Septemb.-:;r DATETIME GROUP 7. t.EHOTH Ofl OIIERYATIOH IAIE~ SUMMARY OP SIGHTIHO , .. :..te ? Jec l .aaving PROJECT 10073'RECORD CARD 2. LOCATION . las Cruces , Oklahoma City, Enid, 01-:l.o..homa TYPE OF OBSERVATION r.l Gro~o~nd Vi suol Ground-Radar l:l AI,.. Vi su ol 0 Air-Intercept Radar Hili t ary HUMBER OF OBJECTS . rf:-r~A..in ed. Explosiv e 1 i :y! t 3.ai n boY. rai.nu t c s . color!Jd f lane rrF';.P.)- o l0gical nhP-::10rr.ene. E-xploding r:et eor ATSC JI'ORlof 3::!9 (REV l6 SEP 52) CONCLUSIONS Was Balloon Pro bob I y Ball aan Passi bly Balloon Wa5 Aircraft Probably Ai rcroft Po ssi bl y Aircraft Was Astronomi col :'!ETEO!i .Probably A stronomical Possibly Astronomical Insuff-icient Data for Evaluation t rJ.il pers~st. The Green Fireballs Oo the evening of September 18. 1954. n group of <lstro nomcrs and their wives from the observatory at Sacramrnto Peak. ;\ew ~fexico, were having a picnic at the White Sands 1\'ational ~!onu ment, ncar Alamogordo. I n this great desert of pure white gyp sum the air is extremely hot during the daytime but cools to a pleasant war mrh after sunset. Supper finished, the picnickers had taken off shoes and :st ockingS" tt7 wade in the soft warm sand. By 8:30 it was dark and some of the astronomers had afready Tcft but others (in- cluding Dr. ~lenzel) had lingered to watch the stars, wh ich stand out sharply in the clear skies over the d esert. Suddenly, far to the north, appeared an enormous green fireball. Of blinding brilliance, it was moving slowly and majestically from east to w est in a substantially horizontal patn about seven degrees above the horizon, leaving behind a luminous trail thaf persisted at least fifteen minutes. At about the same time thousands o f the r p ersons on the ground in New ~fexh.:cr and Colorado, as well as the crews o f several planes in ffight, were observ ing the fireball. It passed over a-crowded football stadium in Santa Fe, interfered with radio and TY transmission as it appeared over Albuquerque, and over Denver turned night into d ay. :\ t:nite d Airlines pilot a t about 15,000 feet ne.rr La r:.nnie, Wyomin~. saw the blue-green ball crossing his course and for some ten mmutcs ob served tl1e luminous it left o~hfnd [6]. :\t' afmost the same instant, the 6rcba11 was sighted in the Bay of San Francisco. 1000 miles away. \lajor Keyboe, the D iredor of NICAP (see Chapter xm), enthusiastically and inaccuratefy rt:tcorded tbis meteor as two separate UFOs, one Oying over San Francisco where it caused a "skyquake," the o ther over New :-.rexico and the Southwest where it "rattled airplanes flying through its trail." [2, pp. 197. 202] \Vhat these planes \vere doi~g at the height of the meteor-some se,enty miles-he d oes not \Vhen telephone calls swamped the newspaper offices, reporters interYiewed Dr. Lincoln L a Paz o f the Institute of ~ leteori ti cs at the U nhersity of ~ew :\Iexico. Although he had not ob!)erved this par- ticular specimen, he had seen similar green fireballs a few years earlier .md he commented that this was no ordinury meteor but something unusual. A new wave of UFO excitement began to sweep the country. \Vere mysterious machint's from outer s pace again patrolling New ~lexica? The astronomer s who had admired the fireball at White Sands w.ere amazed at the pub lic reaction . As proessionals who h ad spent G;tlcly 39-TTTE WORLD OF FLYING S<\UCERS their lives in observing and analrzin g astro nomical phenomena, they a~rcecl that the object h:1u been unusual in ils s lcl\\ monnwnt, its c:olor. and its brilli ance. B11t a n unusn.tl mdt.nr is still only a me - tcor, no t u S(Mc:<ship, and lhe~ easilv reco~niz<:'rl it as a ~recn fire- of the typt: that had uppearecl over the Smtthwe:.t a fe w years I n the years following, green fireballs occasionally appeared. An astronomer observed one over Lafaye tte, Colorado, at 7:45 P.M. on 1950. One _soared over the New England states and eastern Canada on November 2 , 1950, and a year later, on November 2, 1951, a plane crew over Texas sighted a nothe r which was dramati-, cally publicized in Life .\Iagazine, and described in a saucer publi-- cation [2, p . 9.~] as a "projectile-shaped device" and a "stran_ge missife" tha t shot out rt!d balls. F ew others mad~ fhe heaclHnes until the one o September 18, 1954. but even th.rt: caa~d onl}' brief excitement :mel the Air F orce e.~ pressed no afa:rm~ JE.S~O/COi I:~ P.ZI~tiJT L.)i:J t:RY ~S61 d3S OZ r - "ERVIC J~AF Wl\tH f.' AR P. LL L ~G JED EN JED >iJT'l JE F~: C DR f~AP.CH FLT SV CEN FARCH r.,f . 1n JEDEN/Ct:DR ADC ENT .AIB . COLO . (:, ." J!:D!AF{,C;~R ATIC ~wRIGHT PATTERSON AF::; OHI O---- H~[j CTOR ',9f. INi~l NCt HQ USAF WASHDC i;J. :..A N.O DESCRIPTION AS TO SHA ~ ... ;~ NO UESCiHPTIOtJ AS TO SIZE ~.~ J." G OBJECT L EFT A VA"OR OR St-~01~E TRAIL v!~IC H COUL D :E SEEN VE~EEE! SEE~! { FO.R A'~"'P~WX T!-!l~TY ~r::UT:SS ArT~::: O~JECT DISSA'"' .... ~A:-:E:D .. I '321J.,LIM1TLY LIGHTI:C Ti:E OBJECT :.' LEVAL fLIG::T ~ C9JECT r: SIG~tT ro:: OnL':' A SIGET YO~ .P. OX T!!I::T'/ ~r::L'T::s A Al~TO. AI~ <VIStJAL)