NUFORC Sighting 117314

Occurred: 1955-03-01 17:00 Local - Approximate
Reported: 2015-02-14 16:26 Pacific
Duration: ~10 minutes
No of observers: 2

Location: Santa Rosa, CA, USA

Shape: Disk

Large 200' plus disk shaped object observed over Santa Rosa in 1955. News Paper account missing.

Early in 1955, my father and I witnessed a large, disk-shaped UFO on a southerly course near twilight. We were walking to what I think was a spring festival at (then) Lewis school located near the intersection of (then) Chanate Rd and Lewis Rd (now Lomitas Ave and Lewis Rd) in Santa Rosa, California. The craft was large, probably greater than 200 feet in diameter, and traveling at between 800 and 1000 feet. It was light colored and had no visible projections, ports, or drive structures on it. It was absolutely quiet, passing over our shoulders and headed for San Francisco at a slow rate of speed. The craft had no visible form of propulsion but seemed very steady on it's course.

We observed the craft for probably 10 minutes until it passed out of sight on its southerly course over the city.

I was 10 years old and my father was 55 years old. This sighting may have occurred on a Friday evening as I recall a reasonably large newspaper article devoted to the sightings of this object in the Press Democrat on what most likely was a Sunday Paper. The sightings noted in the article were from people located along a flight path that would take it over Novato, Calif., and on to San Francisco.

As a 10 year old, I was especially interested in science. I subsequently worked briefly at NASA, FRC -Edwards AFB during college and became an engineer in various Mechanical and Electronic fields. My Father was a Minnesota farm boy who spent a large part of his life in Southern California. While largely self educated, he was a stable and alert individual, not taken to flights of fantasy.

On a return to Santa Rosa during college, I engaged with the Principal of Lewis school asking for verification of the date/time of the festival but the records had been moved by then and were not available. Subsequently, on 3 occasions, I reviewed the microfilm of the Press Democrat papers for the year 1955 but was unable to find the article (Front page, bottom, center). There were a number of missing papers from the microfilm record so I am unable to verify the account.

Posted 2015-02-20