The Phoenix Lights, 13 March 1997

The first report came at about 7:55 pm from Henderson, Nevada, of a V-shaped object moving south-east⁠[2]. At about 8:15 pm a former police officer in Paulden, north of Prescott, saw a cluster of reddish-orange lights disappearing over the southern horizon; shortly afterwards the Ley family in Prescott Valley saw five lights in an arc about 65 miles away, which formed an inverted V and then a shape like a carpenter's square as it approached⁠[2]. Between 8:30 and 8:45 pm witnesses in Glendale and across Phoenix saw the formation pass overhead, partly obscured by thin cloud; by about 8:45 pm, according to the sceptic Robert Sheaffer, the A-10 formation had landed at Davis-Monthan⁠[2].

At about 10:00 pm a row of lights appeared over the south-west horizon. Many people filmed it; the best-known video is Mike Krzyston's from his home in the Moon Valley area of north Phoenix⁠[6]. The lights hung, drifted slightly, and winked out from one end. This is the footage shown in nearly every later account of the Phoenix Lights, though it is the second event, not the formation.

The story stayed local until June 1997, when national coverage and a USA Today report brought it to the country's attention, three months after the fact⁠[2]. On 19 June Governor Symington called a press conference, announced that the culprit had been found, and produced his chief of staff Jay Heiler in an alien costume, telling reporters they were "entirely too serious"⁠[5]. City councilwoman Frances Barwood had asked the Air Force to investigate⁠[4]. A month later the Maryland Guard's statement explained the 10 pm lights⁠[4].

The accounts divide by event and by date of recording. For the 10 pm lights, the videos are the record; the witnesses' descriptions (lights hovering, then dropping out) match them. For the formation, the earliest accounts were gathered by local reporters in March 1997 and by the National UFO Reporting Center, whose director logged calls that night⁠[7]. Steve Wilson of the Arizona Republic, writing a year later, recorded Dr Bradley Evans of Tucson seeing a diamond-shaped formation pass at an estimated 1,500 feet without sound; Trig Johnston, a retired airline pilot, estimating an object the size of 25 airliners at about 100 knots and 5,000 feet; and Max Saracen describing a huge silent triangle overhead⁠[1]. Tim Ley's account, with his drawing of a carpenter's-square shape with lights along the arms, became the canonical image after it was published nationally in June 1997⁠[2].

Mitch Stanley's telescope observation was made the same night and reported to local journalists within weeks; he said he followed the lights for about a minute and that "they were planes, there's no way I could have mistaken that"⁠[3]. His account is the only one made with magnification.

Symington's account is the one that changed most. In 1997 he staged the alien-costume press conference. In March 2007, to a UFO investigator, to the Arizona Daily Star and to CNN, he said that he had watched the formation himself from near Squaw Peak, that it was "bigger than anything that I've ever seen", and that he had kept quiet to avoid public panic and because of the fraud charges he was then facing⁠[5]. He has repeated the account since. It was first recorded ten years after the event.

A pattern runs through the formation accounts: the earlier the record, the more it reads as lights in formation; the later, the more it reads as a single craft with a dark body between the lights. Timothy Callahan and Donald Prothero argue this is what the psychology of perception and memory predicts for lights against a dark sky⁠[8]; believers argue the lights were on one object from the start.

No radar data survives. Luke Air Force Base reported nothing unusual on its radar, and the FAA's recordings were overwritten on their routine schedule before anyone asked for them⁠[3]. The Black Vault's FOIA requests produced a Luke AFB response that it had no records of the flare drop and a one-page response from Davis-Monthan in 2013 saying any records had been destroyed⁠[9].

The videos all show the 10 pm event. Tony Ortega's 1998 analysis for the Phoenix New Times, with a comparison to a filmed flare drop and a frame analysis showing the lights moving together but independently, is the fullest published examination⁠[10]. The Maryland Guard's statement is the official account of the flares⁠[4]. For the formation there is no photograph or video that unambiguously shows it; the still images in circulation are of the 10 pm lights.

The National UFO Reporting Center's database holds the civilian reports for that night, filed from the evening of 13 March onward⁠[7].

For the 10 pm lights, the flare explanation is accepted by the Air National Guard, the Arizona National Guard, journalists who filmed comparison drops, and sceptical analysts⁠[4]⁠[3]⁠[11]. Its predictions hold: the timing, the azimuth over the Goldwater range, the slow descent, the lights going out in sequence, the parallax across different filming positions. Frances Barwood called it "too convenient" and asked for a re-enactment⁠[4]; no stronger objection has been raised.

For the formation, the aircraft explanation rests on Stanley's observation and on the fit between a V of five aircraft at altitude and the reported track⁠[3]⁠[12]. Its weakness is that no unit has ever said it flew that formation; the Maryland Guard's A-10s are the usual candidate, since they were airborne that evening and landed at Davis-Monthan at about the right time, but their flight that night was for range work, and the Guard has not confirmed a northern transit⁠[2]. The single silent craft explanation rests on the witnesses' estimates of size and altitude, which cannot be checked; lights at unknown distance against a dark sky give no scale⁠[8]. A third possibility, a classified aircraft or a formation from another base, would explain the official silence but has no evidence.

The copycat events show how much the lights depend on their explanation: flares from Luke AFB F-16s in February 2007 and road flares tied to helium balloons in April 2008 both produced reports of hovering lights and both were explained within days⁠[2].

A unit record. The Maryland Air National Guard's flight records and the Davis-Monthan tower log for 13 March 1997 would show whether an A-10 formation transited from the north between 8:00 and 8:45 pm; a positive answer settles the formation, and a negative one points to another unit. The FAA data is gone. A photograph of the formation with a known foreground and timestamp would allow a parallax estimate of altitude, which decides between a low silent object and high aircraft. None of the thousands of witnesses has produced one.