The Lubbock Lights were an unusual formation of lights seen over the city of Lubbock, Texas in August and September 1951. The Lubbock Lights incident received national publicity in the United States as a UFO sighting, and was investigated by the U.S. Air Force. The Air Force ultimately concluded that the lights were “positively identified as a very commonplace and easily explainable natural phenomenon”. Edward J. Ruppelt wrote that the first sighting was reported by three professors from Texas Technological College (now Texas Tech University), located in Lubbock on August 25, 1951, at around 9 pm. According to Ruppelt, they were sitting in the backyard of one of the professor’s homes when they observed a total of 20-30 lights, as bright as stars but larger in size, flying overhead. Ruppelt wrote that the professors immediately ruled out meteors as a possible cause for the sightings, and as they discussed their sighting a second, similar, group of lights flew overhead. According to UFO author Jerome Clark, three women in Lubbock reported that they had observed “peculiar flashing lights” in the sky on the same night as the professors’ sightings, as well as Carl Hemminger, a professor of German at Texas Tech. Clark writes that on September 5, 1951, all three men, along with E. Richard Heineman, a mathematics professor, and one other professor from Texas Tech, were sitting in Robinson’s front yard when the lights flew overhead. According to one of the professors named Grayson Mead, the lights “appeared to be about the size of a dinner plate and they were greenish-blue, slightly fluorescent in color. They were smaller than the full moon at the horizon. There were about a dozen to fifteen of these lights… they were absolutely circular… it gave all of us… an extremely eerie feeling.” Mead said that the lights could not have been birds, but he also stated that they “went over so fast… that we wished we could have had a better look.” Clark wrote that the professors observed one formation of lights flying above a thin cloud at about 2,000 feet (610 m) which he says allowed them to calculate that the lights were traveling at over 600 miles per hour (970 km/h). On the evening of August 30, 1951, Carl Hart, Jr., a freshman at Texas Tech, observed a group of 18-20 white lights in a “v” formation flying overhead. Hart took a 35-mm Kodak camera and walked to the backyard of his parents’ home to see if the lights would return. Two more lights passed overhead, and Hart captured five photos before they disappeared. After an extensive analysis and investigation of the photos, Edward J. Ruppelt, the supervisor of the Air Force’s Project Blue Book, released a written statement to the press that “the [Hart] photos were never proven to be a hoax, but neither were they proven to be genuine.”
First Appearance UFO sighting/incident — Aug-Sep 1951
First Publisher ○
Appearance List Literature: Articles in the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal and Life magazine, The Report On Unidentified Flying Objects (1956). Also “The True Story of Flying Saucers” by Harry Harrison in Space Busters #2 (Oct 1952) [CB+].
Sample Read The Unsolved Mystery of the Lubbock Lights UFO Sightings [Web]
Description The Lubbock Lights were an unusual formation of lights seen over the city of Lubbock, Texas in August and September 1951. The Lubbock Lights incident received national publicity in the United States as a UFO sighting, and was investigated by the U.S. Air Force. The Air Force ultimately concluded that the lights were “positively identified as a very commonplace and easily explainable natural phenomenon”. Edward J. Ruppelt wrote that the first sighting was reported by three professors from Texas Technological College (now Texas Tech University), located in Lubbock on August 25, 1951, at around 9 pm. According to Ruppelt, they were sitting in the backyard of one of the professor’s homes when they observed a total of 20-30 lights, as bright as stars but larger in size, flying overhead. Ruppelt wrote that the professors immediately ruled out meteors as a possible cause for the sightings, and as they discussed their sighting a second, similar, group of lights flew overhead. According to UFO author Jerome Clark, three women in Lubbock reported that they had observed “peculiar flashing lights” in the sky on the same night as the professors’ sightings, as well as Carl Hemminger, a professor of German at Texas Tech. Clark writes that on September 5, 1951, all three men, along with E. Richard Heineman, a mathematics professor, and one other professor from Texas Tech, were sitting in Robinson’s front yard when the lights flew overhead. According to one of the professors named Grayson Mead, the lights “appeared to be about the size of a dinner plate and they were greenish-blue, slightly fluorescent in color. They were smaller than the full moon at the horizon. There were about a dozen to fifteen of these lights… they were absolutely circular… it gave all of us… an extremely eerie feeling.” Mead said that the lights could not have been birds, but he also stated that they “went over so fast… that we wished we could have had a better look.” Clark wrote that the professors observed one formation of lights flying above a thin cloud at about 2,000 feet (610 m) which he says allowed them to calculate that the lights were traveling at over 600 miles per hour (970 km/h). On the evening of August 30, 1951, Carl Hart, Jr., a freshman at Texas Tech, observed a group of 18-20 white lights in a “v” formation flying overhead. Hart took a 35-mm Kodak camera and walked to the backyard of his parents’ home to see if the lights would return. Two more lights passed overhead, and Hart captured five photos before they disappeared. After an extensive analysis and investigation of the photos, Edward J. Ruppelt, the supervisor of the Air Force’s Project Blue Book, released a written statement to the press that “the [Hart] photos were never proven to be a hoax, but neither were they proven to be genuine.”
