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Luke Field, Arizona, USA, in 1945:

Case number:

ACUFO-945-00-00-LUKEFIELD-1

Summary:

The pioneering U.S ufologist Donald Keyhoe told in his 1950 book “The Flying Saucers Are Real” that he met with Major Jerry Boggs and other U.S. Air Forces men involved with the “flying saucers” topic at Wright Field, Ohio, USA, sometime in 1948. Keyhoe tells that he had asked Boggs about a case he heard about, where three fighter aircraft chased a saucer to a high altitude, in 1945, at Luke Field, with one of the pilots emptying his guns at it.

Boggs briefly mentioned another case in New Jersey, but declined to say anything more about any of the cases as he did not have the files at hand.

Ufologist Leonard Stringfield said in 1955 that he heard of an incident of pursuit and firing upon an UFO by U.S. military aircraft from Luke Field in 1945.

Despite this meager information, I show in this file that this may have been an incident in which a pilot was sent to intercept what people on the ground reported as a Japanese Fugo incendiary balloon; which may have been a balloon or even Venus.

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Sources:

[Ref. dke1:] DONALD KEYHOE:

This pioneering U.S. ufologist told in his 1950 book that he met with Major Jerry Boggs and other U.S. Air Forces men involved with the “flying saucers” topic at Wright Field, Ohio, USA, sometime in 1948. Keyhoe said that “Major Jerry Boggs”, in his twenties, was “a Project 'Saucer' Intelligence officer who served as liaison man between Wright Field and the Pentagon.” Keyhoe tells what they discussed, and it included:

[Ref. lsd1:] LEONARD STRINGFIELD:

After reporting about an incident in the USA in which U.S. military aircraft fired at a UFO, Leonard Stringfield noted:

[Ref. jah1:] JAN ALDRICH - "PROJECT 1947":

Aircraft information:

During WWII, Luke Field, U.S. Army Air Forces base, was essentially an operational training field. They used many different aircraft: Curtis P-40 “Warhawk”, Lockheed P-38 “Lightning”, TE-6 “Texan”, North American P-51 “Mustang”, a few a few P-47 “Thunderbolts”, etc.

Discussion:

At the end of World War II, the Japanese army built balloons fitted with incendiary bombs to set fire to the U.S. forests. They were called “Fu-Go” or “FuGo” or “Fugo” (photo below). The first launch was on November 3, 1944, and was followed, as Historical sources say, by about 9000 of them were built. The operation was a failure, the forests did not burn. A large number of the balloons that successfully reached North America failed to release their bomb loads when they arrived. By the summer of 1945, almost 300 fallen balloons had been found, strewn across 27 different states, including Arizona. The American Press did report on many of the earliest recoveries, but in January 1945, the government's Office of Censorship ordered a publicity blackout, so that the Japanese could not know that their program was failing, and keep on this useless operation.

On June 6, 1945, people from Phoenix, Arizona, and other places in Arizona, reported by telephone to the Press, police and weather bureau that they were seeing a “Japanese balloon”, some wanting to know whether it was a really a Japanese balloon or just a weather balloon from the local weather bureau. Some reports said that it was a round white speck “just about 25 feet up and north of the new moon.”

Newspapers reports such as in The Arizona Republic for June 7, 1945, indicated that Luke Field and Williams Field sent planes to check the object, and it was reported that there was no balloon where reported; while in the Phoenix Junior college's, the 5 inch refractor telescope allowed to identify the object as Venus.

Of course, this incident at Luke Field may or may not be the explanation of this case. The meager report is about a pilot firing at a UFO. Maybe a pilot fired at Venus, obviously without success, maybe a pilot fired at a real Japanese balloon or at a U.S. weather balloon. Maybe that pilot, thinking again at the incident after the “flying saucers” were in the news in 1947, decided to tell what he now interpreted as a “flying saucer” incident to Keyhoe and/or Stringfield - the two men knew each other. But nothing as far as I could determine confirms that this really occurred.

Evaluation:

Unidentified, possible balloon or Venus.

Sources references:

* = Source is available to me.
? = Source I am told about but could not get so far. Help needed.

• [dke1] * "The Flying Saucers Are Real", book by Major Donald E. Keyhoe, USMC ret., Gold Medal Books publishers, USA, page 148, 1950.
• [dke2] ? "Flying Saucers: Top Secret", book by Donald E. Keyhoe, G. P. Putnam's Sons publishers, USA, pp 105-106, 1960.
• [lsd1] * Ufology bulletin CRIFO Newsletter, by Leonard Stringfield, director of "Civilian Research, Interplanetary Flying Objects" (CRIFO), USA, Volume 11, No. 3, page 3, June 3, 1955.
• [jah1] * "Status of Hidden and Lost Reports in Major Donald E. Keyhoe and the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) files", Web page by Jan Aldrich, on his historical ufology Website , USA, as of 2024, at https://www.project1947.com/articles/deklost1.htm

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This page was last updated on July 5, 2024.