Fort Smith Mass Light Sighting, Arkansas (1966)

For years, the Fort Smith sightings carried the wrong date. The Encyclopedia of Arkansas placed them in August 1965, right after the Viney Grove sighting, and newspapers repeated it. The documents tell another story. The Project Blue Book file, released through John Greenewald's Black Vault and reported by 5NEWS in January 2015, puts the event on the night of August 15 into August 16, 1966. That was a year of sightings across the United States, the same year as the Michigan "swamp gas" reports.

Some reports began on the evening of August 15. The heart of it came later. Between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. on August 16, lights moved across a clear Arkansas sky. No haze. No clouds. The temperature sat between 70 and 75 degrees.

Witnesses described them as circular in shape and pea size against the sky. Red, green and white in color. Occasionally blinking and twinkling. Silent. They came one to four at a time, traveling in a straight line. Some of the lights were traveling in a southerly direction. One was a blinking white light that changed to a steady white light.

Word spread like wildfire. People gathered in at least two locations, among them the Coca-Cola bottling plant near the Fort Smith Municipal Airport. Hundreds of city and area personnel were in the crowds. Sgt. J. W. Gilbreth of the Fort Smith Police Department is named in the federal file as an observer. The Air Force would later record that as many as 1,500 people saw the lights.

Randy Feemster was 11 years old. Decades later he told the Southwest Times Record what he remembered. A V-shaped object, very high in the sky, illuminated enough for him to clearly see the outline. Feemster went on to become a fighter pilot.

The Fort Smith police, local FAA towers and Little Rock Air Force Base all became involved. On September 7, 1966, Little Rock Air Force Base sent a memo about the August sightings. The case went to Project Blue Book at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

Investigators checked civilian and military air traffic. They looked at cloud-seeding aircraft as a possible source. The FAA towers reported objects resembling aircraft, but no radar paints of any unusual objects. No physical evidence was found. The file holds tape recordings, photographs and newspaper clippings. Citing the sheer number of witnesses, the Air Force did not attempt to formally interview more than two people.

Blue Book leaned toward combinations of aircraft and astronomical sources for much of what had been reported. Red, green and white lights match aircraft navigation lights. Twinkling points in the hours before dawn can be bright stars or planets.

Feemster reached a different answer. He searched for military flight records for August 1966 and found none on file. His conclusion was that it was likely a top-secret military training exercise.

The case resurfaced in 2015 with the Black Vault release. It surfaced again in May 2026, when KATV set Fort Smith 1966 beside the Pentagon's latest UAP file release. What remains is the file. Clear skies, silent lights, and as many as 1,500 people looking up.