The Train from Baku

A train, an airfield, a searchlight

Four Americans were travelling by train from Baku to Tiflis, “at the specific request of Senator Russell who tried to use rail transportation whenever it was at all feasible”. The information report adds that the party had wanted to fly, and that INTOURIST in Baku told them there were no flights between the two cities; in Tiflis the INTOURIST people said there were several a day.

The train left Baku at 16:30 on 4 October 1955, according to the information report, the only one of the three documents that gives a date. “Exactly two hours and forty minutes out of Baku”, which puts it at about 19:10, the CIA memorandum of 31 October places the sightings “about ten minutes beyond Alyaty at 1910 hours when it was already dark”. The information report puts the train “between 50 and 65 miles south of Baku”, with “a large air field” on the left-hand side, “between the train and the Caspian Sea coast”, and “A huge searchlight, on the field itself”.

Something rose from that field. While the four were still watching it climb, according to the same report, the steward came in and pulled down the blinds, and pointed toward the rear of the car to indicate that “the MVD man who had boarded the train at the moment of departure had ordered the blinds drawn”.

Four accounts, four objects

“All four participants in the observation … have now been debriefed,” the memorandum of 31 October begins, and it summarises what each of them saw. The earlier memorandum and the information report add two more descriptions. Set side by side, without smoothing:

Who	What they saw	Shape	Motion
Senator Russell (memorandum, 31 October)	“a small greenish-yellow glowing ball rising quite rapidly”; “never saw the form of the object only the luminescent ball”	none seen; “could have been as small as a rocket”	rising; no change in trajectory noted; “no trail was left”
Mr. Efron (memorandum, 31 October)	“only two lights resembling eyes”	none seen	altered “to horizontal flight quite sharply”
Mr. Efron (earlier memorandum, October)	“two lights which initially arose vertically and then approached the train and passed over head at a high altitude”	“no feeling as to whether it was round, disc-like or even square”	rose vertically, “appeared to glide”; he put it at 9,000 feet; no noise
Colonel Hathaway (memorandum, 31 October)	“a shadowy object with a single light in the middle at the top and a rotating light or lights similar to exhausts at the base”	size “comparable to that of a U. S. jet fighter”; resembled no “aircraft, rocket or missile that he had ever seen”	altered “to horizontal flight quite sharply”
Mr. Gros (memorandum, 31 October)	“a triangular object with three lights which appeared to be ejected from a launching site”	triangular; size “comparable to that of a U. S. jet fighter”	no change in trajectory noted
Unnamed source (information report)	a triangular object on the ground, lit by the searchlight, about two miles away	“a squat shape and in the form of an equilateral triangle”, three lights	“ejected from its launching site, making not less than three and not more than seven fast spirals”, then climbed “extremely fast at about a 45 degree angle”

On one thing they agree: “All observers agree on the impression that the object was rotating or whirling during its rise along its initial steep trajectory.” On the light, they do not: the memorandum of 31 October says it “was already dark”, the earlier memorandum calls it “dusk”, and the information report says “The evening was dark but clear”. No document says how long any of it lasted.

Why four witnesses are not four confirmations

The four did not see the same thing at the same moment, and they did not come to it independently.

Senator Russell saw it first. According to the memorandum of 31 October, he was “resting alone in his compartment with the lights out” when he saw the glowing ball: “He informed the other members of the party who were occupying the other compartment and a few minutes later they too observed another object.” Another object, a few minutes later, after being told what to look for.

The CIA drew the consequence itself. The earlier memorandum, after interviewing Mr. Efron, wrote that his observations “were undoubtedly conditioned by Senator Russell’s remarks that he had seen a flying saucer”, and that “too much confidence cannot be given to his observation”.

The documents do not even agree on where the four were sitting. The memorandum of 31 October has the senator alone in one compartment and the other three in the other: one and three. The information report has its source sharing a compartment with one companion and “the other two” next door: two and two.

