DOW-UAP-D178, Unresolved UAP Report, Catalina Island, 1953
The file contains a report of a round, purplish-white object above Catalina Island on November 16, 1953. The report describes the object as remaining stationary, then moving northwest toward Los Angeles over approximately 10 minutes on a level flight path. The report characterizes the observer as fairly reliable due to his association with military jet aircraft activities while stationed at Long Beach Air Force Base, Los Angeles, CA. The report refers to an assessment by local astronomers that Jupiter provided a possible explanation.
The summary above is sourced from the released file metadata as published to war.gov. The analysis sections below are original to this tracker.
Text of the document
Machine-extracted from the PDF war.gov published (its text layer or OCR), so expect errors, especially in names, numbers and handwriting; the PDF is the authoritative copy. Lines that did not extract as readable text are left out. Showing about 232 words from pages 1, 3, 4, 5 of 5.
PAGE 1
1. DA TE • TIME GROUP 2, LOCATION 4. NUMBER OF OBJECTS >VeJ ent of Object docs no~ co'ncide with w.i.n:ls aloft. er 9, PHYS ICAL EVIDENCE
PAGE 3
TO JEDEN/COMDR ADC ENT AFB COLORADO SPRINGS COLO \
JEDWP/COMDR ATIC WRI GHT PATTERSON AFB OHIO ,,,----
JEPQW/COMDR CONTINENTAL AIR COMMAND MITCHEL AFB NY ....
(A) ROUND SAUCER SHAPE
PAGE 4 PAGE TWOXBJW 19
CI> OBJECT APPERED TO BE STATIONERY IN FIRST SIGHTING . OVER CATALINA
AND MOVED NORTH-WEST TOWARD LOS ANGELES WHERE IT DISAPPERED FROM VIEW
CA) CASUAL GLANCE AT SKY
CB) 45 DEGREES ANGLE OF ELEVATION,; ODEGREES AZIMUTH
CC) 4S DEGREE ANGLE Of ELEVATION AZIMUTH UNKNOWN
CD> OBJECT FLIGHT PATH APPERED TO BE STRAIGHT AND LEVEL •
CA) GROUND VISUAL
CB) NIGHT CLEAR
TENTH ( 111 TH> AND GAFFEY SAN PERDO CALIFORNIA
CA) NEGATIVE PAGE 5 PAGE THREE BWDKW IS
HILL LOMIPA CALIF AIR FORCE CLERK UNKNOWN
(~STRONOMERS AT GRIFF-US ~ARK OBSERV~TORY AVER AT OBJECTS SUCH AS
THESE ARE POSSIBLY PLANETS WHICH APPEAR MORE CLEARLY AFTER RAIN
WITNESS APPEARED FAIRLY RELIABLE DUE TO ASSOCIATION WITH JET
AIRCRAFT ACTIVITY WHILE STATIONED AT LONG BEACH AIR FORCE BASE
ASTRONOMERS OBSERVATION MAY ACCOUNT fOR THE APPERANCE OF THE SUBJECT
DOWNGRADED AT S YEAR INTERVALS.
DECLASSIFIED AFTER 12 YEARS. •
DOD DIR 6200,10
Where this file fits in the PURSUE archive
This file is one of DoD's 282 files in the Trump PURSUE disclosure. Within the DoD agency block it ranks #172 of 282 by Anomalousness Index. Across the entire 478-file archive it ranks #296 of 478.
That places it in the lower-scoring band of the archive (296 of 478 by score), typical of investigative-record style files where the report is paper-based rather than instrumented.
Anomalousness Index: 56/100
Evidentiary weight that this encounter remains unexplained after conventional analysis. Not a probability of extraterrestrial origin - that number is not honestly computable from the released files and this tracker refuses to publish it.
🤖 AI-ASSISTED SCORING · methodology
The six rubric components break down for this file as follows. Each component has a weighted contribution to the final score; the per-component explanation below describes what this file's particular value on that component means in the rubric's framework.
No sensor, camera, or instrument backs this observation - it is testimony, relayed through the Department of War, and scored on the rubric's lowest sensor-quality tier for that reason. That doesn't bear on the witness's credibility (a separate axis); it reflects only that nothing beyond human perception recorded the event.
Reported by trained U.S. military personnel during an operational mission (11/16/1953) - a high witness-credibility tier, ranked in the rubric below astronaut, trained-aviator, and federal-agent testimony. This profile is shared across the AARO-submitted infrared-capture cluster that anchors the archive's densest scoring band, at 66.
On corroboration, this file from the Department of War - like every single-tier file in the PURSUE archive - is a single-witness or single-instrument capture per the released metadata. The rubric doesn't infer multi-witness confirmation the summaries don't actually establish; this score reflects the honest limit of what was released, not a judgment about the underlying event.
The released file contains no speed, acceleration, or vector data precise enough to score on the kinematic axis - and that's true archive-wide, not specific to this file. The rubric declines to infer kinematic anomaly from a witness's narrative estimate of how fast something moved; that itself says something about what PURSUE actually released: descriptive accounts, not flight-path telemetry.
Every file in the archive, including this one, scores this tier: a conventional explanation was considered in the released record but isn't treated as dispositive. That's a pattern in how war.gov's own summaries are written - they consistently hedge against strong conclusions either way - and the rubric takes that hedging at face value rather than resolving it for them.
This file was released as open by the Department of War after a formal review process concluded - not simply logged and left pending. That's a stronger disposition signal than 'unresolved, no review': a review actually happened, and remaining open is the Department of War's own published conclusion from it, not an absence of one.
Bottom line on the score: the Anomalousness Index of 56/100 reflects evidentiary weight that this specific file's encounter remains structurally unexplained by the rubric's six axes - it is not a claim that the underlying event involved anything non-conventional, and it is not comparable across rubrics that use different weights. For the full per-axis weights and the rubric JSON, see /methodology.
Related files in DoD
Other PURSUE files in the same category, ranked by Anomalousness Index.
DOW-UAP-PR024, Unresolved UAP Report, Middle East, 2023
DOW-UAP-PR072, "ADMINISTRATIVE REVISION: IIR 1777 J0032 22 Kazakhstan - UAP in the vicinit…
DOW-UAP-PR106, Unresolved UAP Report, Eastern United States, 2020
DOW-UAP-PR108, Unresolved UAP Report, Western United States, 2020
DOW-UAP-PR109, Unresolved UAP Report, Eastern United States, 2015
DOW-UAP-PR110, Unresolved UAP Report, Eastern United States, 2020
Verification
SHA-256:
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