MINOT AFB

Opening

In the early hours of 24 October 1968, at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, home to B-52 bombers and 150 Minuteman missiles, airmen at several missile sites reported a large, glowing object over the fields. A B-52 returning from a training flight was asked to look for it.

Its radar picked up an object that closed to within a mile of the bomber and stayed with it, and a crew member photographed the radar screen. Half an hour later the pilots flew over a huge lit object sitting on or near the ground. Then the alarms went off at a missile launch site. Project Blue Book, in its last full year, put it down to a star and a plasma.

Timeline

2:15 a.mA two-man maintenance team at launch facility Oscar-6 reports a large glowing object to Staff Sergeant William Smith Jr. at the Oscar-1 launch control facility.

2:30 a.mSmith sees it himself. A maintenance team driving to November-7, Airmen Robert O'Connor and Lloyd Isley, report a luminous object too.

3:20 to 3:30 a.mObservers at three launch control facilities report two objects separating in opposite directions. The base radar approach control is told of an object 24 miles northwest.

3:52 a.mOn B-52H JAG 31, navigator Captain Patrick McCaslin sees a strong return about three miles off the right wing. It holds that distance as the bomber makes a 180-degree turn.

3:58 a.mThe return closes from three miles to one in a single sweep of the radar. The bomber loses its radio transmissions. Radar navigator Major Charles Richey photographs the scope, one frame per sweep.

About 4:02 a.mThe return disappears from the scope. Radio transmissions come back.

4:24 to 4:28 a.mSent round again, the pilots, Major James Partin and Captain Bradford Runyon, see a large lit object on or just above the ground about two miles ahead. The radio fails again as they pass over it.

4:49 a.mAfter the B-52 has landed, both the outer and inner alarms go off at launch facility Oscar-7. The responding team finds the personnel hatch cover open and the gate lock undone.

That afternoonThe base reports to Project Blue Book. Lieutenant Colonel Hector Quintanilla's office later explains the ground sightings as probably a star and the radar and air sightings as possibly a plasma.

Key figures

The ground witnesses were missile maintenance and security airmen spread across several launch sites, at least 14 of them. The B-52 crew was a crew of instructors with Major Partin, an evaluating pilot, in the left seat. Radar navigator Charles Richey took the scope photographs and navigator Patrick McCaslin worked the radar.

Thomas Tulien spent years interviewing the crew and ground personnel and published the original records, including the radar photographs, in his Minot study. Robert Hastings's book UFOs and Nukes placed the case among dozens of reports of unknown objects over US nuclear sites.

Physical and documentary trail

What survives: Blue Book's file on Minot holds statements from ground personnel, the B-52 crew's reports, a transcript of the radio exchanges and the radarscope photographs showing the return close to the bomber. That combination, independent ground observers, an aircraft's radar and sightings from the air, is what investigators call a radar-visual case, the strongest kind there is.

Still missing: any photograph of the object itself, and interviews the investigation never did. The Oscar-6 team that saw it first and the bomber's regular crew were never formally interviewed.

Things you might not know

• The scope was filmed one sweep at a time. A 35mm camera mounted over the radar screen took a frame on every three-second rotation, so the photos show the return moving around the bomber.
• The object was said to be bigger than the B-52. Runyon estimated about 200 feet long, 100 wide and 50 high. Partin compared it to a miniature sun on the ground.
• A general sent them back. The order to bring the bomber round and fly over the object came from the top, and the crew were told to brief only General Ralph Holland, the 810th Strategic Aerospace Division commander.
• The radio failed twice. Both times the bomber was closest to the object, and both times it came back afterwards.
• The ground witnesses said it switched its lights off. It would go dark, move, and light up again somewhere else.

Competing explanations

An unknown object over a nuclear base. Ground teams, base radar, an aircraft's radar and an aircrew all reported something at the same time and place, close to nuclear weapons, followed by an alarm at a launch site.

Blue Book's explanation. A bright star for the lights seen from the ground, and a plasma, a form of ball lightning, for the radar and the pilots' view. Critics point out that a star does not pace a bomber on radar or sit on the ground, and that ball lightning does not last that long.

Several ordinary things at once. A mix of stars, radar effects and tense teams on a nuclear base could have produced a chain of reports. This reading has to explain why the radar and visual sightings line up.

Later life of the case

Minot 1968 is one of the most studied cases among UFO reports near nuclear weapons, often cited alongside Malmstrom in 1967. That history has drawn renewed attention since the 2023 congressional hearings.

Finding

On one night, airmen at several missile sites, a base radar, a B-52's radar and its pilots all reported an unknown object over America's nuclear missiles, and the Air Force's own explanation does not fit what they described. This is one of the strongest military cases on record.

What still will not resolve: what the B-52's radar locked on to, and who or what opened the hatch at Oscar-7. The photographs of the scope show the return, but not what made it.