Sighting record / 1966
Labor Day, 1966. Night in northern Minnesota. Near Grand Marais, in Cook County, a local woman looked up and reported a strange object in the sky. She was not alone. At Finland Air Force Station, airmen watched a "white-red-green" light that moved but never left its place. Their radar found a target too. Two F-89 interceptors were scrambled from Duluth. As the jets approached, the object was said to move up and away to the west. The Air Force called it a star. The Condon Committee blamed the radar on the atmosphere. And the woman who started the story? Her name never made it into the record.
Finland Air Force Station sat 2.8 miles north of the small town of Finland, in Lake County, Minnesota. It was home to the 756th Radar Squadron, part of the SAGE air defence network, running AN/FPS-26A and AN/FPS-90 radars. About 50 miles to the northeast lay Grand Marais, the county seat of Cook County.