Project Blue Book Case #10270. On the night of March 23, 1966, an electronics instructor was driving along a highway near Temple, Oklahoma, when he encountered a brightly illuminated object sitting on or hovering just above the road surface. The witness, whose professional background gave him strong technical observation skills, stopped his vehicle and observed the craft at close range before it departed.
The object was described as a large, structured craft with a flattened dome shape, illuminated from within by a bright light. The witness reported that the object appeared metallic and was significantly larger than an automobile. After a period of observation, the craft rose silently from the road surface and accelerated away at remarkable speed, leaving the witness shaken but certain of what he had seen.
Temple is a small community in Cotton County in southwestern Oklahoma, near the Texas border and the Wichita Mountains. The rural setting, with its empty highways and flat terrain, provided a clear view of the encounter. Fort Sill, the Army's artillery and missile training center, was approximately 30 miles to the northeast.
The Temple case was one of the most dramatic close encounters in the spring 1966 wave. The witness's technical background, the close-range observation, and the detailed description of a structured craft elevated it above routine sightings. J. Allen Hynek, Blue Book's scientific consultant, took particular interest in the case.
Blue Book classified the case as "Unknown" — one of the program's most compelling close encounter reports from the extraordinary spring of 1966.