The county's case files, worked one by one

Item 3 — file-level case work from the official index and the case summaries — MIXED at file strength, stated per case

St. Each is worked at the strength actually reached, and the strength is stated with it. 13 October 1948, South Bend (Sign era). Twelve days after the celebrated Gorman case at Fargo, two office workers at a window of the Studebaker Corporation watched, at 11:45 a.m. CST on a clear, cloudless day, a silvery flat disc speed silently through the sky at about 1,500 feet — a little smaller than a DC-3 in appearance, moving about three times as fast, on a straight southeasterly heading from the northwest, for eight to ten seconds, with no visible means of propulsion, wings or rudders. Both witnesses held important positions in Studebaker's engineering department and were described by company management in terms the NICAP account quotes approvingly; neither had any idea what they saw, but both were certain it was neither balloon nor aircraft. The Sparks comprehensive catalog of Blue Book unknowns carries the same date and city in one line — "Oct. 13, 1948. South Bend, Indiana. Brooke and Thompson. Debris? (McDonald list; Saunders/FUFOR Index)" — the names and a one-word query that sit unresolved against the NICAP narrative, and both print: the narrative at NICAP's strength, the catalog line at the index's. No evaluation for this case was reached in the index material read, and none is invented. 27 April 1950, the TWA Flight 117 case — correction printed. At 8:25 p.m., TWA's Flight 117, a DC-3 westbound for Chicago at 2,000 feet, was paced by a bright red to orange-red disc — Capt. Robert Adickes in the left seat, Capt. Robert F. Manning as first officer; the object overtook the airliner, held off its starboard side at about half a mile, and when Adickes turned and called the South Bend radio range dove to about 1,500 feet and raced north past South Bend at an estimated 400 miles per hour; passengers, including two Boeing engineers, confirmed the sighting, and the pilots estimated the object at fifty feet or more across. Donald Keyhoe investigated it for TRUE magazine and NICAP's aircraft-sighting directory carries it — under Goshen, Indiana, in Elkhart County, some twenty-five miles east of South Bend, with Sparks' own parenthetical "(or Goshen?)" preserving the seat's uncertainty. The county tie is therefore proximity only: the encounter happened over Elkhart County ground and ended with the object departing past South Bend. Any telling that seats Flight 117 in St. Joseph County is corrected here: it is this county's most famous near-case, and it is not this county's case. 8 May 1952, Mishawaka — Insufficient Data. The project's 1952 index, in the digitized Master Index text, carries the one-line entry "Mishawaka, Indiana — INSUFFICIENT DATA" among the early-May sightings, and a first-hand read of the Master Index in a sister build of this program confirmed the date as 8 May 1952; a rival date of 8 March 1952, assembled elsewhere from search snippets, is disproven by that read and is not carried. Nothing further — no object, no witness, no narrative — was reached for this case, which is precisely what its evaluation says: the project had a report from Mishawaka and not enough in it to judge. 23 July 1952, South Bend, Case 1578 — UNIDENTIFIED, the county's one official Unknown. At 11:35 p.m., in the greatest flap month of the whole era, USAF pilot Capt. H. W. Kloth watched two bright blue-white objects fly together over South Bend; after about nine minutes the rear object veered off. The case stands in the Blue Book unknowns lists — Berliner's compilation and the NICAP casebook agree on date, hour, witness and course — and it is the only St. Joseph County case the Air Force closed as unidentified. 31 July / 2 August 1952, South Bend — the newspaper sky-watch (press item, not a case). The APRO Bulletin's compilation of the 1952 flap (15 September 1952) records, under 31 July: "South Bend, Indiana: The South Bend Tribune appealed for public help in a two-hour saucer watch." No object description, witness or evaluation attaches to the item in the record reached; it is a newspaper organizing its readers to watch the sky in the week of the Washington flap, and it prints as press history, not as a sighting. (The 2 August date under which this item is sometimes carried was not corroborated in the record reached; the APRO compilation dates the appeal 31 July.) January 1957, South Bend — Insufficient Data. The county's fourth and last Master Index entry is a single index line: a South Bend report filed under January 1957 and evaluated Insufficient Data. A published case-by-case review of the Blue Book files for January–June 1957 (the SUNlite review) carries it in one line — "1957, South Bend, IN, Insufficient data, Agreed. Report made 9 years later" — the last clause recording that the report reached the project some nine years after whatever it described. No narrative was reached. The town-level finding closes the article, as it closes the leg: no Blue Book case is seated in New Carlisle or Olive Township; the county's file is a South Bend and Mishawaka file, and this town's share of it is zero cases.

Sources:

1. NICAP, "Final Word" (Loedding account) — the 13 October 1948 South Bend / Studebaker sighting, 11:45 a.m., two engineering-department witnesses, 8–10 seconds, c. 1,500 feet.
2. Sparks, Brad, Comprehensive Catalog of Project Blue Book UFO Unknowns — entry for 13 October 1948, South Bend ("Brooke and Thompson. Debris?").
3. NICAP aircraft-sighting directory (AVCAT) and Keyhoe, "The Adickes Case" — TWA Flight 117, 27 April 1950, 8:25 p.m., seated at Goshen, Indiana; Adickes and Manning; object departed north past South Bend.
4. Project Blue Book Master Index, 1952 (digitized index text, archive.org) — "Mishawaka, Indiana — INSUFFICIENT DATA," early May 1952; date of 8 May 1952 confirmed by a sister build's first-hand Master Index read.
5. NICAP casebook / Berliner unknowns list via the 1952 unexplained-cases summaries — 23 July 1952, South Bend, 11:35 p.m., Capt. H. W. Kloth, two blue-white objects, c. 9 minutes (Case 1578).
6. APRO Bulletin, 15 September 1952 — "July 31, South Bend, Indiana: The South Bend Tribune appealed for public help in a two-hour saucer watch."
7. SUNlite Project Blue Book case review, January–June 1957 — "South Bend, IN — Insufficient data — Report made 9 years later."