Michigan sightings at Dexter and Hillsdale draw the Air Force's "swamp gas" explanation
March 20, 1966 – March 21, 1966 · Dexter and Hillsdale, Michigan · Sighting · Original document
On 20 March 1966 near Dexter, Michigan, and on 21 March at Hillsdale College, where students in a women's dormitory watched for hours, witnesses reported glowing red, yellow and blue-green lights low over swampy ground, part of a flood of Michigan reports that month. Project Blue Book consultant J. Allen Hynek investigated with personnel from Selfridge Air Force Base. The Air Force statement, later printed in the House hearing record, said most observers saw only silent lights near the ground rather than an object, and that the lights in both places were probably marsh gas released by the spring thaw. At the House Armed Services hearing on 5 April, Chairman L. Mendel Rivers noted that Representative Ford had spoken out and said the sightings could not just be written off.
Era: Project Blue Book · Themes: Public sightings and waves, U.S. military investigations
Why it matters (4/5)
Formally investigated for Project Blue Book, drew national attention and fed directly into the April 1966 congressional hearing.
The other side
The Air Force statement itself says investigators had not had time to examine all the reports, that young men at Hillsdale had played pranks with flares, and that a widely published photograph was a time exposure of the Moon and Venus taken elsewhere on 17 March. Witness accounts of a solid object at Dexter were not examined here.
Sources
- Unidentified Flying Objects: hearing by the Committee on Armed Services, House of Representatives, 5 April 1966 (No. 55) (U.S. House of Representatives), primary