Best recall as a Sunday night. From east side of ferry boat spotted string of brilliant red balls that apeared to be diving into the sea far away.

My first inpression was that a plane had fired a string of red rockets, but the things didn't trail smoke, didn't explode or fade out.  My impression now, almost fifty years later was that another such string followed the first.  There were no aircraft in sight in the area.
Rather simple observation it seems, but I came across letters to home describing the unique event.  
Being a sailor and stationed on a ship, I was not at all aware that this sighting coincided with the great defense alert along the coast, especially around Washington that night until I read in the Book of Lists of the report by an airliner coming in from over the Atantic that red lights approached him at "thousands of miles per hour".  
If those strings of lights were the ones I saw at that same time and date, what I saw were not diving into the sea, but passing over the very distant horizon.