Case · C-110
Woomera 1954: a radar echo at 3,600 miles per hour during a test flight
Woomera missile range (Long Range Weapons Establishment), South Australia · Australia · May 5, 1954
In flight Mixed witness types Radar
Unexplained
- What happened
- On the afternoon of May 5, 1954, during a test with a Canberra bomber over the Woomera range, a radar operator reported an unidentified target that came in from the north, described a curve above the station and left toward the east: timing it over 15,000 yards in 10 seconds, he estimated its speed at about 3,600 miles per hour and its altitude at over 60,000 feet. A technician of a contractor firm, about 300 yards away, saw through binoculars a dark gray, translucent circular object that stopped above the Canberra's route. The two statements indicate different times, about 4:00 p.m. for the radar operator's and about 4:45 p.m. for the technician's, but the superintendent judged them consistent. The two statements, forwarded on May 20, 1954 by the range superintendent, are in a case file of the National Archives of Australia (D174, SA 5281) studied by Keith Basterfield.
- Official investigation
- Long Range Weapons Establishment (Woomera range); the case appears in the confidential 1954 report by the physicist Harry Turner for the Department of Air
Sources
- Keith Basterfield, “Listing of reports from Woomera, South Australia” (Project 1947, with references to the NAA case files D174 SA 5281 and D250 56/483) (analysis)
- International Business Times, “RAAF UFO Files Reveal Object Racing 3,600mph Over Nuclear Test Range…” (March 5, 2026; popular article with details that do not appear in the original statements) (press)
Open in the interactive archive The whole section: Map of UAP and USO cases
UAPgrade's entries are compiled with artificial intelligence (three verifiers with opposing roles) and checked against the sources listed above: how we work. Have a document that changes this entry? Bring it to the Investigations Unit.