What happened
On the evening of 11 January 1966 the police radio in Wanaque, a Ramapo Mountains town around the Newark water supply reservoir, was flooded with about 30 calls from residents and motorists reporting a flying saucer over the reservoir. Policemen, a reservoir guard and Mayor Harry Wolfe drove out and, according to The New York Times, agreed the object was very white, very bright and much bigger than a star, with some calling it a big white disc that hovered, soared and dived over the countryside. It returned the following night. Nine months later, on 10 October 1966, reservoir police sergeant Benjamin Thompson told the Associated Press a car-sized, glowing saucer came straight at his patrol car, stopped, backed up and zigzagged; when he switched on his red dome light it shot away over the water. Other officers that night described a bright light hovering and then going dark. Wanaque became one of the East Coast's best-known UFO hotspots of the 1960s.
The official explanation
The Air Force told the Associated Press the January lights were probably the planets Venus and Jupiter. Its own file shows the report was never formally investigated: a duty officer took a call from a New York newspaper desk, and staff matched the times to Saturn low in the west-southwest early in the evening and Jupiter later that night. Bright planets seen near the horizon through winter air can appear to move and change colour, and once publicity began, skeptics argue, many callers were watching the same ordinary objects.
The anomalous case
The witnesses included uniformed officers from two police forces, a reservoir guard and the town's mayor, and the January sighting began with about 30 independent calls before any press coverage. The descriptions of hovering, soaring and diving do not fit a planet's slow, steady drift, and in October Sergeant Thompson described an object approaching his car, stopping in mid-air, reversing and fleeing the moment he flashed his light. The Air Force never interviewed the January witnesses, matching times to planets from a desk in Ohio. Its October file notes police claims that helicopters and jets appeared after one sighting, while Stewart AFB said none of its aircraft were in the area, which leaves open who, if anyone, was flying over the reservoir.
The strongest argument that this was something genuinely unknown or classified, with each claim attributed to the person who made it.
Documents
- Project Blue Book file: Wayne, New Jersey, January 1966 (includes Wanaque memos) official, archive.org
Sources
- Project Blue Book case file, Wayne, New Jersey, 1966 (Wanaque memos) U.S. Air Force via Internet Archive
- Bright Flying Disk Reported in Jersey (The New York Times, 14 January 1966, transcription) Patrick Gross, UFOs at close sight
- UFOs Reported Seen in New Jersey, S. Dakota (Los Angeles Times, 12 October 1966, transcription) Patrick Gross, UFOs at close sight
- 'Saucer' Reported in Northern Jersey (AP, October 1966, transcription) Patrick Gross, UFOs at close sight
Witness reports elsewhere
These archives can't be republished here, so we link to them instead.