The 663rd AC&W Squadron Sighting at Lake City, Tennessee

In 1955 the 663rd AC&W Squadron kept watch from Lake City Air Force Station, a radar site on Cross Mountain outside Lake City, Tennessee. Its mission was specific. Watch the airspace over the Oak Ridge nuclear plant, about 20 miles to the south. Send interceptors after anything that entered it.

Sunday, November 20, 1955. About 5:20 p.m. Close to sunset.

The Operations Officer, Capt. Edward G. Denkler, and five men of the squadron saw two objects in the western sky. They were "two oblong, bright orange, semi-transparent objects." The pair "flew at terrific speed and erratically, toward and away from each other."

Some of the men watched for 4 minutes. Others for 15. One later reading of the file stretches it to 20. Lt. Martin L. Anderson did not think the objects were near any clouds. Then, in Denkler's words, they went "sinking below the horizon."

At about 5:38 p.m. more reports came in. At least seven witnesses, including the five airmen, described elliptical, apparently metallic objects heading west. Speed estimates ran "from hovering to 900 mph." One estimate put their length at 100 to 200 feet. Four more people reportedly saw objects at Oak Ridge.

The squadron's direction center scrambled two F-86D interceptors. One document in the file carries the blunt title "SCRAMBLED TWO F-86-D'S AFTER OBJECTS." No intercept was completed.

The 4602d Air Intelligence Service Squadron took up the case by telephone and mailed out report forms. According to NICAP and Brad Sparks, the forms never came back. The AISS commander judged the objects probably Venus. Yet one document in the file is headed "NO CAUSE CAN BE DETERMINED FOR SIGHTING." Project Blue Book's final verdict was Unknown. The case is BBU 3862 on the Hynek and Berliner list of unknowns.

The debate that followed turned on the sky itself. Sparks, a researcher who usually argues for the unexplained, worked through the astronomy. Venus and the star Antares sat low, about 12 to 24 degrees to the left of the sun. The sun set at about 5:25 p.m., and Antares at about 5:50 p.m. But Venus should not have set until about 6:30 to 6:40 p.m., and a planet vanishing an hour early does not fit, unless clouds hid it.

Sparks leaned instead toward atmospheric distortion of stars or planets low on the horizon in twilight. That, he argued, is what the darting looks like. He found the Venus answer "doubtful," but called the case "poorly investigated" and "not worth much effort." Skeptic Tim Printy, reviewing it in 2018, still lists it as unidentified.

The record disagrees on start times, on durations, even on which side of the sun the objects stood. Nobody followed up the discrepancies. What survives is a thin file of a record card, a teletype and witness statements, and two jets sent after a target they never reached. The case remains one of the Unknowns.