August 25, 1951
Three professors from Texas Technological College (now Texas Tech University) are sitting in one of their backyards.
Around 9 pm, the three professors saw a total of 20 to 30 lights. They said the lights were as bright as stars but larger in size, and they were flying overhead.
They ruled out meteors as a possible cause of the lights, and while they were talking about what they saw, a second group of lights appeared, similar to the first.
The Witnesses
Three women in Lubbock and another professor named Carl Hemminger also separately report "peculiar flashing lights" on the same night.
August 30, 1951
Carl Hart Jr., a freshman at the college, sees a group of 18 to 20 lights flying overhead in a "V" formation. Hart takes his 35mm Kodak camera to his parents' backyard to see if the lights would reappear. Two lights emerge, and Hart manages to take five pictures before they disappear.
September 5, 1951
All three men from the first sighting, as well as two other professors, one named Grayson Mead, are in Professor Robinson's front yard. Again the lights fly overhead.
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[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.
Professor Grayson Mead // September 5, 1951
Professor Mead rules out the lights being birds, because they "went over so fast... that we wished we could have had a better look."
All the professors see one formation of lights flying above a thin cloud, which they estimate to be about 2,000 feet overhead. From this, they were able to calculate the lights were traveling more than 600 miles per hour.
