The Phoenix Lights
On the evening of 13 March 1997, thousands of people across Arizona watched lights move through the night sky. Many described a vast V shaped formation that seemed to blot out the stars. The military later said the lights were flares dropped during training. The state governor first joked about it, then years later said he had seen a craft he could not explain.
The Phoenix Lights case
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"It was bigger than anything that I have ever seen. It remains a great mystery. I do not know why people would ridicule it.
"Governor Fife Symington · 2007
The flares explanation
In July 1997 the military attributed the second group of lights to illumination flares dropped by Maryland Air National Guard A 10 aircraft over a training range southwest of the city. The delay in that explanation, and the size people described, kept the case alive long after the official account was given.
Sceptics note the flares would hang and drift behind a ridge, which can explain the line of lights that hovered and then vanished.
Witnesses, including a former Air Force pilot, insist the earlier V was a single solid object far larger than any aircraft they knew.