Sighting record / 1955
October 4, 1955. A Soviet passenger train rolls through the Transcaucasus, about an hour and a half out of Baku. Aboard is Senator Richard Russell, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Near dusk, he looks out of the window. A disc is rising from the ground south of the tracks. It climbs slowly, its outer surface revolving. Then it races north. Russell rushes to fetch his aide and his interpreter. A minute later, a second disc does exactly the same. All three see it. Their account went to the Air Force, the CIA and the FBI. It stayed classified for decades.
In the autumn of 1955, Senator Richard B. Russell Jr. of Georgia toured the Soviet Union. He chaired the Senate Armed Services Committee. With him were his military aide, Lt. Col. E. U. Hathaway, and an interpreter, Reuben Efron. Russell had specifically asked to travel by train rather than fly. On October 4, the party was crossing the Azerbaijan SSR, on the line between Baku and Tbilisi.