Incident No. 154 — 2 August 1948, 1945 Hours, Columbus, Ohio
An attorney and his wife observed an object moving south over the center of Columbus at 1500-2000 ft altitude. During the ten to fifteen minutes the object remained in sight, it changed shape from that of a parallelogram to a circle and back again, direction of travel remained constant. Once it seemed to hesitate and a thin trail of smoke appeared from the rear. The smoke disappeared soon. The outline of the object was dark gray or black, but the center seemed to be transparent. Object was judged to be 20 to 30 feet in diameter.
AMC Opinion: There is no reason to believe other than that this object was a research balloon, of which there are many types, and that the "trail of smoke" appeared so from a momentary glimpse of trailing apparatus.