Ellsworth AFB, South Dakota: Radar tracks object, two F-84s pursue it
On the evening of August 5, 1953, a Ground Observer Corps observer in Black Hawk, South Dakota, reported a UFO; radar at Ellsworth AFB tracked a bright object, and two F-84s pursued it into the night.
Background
Around 8:00 p.m. Ground Observer Corps observer Phyllis Killian spotted a UFO in Black Hawk, and soon after radar at Ellsworth AFB near Rapid City tracked a “well-defined, solid, and bright” object. The base scrambled an F-84 whose pilot saw the UFO, and many witnesses saw the object accelerate and climb; the F-84 could get no closer than 3 miles and returned low on fuel, followed by the UFO; a second F-84 received strong radar returns of a target ahead and broke off the chase, and the object left the scope to the northeast. Reports then came from Brunswick of a fast-moving bright blue object that hovered near an air filter center and disappeared after midnight, and three more UFOs were seen at 10,000 feet for three hours. Edward J. Ruppelt investigated personally and called it “the best” in the USAF files, J. Allen Hynek found it had “too much of an Alice-in-Wonderland flavor for comfort,” and Donald Menzel attributed it to the star Capella. The official file is several hundred pages long. The account follows the entry in George M. Eberhart's chronology UFOs and Intelligence (CUFOS) and the sources cited there; it is not an independent determination by From Beyond Space.