Project Blue Book Case #8549. On September 15, 1963, witnesses in Vandalia, Ohio — a community immediately north of Dayton — observed a luminous object in the sky. The remarkable aspect of this sighting was its location: Vandalia sits just 8 miles from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, where Project Blue Book itself was headquartered. The unknown was, quite literally, in Blue Book's backyard.
Wright-Patterson was the nerve center of Air Force research, development, and intelligence. The base housed the Foreign Technology Division (which oversaw Blue Book), the Air Force's aeronautical research laboratories, and the massive logistics and engineering operations of the Air Materiel Command. More types of aircraft — including foreign and experimental designs — were studied and flown at Wright-Patterson than at perhaps any other facility in the world.
Vandalia's proximity to this concentration of aerospace expertise meant that residents were extraordinarily familiar with aircraft. The Dayton area was, in a real sense, the most aviation-literate community in America. For Vandalia residents to report something they couldn't identify was equivalent to a wine sommelier saying they tasted something completely unfamiliar.
The irony of an unknown appearing within sight of Blue Book's own offices was not lost on the program's staff. The case was investigated with the knowledge that any misstep would be immediately apparent to colleagues who could look out their windows at the same sky.
No conventional explanation was found. The case was classified "Unknown" — perhaps Blue Book's most personally embarrassing case.