By Cherlyn Gardner Strong

On August 6th 1962, around 8:00pm, Davis-Monthan Air Force Base personnel began receiving reports of a “flying saucer”. Witnesses reported a brilliantly glowing light that descended over the Titan missile silo in Oracle, Ariz., near Tucson.

As two jets from Davis-Monthan approached to investigate, witnesses stated that the object “took off fast” and disappeared in seconds. The jets circled the area before heading back toward the base in Tucson.

When the coast was clear and the jets were gone, however, the object came back.

The incident would have been forgotten, if not the inclusion of the event in a bulletin released by the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO) in September of 1962. The incident later received a brief mention in a book by APRO founders, Jim and Coral Lorenzen.

Jim and Coral Lorenzen founded APRO, a UFO research organization, in 1952.

Tucson-based APRO placed emphasis on scientific field investigations, backed by a staff of consulting scientists who worked closely with the organization. The scientists included Dr. James E. McDonald of the University of Arizona and Dr. James Harder of the University of California, Berkeley.

Both men would later testify about UFOs before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science and Astronautics in 1968.

APRO investigated tens of thousands of cases and grew to thousands of members and many state chapters. In 1969, a large portion of APRO’s members elected to form a new group called MUFON.

APRO would continue to investigate UFO sightings until 1988.

As for the UFO sighting that occurred between August 6th and August 7th of 1962, the incident was never covered by the press. In 2007, a report by NICAP made mention of this incident, mentioning that details relating to this incident remain elusive.