A short New Zealand camping observation entered Project Blue Book with the word unidentified on its US Air Force summary card. The accompanying questionnaire is more useful than that label alone: it records brightness, colour changes, drawings and the witness’s unwillingness to estimate distance or speed. It also preserves a day-of-month discrepancy that later summaries can easily hide. This is a May 1963 New Plymouth case, rather than an independently measured demonstration of unusual flight performance.
What the surviving folder contains
The US National Archives file, New Plymouth, New Zealand, May 1963, contains nine scanned frames. The first is an official Project 10073 record card. The other eight are copied questionnaire pages, bearing printed appendix pagination 245–252, with handwritten answers and sketches. They are not eight separate witness statements. UKPX has reviewed all nine scans, including the original form images where automatic text recognition was unreliable.
The respondent described being outdoors camping, hearing an animal on a hillside and looking up to notice a bright moving object. The card describes one object, seen for about four minutes, initially to the west and disappearing towards the south. Its account includes periods of apparent stillness, sudden movement, flashes and changing brightness. It records no sound associated with the object. The preceding animal noise should not be converted into an engine noise.
The date is less settled than the usual headline
The official card gives 18 May 1963, 10.30 p.m. local time, with 1030 GMT. The handwritten first questionnaire page appears to give 19 May, also at 10.30 p.m. The questionnaire’s completion date is 21 June 1963, a different date again. The file does not contain an explanation of the apparent one-day difference.
UKPX retains May 1963 in the title and 1963 in the incident-year metadata. It attributes the exact day when discussing each document. The completion date is not another encounter, and the discrepancy does not justify creating two cases. Checking an aircraft movement or a particular astronomical position would require resolving the correct night first; this article does not pretend that such a check has been completed.
Colour, outlines and the drawings
On the second questionnaire page, the respondent marked a few stars and dull moonlight, and compared the brightness to a car headlight several yards away. That is a brightness comparison, not a claim that the object itself was several yards away. The answer about looking through something names a handkerchief. The file does not establish a calibrated optical arrangement or measurement through that material.
The following page records white, red and blue colours and fuzzy or blurred edges. A drawing uses arrows to depict movement. A separate path sketch includes a turn labelled 270 degrees, while the answer about disappearance describes a change to dark blue before the object was lost. These are the observer’s reconstructed impressions; the arrows do not constitute a timed trajectory.
A fuzzy outline gives a weaker basis for identifying a physical shape than a sharply resolved image. Colour changes alone do not establish a propulsion system or a measured change in velocity. No spectrum was obtained. UKPX assigns the flashes tag because flashing or pulsation is explicitly reported, but adds no occupants, landing, radar or underwater-object classification. None is supported by these nine frames.
A large size estimate without a known distance
The questionnaire includes an estimated real size of 60 feet and an apparent-size comparison to a basketball held at arm’s length. It also asks directly whether the respondent can estimate speed and distance. Both answers are no. The numeric size estimate therefore cannot safely be promoted into a measured 60-foot vehicle. Apparent size, assumed distance and physical dimensions must be distinguished.
The direction page gives west at first and south at disappearance, but leaves numerical bearing and elevation fields blank. The next page marks a route on the questionnaire’s printed sky diagrams. These drawings help establish what the person meant to report; they do not supply survey control, range or an independently observed path. The weather answers describe clear sky, a slight breeze and warm, dry conditions, and say nobody else was present. These are recorded witness answers, not a separate meteorological station report.
What unidentified means here
The official card categorises the report as civilian, ground visual, with no photographs, and writes unidentified in its comments. It contains no radar measurement or supporting photograph. The folder reviewed does not include a field investigator’s detailed explanation, an interview transcript testing the answers, or a documented comparison with particular aircraft, balloons or astronomical objects. The existence of a US administrative record confirms that the report was filed; it does not independently verify the movement described.
UKPX therefore uses insufficient evidence for its own outcome. The historical US unidentified entry is preserved rather than rewritten, but it is not treated as proof of an unconventional craft. Nor is a specific ordinary explanation invented to close the case. The useful result of reading the underlying record is a clear list of observations claimed, answers missing and inconsistencies that remain unresolved.
Location, privacy and source trail
The public record redacts the witness’s name and portions of the address. UKPX does not attempt to restore them from later retellings. The map uses an approximate New Plymouth city reference, rounded from OSM node 60024508 at -39.058, 174.0806, to -39.06, 174.08. It is not an exact campsite, private residence, hilltop or target position. No present-day visitor venue is asserted.
The lead image is the actual US Air Force summary card, not a photograph of the reported object. Its documentary status is the reason for showing it. A separate New Zealand case with contemporary civilian and official material is Canterbury in November 1954, where a balloon explanation appears in the surviving file. Its conclusion is not transferred to this case merely because both reports reached Project Blue Book.