The Jackson "Megaphone" Object: Pilot Thomas A. Rush and Blue Book Incident 233 (1949)

New Year's Day, 1949, was a Saturday. Four people were aboard a private Stinson in the air east of Jackson, Mississippi. At the controls was Thomas A. Rush, a former military pilot. With him were his wife and a second couple, the owners of the plane. Both Rush and Mrs. Rush were civilian pilots with plenty of experience with aircraft.

It was about 5:00 p.m. The Stinson was approaching North Jackson Airpark to land, at roughly 1,500 to 1,600 feet. Then something flew across their path.

It passed about 500 feet in front of the plane, at an estimated 200 miles per hour. It was dark blue or black, with no wings. At first it looked cigar-shaped, but Rush's fuller description and drawing showed something stranger. It tapered from a diameter of roughly ten feet at the front end to four feet at the trailing end. It was shaped like a megaphone, about 60 feet long.

Rush's first thought was a tow target, the kind dragged behind a plane for aerial gunnery. Yet Rush could see nothing towing it. The object made a turn of about 50 degrees to the southwest and shot away with a remarkable burst of speed. Air Force reports estimated 400 to 500 miles per hour. From first sight to last, the encounter lasted 10 to 12 seconds.

The report went up the chain. The 5th District Office of Special Investigations took statements and sent them, through the Inspector General's office at USAF headquarters, to the Commanding General of Air Materiel Command at Wright-Patterson. Rush wrote his own two-page letter to the same command.

The witnesses supplied a sketch of the object and maps of its flight path. Investigators gathered Jackson weather data and a report from a weather detachment, and airplane operations were contacted. The tow target idea was checked. So was a balloon. One page in the file is labelled "Definitely no balloon."

J. Allen Hynek reviewed the case for Project Grudge. His verdict: "Non-astronomical. Lack of evidence precludes explanation." It is Project Blue Book Incident 233, classified as Insufficient Data. A memo from the Chief of the Air Weather Service even recommended editing the "Guide to Investigation of Unidentified Aerial Objects" because of what this case found.

No one has ever alleged a hoax. Rush himself raised the tow target and set it aside, since nothing was pulling the object. A modern review of the Blue Book files, citing Tim Printy's newsletter SUNlite, suspected a balloon, then conceded that the description of the flight path was against the wind. That reviewer argued the case should be listed as Unidentified.

The Jackson object never became famous. There were no photographs, no radar, no film. Yet it holds a place on the serious lists. Brad Sparks includes it as Case 831 in his Blue Book Unknowns catalogue. NICAP keeps a case entry and an index of the 28 Blue Book pages. Historian Loren E. Gross recorded it in his chronicle of 1949, and in 2023 Jazz Shaw revisited it for The Debrief. Four experienced fliers. Ten or twelve seconds. A dark, wingless megaphone that turned southwest and outran them. The file still offers no answer.