Loring AFB, the second night
The next night a similar craft returned to Loring, hovered over the weapons area with helicopter-like movement, and witnesses described a cigar-shaped object over the flightline.
1975 CE · 46.95, -67.89 · status: official
The account
One service member said the object was chased to the north end of the runway and found hovering a few feet off the ground. It was tracked on radar leaving toward New Brunswick, and an OSI teletype called the intruder an 'unknown entity'.
The sceptical view
The base records and later witness accounts do not fully agree on dates and details.
The researched reading
The second night adds the most dramatic description, but it rests largely on recollections recorded years later. A helicopter-like intruder remains the core; the silent “football” is the part that is hardest to check.
| Explanation | Weight | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Something known, misidentified | 28% | The first sightings that night were of running lights at about 3,000 feet that descended over the runway, which fits a helicopter; night lights on a low aircraft can merge into an apparent solid body. |
| Perception, memory or mind | 22% | The most striking description, a silent “stretched-out football” four car-lengths long hovering five feet up, comes from a B-52 crew member interviewed years later; long-delayed recall under a famous case’s influence tends to sharpen and enlarge details. |
| Secret human technology | 20% | The OPREP’s “clear intent” language and a craft that flew without lights fit a deliberate, skilled probe of the base by some unacknowledged human operator. |
| Genuinely anomalous | 17% | A silent hovering object close to the ground, seen by a B-52 crew, would not fit a helicopter; the share is limited because that account was recorded late and does not match all the contemporary messages. |
| A known natural phenomenon | 5% | Radar artefacts in the cold autumn air could have produced some of the tracks. |
| A poorly understood natural phenomenon | 5% | A reddish-orange glow hovering near the ground has been compared with poorly understood luminous phenomena, though nothing was measured. |
| A hoax or fabrication | 3% | No sign of invention; the dates and details in later accounts differ, which suggests memory drift rather than fabrication. |
Official position: Military messages recorded a second intrusion and an “unknown entity”; no identification was ever made.