Phoenix Lights 1997: what 10,000 witnesses saw over Arizona

8:00 p.m. — The formation enters Arizona airspace

On March 13, 1997, at 7:55 p.m., the first reports arrived from Henderson, Nevada — a man sees a V-shaped formation of 6 lights moving southeast. At 8:00 p.m., it is reported above Prescott, Arizona, at 1,530 meters above sea level. At 8:15 p.m., it is above Phoenix. At 8:30 p.m., above Tucson. She will have crossed the state — 400 kilometers — in less than two hours.

Characteristics consistently reported by hundreds of independent witnesses:

The training is filmed by several people including Tim Ley, a former executive in the Defense Administration, who films it from his home in Prescott. Its recording shows 5 white lights arranged in a V moving silently above homes at low altitude.

Governor Symington—first mocking, then confessing

Fife Symington, Republican governor of Arizona, received hundreds of calls from frantic residents in the days that followed. On June 23, 1997, he organized a press conference — and brought in his chief of staff disguised as an alien to ridicule the witnesses. The audience laughs, the matter seems closed.

“I saw a kilometer-wide mass flying slowly and silently over Squaw Peak. It was from another civilization, I have no doubt about that. »

— Fife Symington, former governor of Arizona, CNN, 2007

In 2007, Symington broke his silence in an interview with CNN: he had personally observed the object on March 13, 1997 and had organized the mocking conference to avoid public panic. He specifies that he contacted the military chain of command and never received a satisfactory explanation.

What radar and the US Air Force said

Luke Air Force Base (F-16) is in operation that night. Neither Luke nor the FAA reports any unusual radar contacts in published records. The US Air Force said in a statement that the lights observed at 10:00 p.m. were flares dropped by the 104th Fighter Squadron during an exercise above the Barry Goldwater Range, 80 km southwest of Phoenix.

Central problem with this explanation:

• The first observations (8:00–8:30 p.m.) precede the 10:00 p.m. flares by two hours.
• The flares fall vertically — the lights observed at 8:00–8:30 p.m. were moving horizontally at low altitude.
• Hundreds of witnesses describe two separate events : a compact formation at 8 p.m., then stationary lights at 10 p.m. (the latter corresponding to the flares).

Unsuspicious witnesses

Among the thousands of witnesses, several military and scientific profiles:

• Dr. Lynne Kitei, a cardiologist in Phoenix, photographed the lights from his home and documented the event for several years (book The Phoenix Lights, 2000).
• Bill Greiner, a tanker truck driver, watches the formation next to an F-16 from Luke AFB that appears to be conducting reconnaissance — without intervention.
• National Guard Reservist unidentified person who told Lynne Kitei that he had seen the object from an official position and had been ordered not to report anything.
• Mike Krzyston, private pilot, reported the formation to the Prescott control tower which detected nothing on the secondary surveillance radar.

The lack of radar detection remains unexplained. An object 1 to 2 km wide at an altitude of 300 meters should produce a significant radar echo on civil and military radars in the area, unless materials with a very weak radar signature are used — technology at the limit of what is possible for a civil or military device known in 1997.

What remains without a satisfactory explanation

In 2026, 29 years after the event, the formation observed between 8:00 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. remains officially unidentified. None of the conventional hypotheses meets all of the documented observations:

Le James E. McDonald Institute and several independent researchers have documented that the two events (8 p.m. formation and 10 p.m. lights) were deliberately merged in official releases, allowing the flares to "broadly" explain the night of March 13 — without specifically addressing the 8:00 p.m. formation.