2000-02-11 - Rockford, IL - Fireball

While out for a family night we observed five orange glowing objects three times larger than visible stars flying in formation and doing arial acrobatic moves before darting away at which look like high speeds.

I ((deleted)) accompanied with wife ((deleted)), and sixteen year old son ((deleted)), and five year old daughter ((deleted)) were on states street in rockford illinois approximately 9:15 p.m. heading east in a heavily populated area when we all noticed Five Large orange glowing lights Flying in unusual formation. Suprised by this, we immediately pulled off the road and My son just so happened to have his 8mm videocamcorder with him, and he jumped out the vehicle along side the road and began video taping this flying objects for about 10-15 minutes. My wife and I sat in the car with our windows down and intently watched as these objects not only flew in intelligent formation but at times changed formation as follows: First.. They were flying staggered vertically.. Then two of the lower ones flew directly along side each other.. almost touching each other. Immediately after that, One of those objects flew below the other then in a counterclockwise rotation.. arced up and around the other object, then resumed position again along side it.. shortly after this four of the objects began flying in a straight line vertically one over the top of the other flying east to west.. almost seemed to be hovvering at a slow speed.. so it seemed. The highest object which will call the fifth object appeared to always stay a little bit ahead of the rest of the objects below it.. almost as if It was the lead object, and always stayed to the left of the objects. After the lower objects flew a couple of arial acrobatic moves , the next too above them also made a few arial moves then the lower objects appeared to one by one rapidly speed away till they disappeared.. From the bottom one by one.. While they're was still three of the objects visible the very top object none as the fifth object or the lead object either seperated into two objects or actually appeared to have dropped another object out the bottom of it. We observed this for a few seconds.. and then systematically one by one the appeared to speed away until no! n visibl e.. At that time we could no longer see anymore objects. We came home and the first thing I did was call the rockford airport because these objects appeared to be almost directly over the airport vacinity. The airport me in direct contact with the control tower, I told the conrtol tower that we had seen some u.f.o.'s and wondered if anyone else had reported anystrange objects, He said a few people had called in. I told them what we saw and asked him if they had any aircraft around that time on radar flying in formation like that.. He said absolutely not, he suggested we contact National UFO Reporting Center which we did.. and we also contacted a few local news agencies.. and also were told by these sources that other people were calling in and reporting similiar stories..

((NUFORC Note: The event was reported on the 10:00 p.m. newscast by WRAX-TV. Please see reports of somewhat similar sighting events in Prescott, AZ, during the first week of February 2000.))