1961: April UFO & Alien Sightings

Date: April 1 1961
Location: Shenandoah, PA
Time: 2000 Duration: few minutes
Summary: I am not sure of the year, between 1960 and 1963, the date was April 1st, time about 8 PM. The moon was full or close to being full and was in the north west sky. It was a clear night. Myself and two friends were sitting on our porch just talking the way pre-teens do.I think we were discussing basball. One of us, and I do not remember who, it could have been me I am not sure, yelled out, What are they? And pointed to the moon. Three small bright dots were flying east in an upside down “V” formation. They came from behind the moon and traveled at a slow speed eastward when the one on the bottom right of the upside down V broke formation and flew back and disappeared behind the moon. We watched the other two fly east and out of sight. I remember saying that we should tell someone, probably our parents, what we saw. But we decided against it because the date was April 1st and we thought and knew that if we told anyone they would think it was just an April fools joke. Remember back in the early 60s if you said you saw a UFO, then called flying saucers, people thought you were nuts and we also had our young age going against us. To give some perspective of how this looked to us, see the moon about the size of a quarter and the lights about the size of a small pea. I testify that what I said here is true and that what we saw was not in our atmosphere but had to be in space because of the one light disappearing behind the moon.
Source: NUFORC

Date: April 9, 1961
Location: Kingsville, Texas
Time:
Summary: Round red UFO descended, hovered, sped away.
Source: NICAP UFOE, XII

Date: April 11, 1961 BBU
Location: Cape Canaveral, Florida
Time: 9:57 a.m. local time
Summary: An object was picked up on ground radar at speeds from from 150 knots to 600 knots. The object orbited 6 or 7 times along an azimuth of 126 degrees and between 10 and 55 miles from the Cape. The length of the observation was 30 minutes. The UFO was picked up prior to launch of test number 1352, a Polaris Missile. (39 documents found)
Source: Dan Wilson, McDonald list

Date: April 12 1961
Location: Loxley Road, Stratford On Avon, Warwickshire, England
Time: 1200 Duration: 10 minutes
Summary: As a 7 year old boy, I remember walking from my home down Dale Avenue to town along the Loxley Road. It was a beautiful day with a clear blue sky. As I walking I looked up and noticed a bullet shaped object high in the sky. It was red / orange in color, similar to a hot metal ingot, so brighter and more orange in the center, and darker and more red on the edges. I was walking west, and the object was moving perpendicular to me, so from North to South across the road. In my child mind I assumed that I was looking Yuri Gagarin’s Vostok spacecraft as he was completing his orbit of the earth. Many years later I recalled this event and with my adult and more knowledgeable mind realized this could not be Gagarin because of the flight path and size and shape of the object. I would guess that the object was at least several thousand feet up in the sky, and with that estimation it was perhaps 50 feet long.
Source: NUFORC

Date: April 14, 1961 BBU
Location: Far East, NW of Mariana Islands [1834N 14257E]
Time: 2:36 p.m. local time
Summary: Four objects the size of a pinhead were picked up on air intercept radar. The radar blips were small and well defined.The length of the observation was approximately 10-15 minutes.
Source: McDonald list

Date: April 1961
Location: Pescara, Italy
Time:
Summary: Bruno Ghibaudi, a scientific newspaper journalist, took several photographs of strange flying devices on the beaches of Pescara along the Adriatic sea in April 1961. He also claims he had encountered extraterrestrial beings. See the larger version of the picture.
Source:

Date: April 15 1961
Location: Altus, OK
Time: 2100 Duration: approx 20 min
Summary: A large glowing circle shape. It came from our left from up in the sky and positioned itself in front of us. It was probably a quarter mile from us still in the sky at about a 45 degree angle. It hovered there (I can’t give exact length of time, as we were all taken by what we were seeing ) then a smaller object came out of it and hovered beside the larger object. You could see sky between them. The smaller object then took off to the right and took a path to ground out of our sight. We were still focused on the larger object when the smaller one came back from the same path it disappeared and hovered there beside the larger one and then went inside it. By that time we had seen enough. WE had been parked in a car, I was the driver, with my lights still off, I turned the car around, turned my lights on, and took off away from the object. One of my friends in the back seat yelled ” it coming ” I glanced back and so it was behind us. The next thing that happened was all lights, headlights, dash lights,etc went out. The car was still going. I was driving in the dark on a country road, I managed to feel the edge of the road and come to a stop. When the car stopped the lights came back on and the object was gone. No of observers: 4
Source:

Date: April 18, 1961: Eagle River Close Encounter

Date: April 20, 1961 BBU
Location: Hanna City AFS, Illinois
Time: 6:20 p.m. CST.
Summary: An object at an estimated altitude of 97,000 feet was picked up on a FPS-6A radar of the 791 Radar Squadron (SAGE) at a bearing of 96 degrees. The object disappeared after 1 hour and 4 minutes at 10,000 feet at a 95 degrees bearing. The object had been on a perpendicular descent with a 10 NM variation.
Source: McDonald

Date: April 24, 1961 BBU7359
Location: 200 miles SW of San Francisco, Calif.
Time: 3:34 a.m. (PST).
Summary: AEW&C Sq aircraft commander Capt. H. J. Savoy and navigator 1st Lt. M. W. Rand, on USAF RC-121D radar patrol plane at 11,000 ft saw reddish-white round object or light, similar to satellite or aircraft, angular size of pinhead at arm’s length, moving W to E, tracked through sextant from 29°55′ elevation 140° azimuth (SE) disappearing at the horizon at 50° (or 60° text barely legible) azimuth. No sound, no trail, weather clear, check for Echo satellite negative.
Source: Berliner; Jan Aldrich-NICAP