The Corning Police "Aluminum Cigar"

Corning sits in Tehama County's Sacramento Valley, an "olive grove community" in the AP's account. Before dawn on Tuesday, July 4, 1967, three men were inside Jay Munger's all-night bowling alley near Interstate 5. Munger, the 46-year-old owner. Jim Overton, 31, an on-duty officer of the Corning Police Department. And Frank Rakes, 23, on duty for the Orland Police Department and a former Corning patrolman.

Munger saw something in the air over the freeway, about two blocks south. All three men agreed it was about a quarter of a mile away, at 300 to 500 feet. It was shaped like a big cigar and aluminium-coloured. "Around the center of this object was a band, either paint or a different kind of metal," Overton said. The band was neutral gray.

"It had a huge, white light on the top," Overton said. "Down at the bottom it had a smaller, not so bright light." Rakes called it "the brightest light I've ever seen." The lights were a constant white, like floodlights rather than spotlights. "There was no sound coming from it at all," Rakes said.

For three to four minutes it hung motionless over the freeway. Then it went. "It suddenly began to move with the most terrific burst of speed I've ever seen," Overton said. No gradual build. It shot south, faster than a jet.

The men rushed inside and drew rough sketches of what they had seen. Munger's drawing was printed in the local paper. The Corning police logged the sighting as complaint #29, 5:10 a.m., filed as "Suspicious". "I was kind of skeptical about these flying saucers, but you couldn't convince me otherwise now." "IT WAS NO AIRPLANE."

The AP carried the story nationally. On August 4, 1967, Time opened its essay "A Fresh Look at Flying Saucers" with Corning, describing a large, metallic, cigar-shaped object and the shaken men who watched it. The magazine treated UFOs as a genuine scientific puzzle.

On January 14, 1970, a letter signed only "Murph" went from Redding, California, to Dr. J. Allen Hynek. The writer had interviewed Officer Rakes and enclosed Munger's drawing. Murph wrote that Rakes rejected early Fourth of July fireworks and a Vandenberg ICBM because its bearing and movement differed, and he noted that the object left "no afterglow". As far as Rakes knew, it was not on the Red Bluff radar. Rakes's hand gesture suggested a level departure, but Murph admitted he had not asked whether it ascended or how large it appeared.

A scanned document in the Project 1947 archive carries a file name pointing to NICAP, which suggests the case reached NICAP's files. No Project Blue Book record or official conclusion has been found.

The accounts do not fully agree. The police log reads: "SHIP WAS ROUND AND HAD TWO LIGHTS, ONE ON THE TOP, AND ONE ON THE BOTTOM AT THE FRONT OF THE SHIP." The AP and Time say cigar. The AP puts the men in a bowling alley. Time calls it an all-night restaurant.

No hoax claim has surfaced. Beyond what Murph set aside, no ordinary explanation has been offered. The case is absent from the standard catalogues, yet it rests on three named witnesses, two of them police officers on duty, and a log entry written that same morning. Weeks later, on July 28, 1967, a state forestry worker in a fire lookout near Coarsegold reported an "oval blue-white light" with a dark band around the middle.