Senior Airman Brittany Y. Auld · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Minot and the Night on the Missile Field

added01 September 2026

On the night of 24 October 1968 several security patrols on the missile field of this North Dakota base reported a glowing object hanging over the silos. Ground radar held a return, and the crew of a B-52 on approach saw it both on their own radar and with their eyes. The episode entered the Project Blue Book files with an unusually full set of documents: statements from sixteen men, radar film and duty reports. The official explanation is plasma and the star Sirius. It does not account for the agreement between ground and airborne radar, and the case remains one of the most cited military files in the archive.

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48.41583, -101.35806

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