U.S. Air Force photo/Senior Airman Julius Delos Reyes · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Edwards and the Night on Tape

added01 September 2026

On the night of 3 October 1965 controllers and aircrew at this California base and the range next to it spent several hours tracking unidentified objects that hovered, separated and closed again. The radio recordings survive and were later declassified — officers can be heard discussing the sighting in real time. Dozens of people saw the objects from the ground, base command among them. An aircraft was sent up and found nothing. Edwards is a test base where things that were not reported were being flown in those years, and that is the main explanation. It does not settle the central question: why the base's own staff could not identify what was happening.

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34.90556, -117.88361

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