Flying Object Report, Canada, November 13, 1953 — Department of War File
This document is a Flying Objects Report prepared in accordance with Air Force Regulation 200-2, which established guidance for reporting unidentified flying objects. This report records a November 13, 1953, incident in British Columbia, Canada, in which three U.S. Air Force servicemembers…
Incident Overview
On November 13, 1953, in British Columbia, Canada, the Department of War preserved a documentary record that was declassified and published on October 23, 2026 as part of the seventh tranche of the Department of War’s Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE).
The date of November 13, 1953 is the date of the report, not the sighting. The form gives the time of the sighting as the date-time group 080315Z, which is 03:15 Greenwich time on November 8. If the airmen kept Pacific Standard Time, that is about 7:15 in the evening of November 7 at Prince George.
What the government released
This document is a Flying Objects Report prepared in accordance with Air Force Regulation 200-2, which established guidance for reporting unidentified flying objects. This report records a November 13, 1953, incident in British Columbia, Canada, in which three U.S. Air Force servicemembers reported observing a round, blinking white light with a blue hue, initially described as resembling a falling star. The report describes the object’s motion as descending to an estimated altitude of 150 feet, remaining stationary for approximately 30 seconds, ascending vertically to an estimated altitude of 300 feet, remaining stationary for approximately 10 seconds, and then departing the observers’ field of view in a westerly direction while gaining altitude.
All descriptive and estimative language contained in this report reflects the reporter’s subjective interpretation at the time of the event. Such characterizations should not be interpreted as a conclusive indication of the presence or absence of any intrinsic object features or performance characteristics.
What the form records
The report came from the 918th Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron at Prince George, British Columbia, a U.S. Air Force radar unit stationed in Canada. Its first paragraph says it was “submitted in accordance with AFR 200-2, 26 August 1953”, the regulation then only eleven weeks old. AFR 200-2 told units how to report unidentified flying objects and set out a fixed list of numbered questions so that every report reaching the analysts would answer the same things in the same order. Its addressees included Headquarters USAF intelligence, Air Defense Command and the Air Technical Intelligence Center at Wright-Patterson. A receiving stamp shows through on the second page, dated November 18, 1953.
The answers are short. The object was round, about the size of “a basketball held at arm’s length”, white with a blue tint, and blinking rhythmically for about one second at a time. There was one, with no features or trail. The witnesses heard a humming sound for about two seconds. What first caught their attention was that it “appeared to be a falling star.” They put it at about 15 degrees above the horizon when first seen and about 135 degrees when it vanished, meaning it had passed overhead. No bearing was recorded. They said it came within about 150 feet of the ground, hung there for about 30 seconds, rose straight up about 300 feet, paused for about 10 seconds and then climbed away to the west until it was lost through “distance and altitude”. The whole sighting took about four minutes. They watched with the naked eye from the ground at Prince George Airport.
The form names two observers, both from the 918th and both marked “reliable”: Technical Sergeant Arvel Lee Daniel, the provost sergeant, and Staff Sergeant John Junior Bricker, an air policeman. They were guarding a B-29 at the airport. The government summary above says three servicemembers, but the observer section lists only these two and no civilians. The weather entry reads “clear and dark; no moon. Stars were clearly visible.” Ceiling, visibility and cloud cover are marked unknown. Physical evidence, interception and known air traffic are all marked “none”. The preparing officer, Captain James F. Mitchell, gave his comment in two words: “Cause unknown.”
A lone light against a black sky gives no clue to its distance, so the heights of 150 and 300 feet are guesses. The “basketball at arm’s length” is better practice because it describes an angle. Taken literally, though, it covers about twenty degrees of sky, roughly forty times the width of the full Moon, which shows how hard such comparisons are to make at night. The obvious ordinary candidates are a meteor for the first moment, which is what the airmen themselves first thought, and a light aircraft with a flashing light for the rest. The form gives no way to test either.
Status of the case
This is an archival record, and it should be read as one. It records what a particular office believed, or was willing to commit to paper, on the day it was written — not a present-day finding. The mid-century investigations worked from witness testimony, sparse instrumentation, and the strategic anxieties of the early Cold War, and the great majority of the sightings they catalogued were eventually attributed to aircraft, balloons, astronomical objects, and misidentification. The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office has made no modern determination about the incidents described here, and the record’s release is not an endorsement of the conclusions inside it. Its value is as evidence of how the United States government investigated the question, and of what it chose to keep.
Mitchell’s “Cause unknown” means a squadron with no means to trace local flights found no explanation, not that none existed. The report is most useful as an early example of the August 1953 format filled out in the field, gaps and all.