The Mantell Incident involved the crash and death of 25-year-old Kentucky Air National Guard pilot, Captain Thomas F. The incident has evolved into a recognized and referenced pop culture phenomenon. The United States military maintains that what was recovered was a top-secret research balloon that had crashed, whereas many ufologists believe the wreckage was of a crashed alien craft. There are widely divergent views on what actually happened. The Roswell UFO Incident involved the recovery of materials near Roswell, New Mexico, in early July 1947 which have since become the subject of intense speculation and research. The next day Baird's boss announced that the story was a hoax. Bozeman's base looked for the UFO on the ground but found nothing. He took an evasive action and the disc appeared to split into two sections and lose altitude over the Tobacco Root Mountains of western Montana. Baird claimed that he was at 32,000 feet when he saw a flying disc. On July 7, 1947, Vernon Baird, a pilot of a commercial photographic plane, was mapping the region between Helena and Yellowstone Park. He described the objects as almost blindingly bright when they reflected the sun's rays their flight as "erratic" ("like the tail of a Chinese kite") and flying at "tremendous speed." Arnold's story was widely carried by the Associated Press and other news outlets. On June 24, 1947, Arnold said he saw nine unusual objects flying in a chain near Mount Rainier, Washington while he was searching for a missing military aircraft in his CallAir A-2. It is also one of the earliest reported instances of an alleged encounter with so-called "Men in black suits." It allegedly took place shortly after the sighting of the original flying saucers by Kenneth Arnold. The Maury Island incident is an early modern UFO encounter incident that happened on June 21, 1947.
Initially, the target of the aerial barrage was thought to be an attacking force from Japan, but Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, speaking at a press conference shortly afterward, called the incident a "false alarm." When documenting the incident in 1983, the US Office of Air Force History attributed the event to a case of "war nerves," likely triggered by a lost weather balloon, and exacerbated by stray flares and shell bursts from adjoining batteries. The "Battle of Los Angeles," also known as "The Great Los Angeles Air Raid," is the name given by contemporary sources to the fictional enemy attack, and subsequent anti-aircraft artillery barrage which took place from late February 24 to early February 25, 1942, over Los Angeles, California.
This is a list of alleged UFO sightings in the United States.