Somewhere in the Skies - Bite-Sized UFOs | UFO over Malstrom Air Force Base

Episode Date: February 7, 2025

Did a UFO hover over an atomic weapons storage area at Malmstrom in 1958, 9 years before the infamous incident involving the shutdown of nuclear missiles in their silos? Links to obtain Graeme Rendall's books can be found here: https://www.reivercountrybooks.com/ Book Ryan on CAMEO at: https://bit.ly/3kwz3DO Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/somewhereskies ByMeACoffee: http://www.buymeacoffee.com/UFxzyzHOaQ PayPal: [e-mail] Discord: https://discord.gg/NTkmuwyB4F Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/ryansprague.bsky.social Twitter: https://twitter.com/SomewhereSkies Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/somewhereskiespod/ Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/Sprague51/ Order Ryan’s new book: https://a.co/d/4KNQnM4 Order Ryan’s older book: https://amzn.to/3PmydYC Store: http://tee.pub/lic/ULZAy7IY12U Read Ryan’s articles at: https://medium.com/@ryan-sprague51 Opening Theme Song by Septembryo Copyright © 2025 Ryan Sprague. All rights reserved Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/somewhere-in-the-skies. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to bite-sized UFOs, a show where we break down lesser-known UFO cases in 20 minutes or less. And now here's your host, Graham Rendell. Welcome to Episode 12 of Bite-Sized UFOs. I'm Graham Rendell, author of UFOs Before Roswell and other books about pilot and aircrew sightings during the 1940s and 1950s. In this installment, let's look at a case from May 1958, one that's centered on Malmstros. Air Force Base. This location is better known for an event in 1967 which involved the apparent shutting down of at least 10 minute men ICBMs in their launch silos but this earlier incident also involved a UFO that hovered over weapons of mass

destruction. As today in the late 1950s two large airfields sat either side of Great Falls Montana. On the western side of the Missouri River was Great Falls Municipal Airport, whilst to the east was Malmstrom Air Force Base. The two locations were separated by a distance of about five miles. In 1954, Strategic Air Command took over Great Falls Air Force Base, and the 4 of 7th Strategic Fighter Wing moved in, its Republic F84s, providing escort for sack bombers. Supporting the fighters were the wing's KC97 Stratofreter tankers, one of which is shown here. Great Falls was renamed Malmstrom in 1955 after the vice commander of the 407th Colonel Einar Malmstrom was killed in a flying accident. The wing was deactivated in 1957 but the

tankers were retained to form part of the 4061 air refueling wing. In 1958 the 29th Fighter Interceptor Squadron was also based at Malmstrom and had traded in its venerable Lockheed F-94 starfires for Northrop F-89H Scorpion All-Weather Interceptors the previous year. These were armed with the first versions of the Hughes Falcon Air to Air Missile, as shown here fitted to the wing-tip pods. Across at Great Falls Municipal Airport in 1958, more scorpions could be found in the shape of the 186th Fighter Interceptor Squadron, Montana Air National Guard, with their earlier F-89C models.

Both airfields would be visited by a UFO sometime during the middle of May 1958. No project Blue Book file exists for this case. The details emerged via two Air Force personnel who worked at Malmstrom in May 1958 and who had heard colleagues and others discussing what had occurred over the airfield and across at Great Falls Municipal Airport one night in the middle of that month. A civilian UFO investigator questioned the men the next to the night. questioned the men the next morning and the information was passed onto the bay area subcommittee of NICAP, the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena. According to a memo drafted

by the Bay Area Subcommittee for NICAP's headquarters in Washington, D.C., sometime after midnight on that unknown day in May 1958, a guard standing outside the alert hangar at Malmstrom, which housed 6 F89H Scorpion jets, observed an UFO approaching from the north. The object hovered over the alert hanger and the adjacent atomic missile and bomb storage area at about 1,000 feet. The guard described it as a flying saucer, round and metallic. No estimate of its size was given. Apparently, the radar controllers at both Malmstrom and across at Great Falls Municipal Airport detected the UFO. The unknown object then proceeded to fly slowly down the length of the main runway at Malmstrom in a south-westly direction, before moving westwards across the town of Great Falls to the municipal airport, on the other side of the Missouri River,

where it was observed hovering over the 186 Fighter Intercept Squadron's parking ramp, before flying away. According to the men who were interviewed about the incident for NYCAP, a civilian investigator turned up at Malmstrom the next day and asked personnel whether they had seen anything strange the previous night. Two other guards had been inside the alert hangar at Malmstrom which housed the six jets from the 29th Fighter Interceptor Squadron. However, they were apparently oblivious to the presence of the UFO just outside. Other personnel who had been on duty across the base at the time of the infant may well have seen the UFO, but no one chose to come forward. and report the event officially. That did not stop Scuttlebutt from running rampant over the next few days.

The NICAP subcommittee memo also included a sketch map of the various facilities at Malmstrom at the time of the alleged UFO sighting. I have ringed the alert hangar and the associated atomic weapons storage area here. Although the sketch showed the runway as being orientated north to south, it was in fact northeast to south-west, as shown in this contemporary aerial photograph of the site. Did a UFO visit Malmstrom Air Force Base nine years before the now infamous events of 1967? Was a mysterious object paying particular attention to the interceptors based at both that airbase and the local Air National Guard facility located just a few miles away? Or was its focus the atomic weapons storage area at Malmstrom?

Had the entire story been based solely on Roosel that flew around the base. We may never know the answers to these questions. If you've liked hearing about this case from the 1950s, and what will learn more about sightings from the period, then I have written a series of books looking at pilot and acre encounters stretching from the late 1940s until the mid-1950s. All four of these books can be obtained via Amazon. And that's it for this 12th installment of bite-sized UFOs. Remember, UFOs can be based on little more than rumors or second-hand accounts. It's important to stress what is alleged, what is documented, and what can be proven, if anything.

Bight-sized UFOs is all about the facts. This has been Bight-Sized UFOs with your host, Graham Rendell. Be sure to rate and review wherever you get your podcasts. For a full video version of this episode, subscribe to the Bight-Sized UFOs YouTube channel. Thank you for listening.