FOIA: St. Patricks Day 1950 Sighting, Farmington NM (Skyhook)?

NM_MAR_17_1950.pdf
Farmington NM Sighting 17MAR50 (Skyhook)?
This is a report on a multiple sighting of silver dark fluttering objects in the Farmington sky on St. Patricks Day in 1950 which was attributed to a skyhook balloon which tore into hundreds of little pieces.
Document date: 1950-03-17
Department: Unknown
Author: Unknown
Document type: Report
pages: 4


Archivist's Notes: Unfortunately only the first two pages are legible, page 2 is a photocopy from a publication that describes the event. For a sighting with so many objects, it is suspicious that there are not more official report documents within this file. Hopefully more information will surface in another FOIA file.

The basic facts seem to be that people saw something shiny in the sky that day. Actually, a lot of somethings. The article mentions "magnetic" flight, though there is no mention of how this idea came about.

The military said it was a Skyhook Balloon that broke up from being brittle. Some people will see this as a cover story, some will not. What is telling is that , in this file at least, there is nothing from any official source confirming the balloon. Actually, all of the information is copied from what seems to be a magazine or a newspaper. Which almost smacks of someone sending in a report to show how well they did at covering something up.

But maybe I'm just not the trusting sort.

Unfortunate that the PDF. Page 2 and 3 are almost unreadable.

PDF. page 2 was written on the 17 March 1950, Farmington, New Mexico:
A burst balloon has caused many a saucer scare. But the invasion of Farmington, New Mexico on Saint Patrick’s Day 1950 was one of the most dramatic. The “saucers” began to fly about 10:15am MST and soon filled the air. In numbers estimated from 500 to thousands. For the next hour the gleaming saucer- shaped objects soared over the town, moving erratically at incredible speeds darting in and out among each other in what one writer has called “the greatest exhibition of magnetic flight that has ever happened I the universe.
The explanations more prosaic, A Skyhook Balloon had been launched that morning from Holloman Air Force Base near White Sands, New Mexico near Farmington in the cold atmosphere at 6000feet the balloon had become brittle, burs and disintegrated into hundreds of tiny pieces of plastic. Light as feathers, shining in the sunlight they floated over the town and away.

I’m unable to get a full sense out of PDF. page 3 .
I agree with NGC2736 and I would believe that that people would differ between a Skyhook Balloon (disintegrated into hundreds of tiny pieces) and a UFO.
The explanation that the balloon became brittle is very poor. This is very unlikely for the whole balloon structure to become brittle at once. And if so, the balloon would burst on one spot first, loosing helium and then come down in one piece…..