A pear-shaped ball of fire streaked across the sky over North Carolina in 1946. Multiple people saw the object, but none of them, including military personnel, could positively identify it.
Below is the original article about the event.
As a point of reference, the Roswell crash happened in the year following this incident (1947).
Ball of Fire Streaking Across Sky Compared with Previous Phenomenon
North Carolina – Observers who noted the great ball of fire streaking across the southern sky Friday evening at 7:25 o’clock were contrasting their observations yesterday with those made by others who saw a similar phenomenon in the southern skies over Wilmington about 15 years ago.
The white headed red ball was noticed by operators at the power plant of the Tide Water Power company, at the foot of Castle street.
One operator said:
It was 400 or 500 feet off the ground; and it streaked like a meteor from the southwest toward the northeast. I don’t see how it could have been a meteor, though, because it seemed to be traveling parallel with the ground instead of falling.
Mr. and Mrs. Theron Dunn, who were seated in their front yard, reported that the object was pear-shaped, and that it discharged three large balls of fire while in flight.
Mrs. Dunn exclaimed on seeing the phenomena: “Oh, look at that star!”
Her husband answered:
That’s no star; that’s a ball of fire!
While motoring towards Wilmington at about 7:30 o’clock Friday evening, and just as their car was passing Fort Bragg, Mr. and Mrs. Arthur H. Rush, of Winter Park, reported that they saw the “ball of fire.”
They were en route to Wilmington, returning from a motor vacation trip.
Rush, stationed at Camp Davis for some time prior to serving for two years in the European theater of war with the Ninth Army Air Corps, reported yesterday that he had seen nearly every kind of rocket fired during the war and that he had never before seen any thing like the “ball of fire.”
He described the object as having been “round at the front, tapering off to a point at the rear, from which a trail of sparks were seemingly emitted.”
Mr. and Mrs. Rush said:
The front was white and the tail red. It followed a seemingly direct course, and was not like a falling plane, although it did disappear below the trees, after traveling like a jet propelled rocket about 500 feet above the trees.
Capt. Robert C. Merritt, retired assistant United States district engineer, recalled having seen a similar ball of fire streak out of the southeast, hiss over southern Wilmington, and disappear over northeast Brunswick County.
Other observers of the 1931 phenomena remarked that one Wilmingtonian later contacted the observatory at Harvard University, which questioned his statement that the hissing sound like that of a sky rocket had been heard by the observers in Wilmington.
The 1931 “ball of fire” traveled about 1,000 feet above the earth and formed an arc, leaving behind a long brilliant tail, which remained in the heavens for some time after it had passed.
Source: The Wilmington morning star. (Wilmington, N.C.), 25 Aug. 1946.
