Savannah River Plant Discs over the 400 Area, Ellenton, South Carolina

Spring 1952. The Savannah River Plant was rising out of the South Carolina countryside near Ellenton. The Atomic Energy Commission owned it. DuPont ran it. Old Ellenton was being cleared to make room. In the plant's "400 Area" stood the heavy-water production complex, with its tall tanks, close to the river and its swamps.

Saturday night, 10 May 1952. About 10:45 p.m. Four DuPont employees saw four disc-shaped objects "approaching the four-hundred area from the south." They crossed over and disappeared to the north. They were yellow to gold. They made no sound.

At about 11:05 p.m., two more appeared, again heading south to north. At 11:10 p.m. a single object came in from the northeast. This one was different. It flew at an "altitude so low it had to rise to pass over some tall tanks in 400 area," then disappeared to the southwest. At 11:15 p.m. one more crossed from south to north.

The witnesses estimated the objects at about fifteen inches in diameter. They described them "weaving from left to (right) but seemed to hold general course." Most moved at a "high rate of speed at high altitude." Each pass lasted only a few seconds. By NICAP's count, eight objects crossed in about half an hour.

On 12 May the FBI's Savannah office sent an urgent teletype to Washington. J. Edgar Hoover then wrote a memo titled "Flying Disks Reportedly Seen in Vicinity of Savannah River Plant Atomic Energy Commission." It went to AFOSI, the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, at the Pentagon. Copies went to the Army's Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, the Director of Naval Intelligence and Capt. John A. Waters, the AEC's Director of Security, by special messenger. "All of the objects were allegedly traveling at a high rate of speed and at a high altitude, without any noise," it read. It also stated plainly: "No investigation is being conducted by this Bureau."

Project Blue Book filed the case as #1198. Its verdict was "Unidentified."

Bruce Maccabee, who contributed scans of the FBI documents to NICAP, noted that neither the FBI nor apparently the AEC followed it up. If the objects had looked like model aircraft over a vital installation, Maccabee argued, the FBI would have looked for whoever was flying them.

The Blue Book record card suggests ducks, but offers no proof. In 2023 the skeptic Tim Printy took the idea further in SUNlite. A 15-inch size fits birds. The plant sat among swamps and lakes where waterfowl gather. Weaving flight and a climb over an obstacle fit birds too, and plant lights reflecting off their bellies could explain the gold colour.

Four of the five passes Printy counted headed north, in the peak of spring migration. He proposed "possible birds," while admitting the information is not enough to be certain. The witnesses, though, described discs. They called them noiseless and fast. And no one knows how far away the objects really were.

The case never left the unknowns list. It appears in Don Berliner's Blue Book Unknowns list, in Brad Sparks's catalogue as case 576, and in Loren E. Gross's history of 1952, which links it to a December 1950 local newspaper asking whether UFO reports meant aerial "spies." George D. Fawcett counted it among visits to nuclear energy sites, and Robert Hastings cited it in UFOs and Nukes. It belongs to a cluster of 1952 reports around atomic installations, from Oak Ridge to Hanford. That August, the Savannah River Plant would report a strange light again.