That is why this case scores 1 on the multi-channel axis of our methodology. Four people in one train, one of whom told the rest what he had seen before they looked, are one channel of information, not four.

Who wrote the information report

The information report does not name its source. It describes “US national, 41 years old, publicity and advertising vice president of large US corporation”, who “has had no technical training or experience in aviation matters”. Someone wrote “Sen. Russell UFO file” by hand at the top of the report; nothing says who.

Its account matches, almost word for word, what the memorandum of 31 October attributes to Mr. Gros. The memorandum: “a triangular object with three lights which appeared to be ejected from a launching site”. The report: “a triangular object on the ground”, “three lights on the object”, “ejected from its launching site”. It is the only account in the file of an object on the ground.

That makes it likely the source is Mr. Gros. It is an inference from the match, not something the report states, and the report and the memorandum part in three places:

• The compartments. Two and two in the report, one and three in the memorandum.
• Who saw the ground. The report says “we all saw the following sight”, the launch from the field included. The memorandum says “Neither Senator Russell, Colonel Hathaway nor Mr. Efron saw any objects on the ground with the exception of the search light”.
• Who raised the alarm. In the report a man from the compartment next door came in and said “Did you see that out there? I just saw a flying saucer.” In the memorandum the senator, alone in his compartment, told the others. The two can be reconciled only if the senator was not alone.

What the CIA concluded

The memorandum of 31 October gives the CIA’s reading, and qualifies it at every step:

• “the only testimony which would support the existence of flying saucers or radically unconventional aircraft is that of Colonel Hathaway”;
• “All other observations can probably be explained as steep climbing aircraft or missiles”;
• “Further discussions will probably be required before the matter can be completely resolved”;
• “the evidence does not appear sufficiently firm to warrant the conclusion that the Soviets have developed and have in operation a radically new type of aircraft”.

It opens with “Based on the interviews so far”. It is an interim assessment, and the file holds nothing later.

The earlier memorandum had already set the question in its own frame. Recalling that a group headed by Dr. Robertson had been able to “explain almost all the sightings” in the United States, it cautioned that even if the sightings in Russia were confirmed, “it should not be assumed that these unconventional aircraft have actually been flying around the U.S.” It then set beside the sightings, in the same memorandum, a paragraph on a Project “Y” that “The USAF is supporting” at Avro Aircraft Ltd. in Canada “for the development of unconventional saucer-like aircraft”.

Why this scores where it does

Witnesses score 3. One of the four is identified by rank as a colonel; the file gives no other qualification for any of them, and the one it does describe, the source of the information report, has “no technical training or experience in aviation matters”. Independence is what costs the most: the senator told the others before they looked, and the CIA recorded that it shaped at least one account.

Multi-channel scores 1, and radar, optics and physical trace are all 0. Nothing but eyesight was involved, from a moving train, at night or at dusk, and no photograph was taken. No document gives a duration.

Documentation scores 4: three documents within six weeks of the event, written by the agency that interviewed the witnesses, one of them released without redaction, with the reasoning and its qualifications on the page. It stops at 4 because the dispatch that started the inquiry and the records of the individual interviews are not in the file. Anomaly scores 2: one account the CIA could not explain, against three it thought it probably could. Data today scores 2: the route, the station and the time are known, and nothing else can be checked.

That puts the case at 1.4 overall, class D, testimony only, with the status insufficient data. The CIA itself called its assessment provisional, and nothing in the file closes it.

What would settle it

Prague dispatch C-103 of 13 October 1955. The earlier memorandum was written from it, and it reported “two flying saucers or disc-like unconventional aircraft”. It is the first written account of the sighting and it is not in the file.

The four debriefings. The memorandum of 31 October summarises “all four participants” in one paragraph. The individual records, if they exist, would show what each person said before the summary merged them, and whether the source of the information report is Mr. Gros.

What flew from that airfield that evening. A launch log, a flight record or any account from the Soviet side would test the CIA’s “steep climbing aircraft or missiles” directly, and would say whether there was one launch or two.