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Aliens & the Unexplained · One Official Unknown, and a Town With a Single Press Report
The national frame: 1947, and the Air Force file system every local case is checked against
1947–1969 · THE FRAME, STATED ONCE
Every case in this section is measured against one file system, and it is stated here once, from the National Archives' published record. On June 24, 1947, the private pilot Kenneth Arnold saw nine objects over Mount Rainier…
Before the saucers: the 1896–97 airship wave, tested over this ground
NOVEMBER 1896 – APRIL 1897 · THE AIRSHIP WAVE OVER INDIANA
Fifty years before the saucers, the same kind of wave crossed the same country, and this article tests it over Walkerton's ground. The mystery-airship wave ran from mid-November 1896 — a winged ship drawn in the San Francisco…
Case: the Walkerton housewives, July 1947 — the town's one saucer-era report, and it is press, not file
JULY 1947 · SEAT: WALKERTON ITSELF
Walkerton's own share of the flying-saucer era opens — and, in the official file, closes — in the first wave, nine days after Kenneth Arnold. The carrier is the history built on Alfred Loedding, the Wright Field engineer who…
Case: the disc over the Studebaker works, October 13, 1948
OCTOBER 13, 1948 · SEAT: SOUTH BEND
The county's second case belongs to its industrial skyline. On Wednesday, October 13, 1948 — twelve days after the Gorman dogfight over Fargo made the national wires — two office workers of the Studebaker Corporation in South…
Case: TWA Flight 117 and the red disc, April 27, 1950 — seated at Goshen, over the county line
APRIL 27, 1950 · SEAT: GOSHEN, ELKHART COUNTY
The airliner case is the best-witnessed report in this section, and it is not this county's. On the evening of April 27, 1950, TWA's Flight 117, a DC-3 westbound for Chicago with Captain Robert Adickes in the left seat and…
Case: the neighboring-city index case, Mishawaka, 1952 — one case, two dates, printed unmerged
1952 · SEAT: MISHAWAKA · DISPOSITION: INSUFFICIENT DATA
The smallest case in this section is a single line in the Air Force's own index, and it carries the date conflict this build was warned about. In the Project Blue Book Master Index for 1952 — the Air Force's year-by-year list of…
Case: Captain Kloth's two objects, July 23, 1952 — the county's one official Unknown
JULY 23, 1952 · SEAT: SOUTH BEND · CASE 1578 · UNIDENTIFIED
One case in this county's file was never explained, and it belongs to the county seat. On the night of Wednesday, July 23, 1952 — in the middle of the great 1952 wave, four days after the first Washington National Airport radar…
Case: the newspaper sky-watch, high summer 1952 — a watch the Tribune organized, and no case at the end of it
JULY 31 – AUGUST 2, 1952 · SEAT: SOUTH BEND · NO CASE FILE
The last 1952 case in this section is a case a newspaper made on purpose. In the last days of July 1952, with the Washington radar flap on every front page in America, the South Bend Tribune put its own city on watch. The…
Case: the next index year opened — South Bend, January 1957
JANUARY 1957 · SEAT: SOUTH BEND · DISPOSITION: INSUFFICIENT DATA
The county's file does not end with the 1952 wave; it ends, so far as this build's pull reached, with one more line five years later. In the Air Force Master Index for 1957, the section headed "January 1957 Sightings" opens with…
The Blue Book ledger for St. Joseph County, compiled whole — and Walkerton's share, stated exactly
1947–1969 · THE COUNTY LEDGER
Here the county's whole official file stands in one place, every entry the official index record produced for St. Joseph County, the explained and the unexplainable together, each with its disposition as the record gives it:
The October 1973 wave, measured: Indiana's center lay in the east-central counties, and this ground's share was none
OCTOBER 1973 · THE GREAT WAVE, TWENTY-SIX YEARS ON
By 1973 there was no Blue Book; the Air Force had been out of the business for four years, and the great wave of that October was worked by the successor record — the press, the police blotters, and the civilian organizations'…
The modern database era, worked as a database: NUFORC's record for Walkerton, Indiana
1974–2026 · THE DATABASE ERA, KEPT SEPARATE FROM THE FILE ERA
The National UFO Reporting Center is a different instrument from the Air Force file, and this article reads it as one. NUFORC was founded in 1974 by Robert J. Gribble as a telephone hotline and is now an online databank of…
The drone era as its own period: winter 2024–25, tested for this ground
NOVEMBER 2024 – JANUARY 2025 · A THIRD PERIOD, NOT MERGED INTO THE UFO RECORD
In the winter of 2024–25 the American sky filled with "drones," and the episode is tested here as its own period, the way the record insists on being read. The wave began over New Jersey in mid-November 2024 — Picatinny Arsenal…
Investigators and organizations: the local record the record supports
1960–2014 · WHO ACTUALLY WORKED THIS SKY
Organized investigation came to Indiana early, but it was never headquartered here, and this article prints the local record at exactly the size it reaches. The state's first organization of record was NICAP's Indiana…
Closing findings: what this record can and cannot support
FINDINGS · LEG 32
The findings of this section are few, and they are findings about a record, which is all the dispelling discipline ever promised. First: the Air Force file system of 1947–1969 holds four entries for St. Joseph County — the 1948…