the flight log. NICAP argued that the log had been adjusted to hide the chase.

Date: April 9, 1956
Location: Mooi River, Natal Province, South Africa
Time: 7:00 a.m.
Summary: Early in the morning, Elizabeth Klarer walked to a hill where she said she had seen a UFO before. She found the craft on the ground with the same spaceman she had seen previously standing in front of it. She described him as 6 feet 4 inches tall, with long white hair, in a silvery-white one-piece suit that covered even his feet. He greeted her warmly, seemed surprised that she wasn’t afraid, and told her he came from Venus. She said she was taken aboard, where a darker-skinned man sat at the controls, and was flown to a huge mother ship. There she saw many people, was shown pictures of the beings’ home planet, and was given water and fruit; the crew told her they were vegetarians. She described the craft’s interior as simple and clean, with rows of push-buttons instead of instruments and a soothing hum from the floor. She said she spent “a whole day and evening” in space.
Source: Cynthia Hind in Fate; Edgar Sievers; Flying Saucer Review, Vol. 56, No. 2

Source Status: Contactee account from a single witness, with no independent corroboration. Klarer’s story grew considerably over later decades, culminating in her 1980 book and her claim to have had a child with the being, and it is widely regarded as unverified. Her claims of Venusian origin follow the pattern of 1950s contactee narratives.

Date: April 13, 1956
Location: McKinney, Texas
Time: 9:15 p.m. (CST)
Summary: At Charles Anderson’s house, Weather Bureau observer Capt. Roy F. Hall, U.S. Army (Ret.), saw two fast red lights pass low over the rooftops to the south and vanish in the west within about 2 seconds. A second, independent observer, Tully B. Lucas Jr., about half a mile away, saw objects pass directly overhead but described them as three pale blue lights. Hall used the two reports to triangulate a height of about 150 feet and estimated a speed of about 1,800 mph.
Source: Brad Sparks; CUFOS; Project Blue Book files; NICAP 1956 UFO Chronology (BBU)

Source Status: NICAP’s own notes question Hall’s triangulation. They suggest a more likely speed of about 700 mph, and they raise a meteor as a possible explanation. This is the third McKinney-area report in ten days.

Date: April 16, 1956
Location: Route 1, Henderson, North Carolina
Time: 5:00 a.m.
Summary: Just before dawn, two FBI agents, one named Richards, were driving on Route 1 when a large, top-shaped object passed over their car for a few seconds. It was as wide as the road and made no sound.
Source: Jacques Vallée, Passport to Magonia, case 381 (BBU)

Date: April 28, 1956
Location: Old Bridge, New Jersey
Time: 8:30 p.m.
Summary: A Lockheed/Curtiss-Wright technical representative, who was also a scientific consultant to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and his wife watched a bright white “star” in the east. For more than 10 seconds it grew brighter at high altitude, then dimmed to a dull red. It moved from east to west at about 3 degrees per second, dimmed again after about 30 seconds of travel, then accelerated to enormous speed and wobbled as it disappeared.
Source: J. Allen Hynek, The Hynek UFO Report, pp. 91-92 (BBU)

Date: April 19, 1957 (see Source Status)
Location: Pacific Ocean, east of Japan (31°15′ N, 143°30′ E), south of Yokohama
Time: 11:52 a.m.
Summary: The five-man crew of the Japanese fishing boat Kitsukawara Maru saw two silver, saucer-shaped metal objects plunge into the sea nearby. The water where they entered immediately boiled and churned violently. The crew searched for wreckage and found nothing. The location is over one of the deepest parts of the Pacific, more than 10,000 meters deep.
Source: Jacques Vallée, Anatomy of a Phenomenon (1965), p. 136
Source Status: Vallée dates this event to April 19, 1957. It has long been filed with April 1956, and it belongs to the April 1957 archive.

Date: April 5, 1955 (see Source Status)
Location: Almy Pond, Newport, Rhode Island
Time: 12:30 to 12:35 p.m. (EST)
Summary: Mrs. Genevieve Mathison, a physicist at the U.S. Navy Underwater Ordnance Test Station, and her children watched from the front door of their home as a circular silver object with no trail or sound descended from about 45 degrees in the north toward the horizon. It made a sharp turn and disappeared by whirling into the haze. [Full Report]
Source: 4602d AISS UFO files, National Archives; Jan Aldrich, Project 1947 NavCat (BBU)

Source Status: Jan Aldrich’s catalogue, built from the 4602d AISS files, dates this sighting April 5, 1955. It has long been filed with April 1956, and it belongs to the April 1955 archive.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

An Airliner Ordered to Chase, and a Month of Credentialed Witnesses

April 1956 centers on the Ryan-Neff airliner chase over New York State. An American Airlines crew saw a brilliant light swing across their path at an estimated 800 to 1,000 mph and turn orange ahead of them. Griffiss AFB reported seeing the orange object as well, and the crew said the Air Force then asked them to follow it, with passengers aboard. Ryan and Neff described the chase on Buffalo television eight days later. In the official inquiries they denied any deviation from normal flight. That contradiction is part of what makes the case important.

The rest of the month’s witnesses are unusually credentialed. They include telescope observers at McKinney, led by a retired Army captain, a Joint Chiefs scientific consultant at Old Bridge, and two FBI agents on Route 1 at Henderson. Vallée’s catalog adds a landing near McKinney and a finned, red-domed disc over Elbeuf, France, and Birmingham’s silver winged figure adds to the archive’s cryptid thread. At the far end of the reliability scale is Elizabeth Klarer’s claimed trip to a Venusian mother ship. Two cases long filed here belong to other years. Vallée himself dates the Kitsukawara Maru sea entry to April 1957, and the primary Air Force file places the Almy Pond, Newport disc in April 1955.