July 5-8, 1947 — three cases: Colonel Blanchard's press release announcing the Roswell recovery, William Rhodes's extensively investigated Phoenix photographs, and Muroc's remarkable July 8 sighting witnessed by test pilot John Paul Stapp. thinkaboutitdocs.com.
1947: July UFO|UAP & Entity Sightings Archive
Part 2 (July 5 through July 8)
This stretch of July carries both the Roswell incident’s escalation to public announcement and one of ufology’s most thoroughly self-debunked witness accounts. Sheriff Wilcox, Major Jesse Marcel, and mortician Glenn Dennis all enter the Roswell timeline here, building to Colonel Blanchard’s July 8 press release announcing a recovered “flying disc.” The same window also carries William A. Rhodes’s Phoenix photographs — among the most extensively investigated photographic evidence of the entire wave, with negatives confiscated by military intelligence. One entry, the Gerald Anderson “Plains of San Agustin” account, required this archive’s strongest possible caution flag: Anderson’s own original supporters retracted confidence in his testimony after forensic analysis proved his supporting “diary” was written on ink not manufactured until roughly 1970, decades after the events it claimed to document.
Date: July 5, 1947
Location: Plains of San Agustin, New Mexico
Time: 11:30
Case Status: Discredited
Summary: According to Gerald Anderson, who was 5 years old at the time, he and family members were rock hunting in the desert when they came upon a gully near a shallow arroyo and saw a craft that appeared to have impacted a small slope, with debris scattered around a torn opening. Anderson said he and a cousin approached and saw four apparent occupants, small in stature with large heads and blue eyes; two appeared dead, one injured, and one alive and terrified. Other witnesses reportedly arrived, including college students, before armed military personnel arrived and ordered everyone to leave.
Source: Kevin D. Randle, A History of UFO Crashes
Source Status: DISCREDITED — Anderson’s account, once treated as a major corroborating case for a second 1947 New Mexico crash, was retracted by its own primary champions. Researchers Stanton Friedman and Don Berliner, who had built a central chapter of their book Crash at Corona around Anderson’s testimony, publicly stated in a 1993 letter that they “no longer have confidence in the testimony of Gerald Anderson,” after forensic ink analysis (commissioned by Friedman himself, from Brunelle Forensic Laboratories) showed that a supporting diary Anderson presented as written by a relative in 1947 used an ink formulation not manufactured until approximately 1970 — meaning the document was fabricated decades after the fact. A supposed archaeologist Anderson named as present at the scene (“Buskirk”) denied any involvement or knowledge of the event when located by researchers. Anderson was separately found to have falsely claimed a career as a U.S. Navy SEAL. This archive retains the account here as a documented, and thoroughly discredited, claim in the historical record — not as an established event.
Date: July 5, 1947
Location: Brazel Farm, New Mexico
Time: Unknown
Summary: Following rain the night before, Mac Brazel inspected the pastures around his ranch house, riding with William D. Proctor, the young son of neighboring family the Proctors. Brazel discovered a debris field roughly 300 yards wide and three-quarters of a mile long, with metal, plastic-like beams, lightweight material, foil, and string scattered across slopes, a sinkhole, and depressions — thick enough that sheep refused to cross it, being driven around to water more than a mile away instead. Brazel collected a sackful of the material.
Source: Undocumented (widely corroborated across standard Roswell timelines)
Date: July 5, 1947
Location: Roswell, New Mexico
Time: 13:15 or 13:30
Summary: Glenn Dennis, the mortician at Ballard Funeral Home in Roswell, which held a contract to provide mortuary services for Roswell Army Air Field, received a call from the base mortuary officer asking about the smallest available size of hermetically sealed caskets in stock.
Source: Undocumented (widely corroborated across standard Roswell timelines)
Date: July 6, 1947
Location: Roswell, New Mexico
Time: Noon
Summary: Brazel arrived at the Chaves County Sheriff’s Office in downtown Roswell, told Sheriff George Wilcox about his find, and showed him pieces of debris. Wilcox called Roswell Army Air Field, reaching 509th Bomb Group Intelligence Officer Jesse A. Marcel at the Officer’s Club during lunch; Marcel promised to come after lunch, then arrived, interviewed Brazel, and examined two boxes of wreckage.
Source: Undocumented (widely corroborated across standard Roswell timelines)
Date: July 6, 1947
Location: Chickamauga Creek, Tennessee
Time: 14:00
Summary: W.D. Seacrest, hunting turtles in a creek, saw three flying, disc-shaped objects over the area, hiding behind a tree at first out of fear. One disc descended and hovered over a nearby field, allowing Seacrest a clear look at a cockpit containing two pilot-like figures as the object tilted, along with a black hump behind the cockpit he believed housed the engines. The other two discs remained higher while the lower one surveyed the field, then suddenly zoomed upward to a leading position before all three departed at incredible speed.
Source: Project 1947
Date: July 6, 1947
Location: South Central Wyoming
Time: Unknown
Summary: An aviation engineer saw an oval-shaped UFO.
Source: The UFO Evidence, Section VI
Date: July 6, 1947
Location: Fairfield-Suisun AFB, California
Time: Daytime
Summary: AAF Captain and Mrs. James H. Burniston saw a highly reflective, round, flat object with no wings or tail, the size of a C-54 transport (118 feet), roll from side to side three times before flying away very fast from northwest to southeast at 10,000 feet.
Source: Don Berliner; Bloecher 1967 (BBU #36)
Date: July 6, 1947
Location: Clay Center, Kansas
Time: 13:45
Summary: AAF pilot Major A.B. Browning and crew, flying a B-25 east toward Kansas City, saw a silvery, circular object 30-50 feet in diameter pacing the aircraft at a slightly lower altitude before shooting off at high speed heading east at 11,000 feet, 210 mph.
Source: Project 1947; FOIA; Bloecher 1967 (BBU)
Date: July 7, 1947
Location: Roswell Army Air Field, New Mexico
Time: 07:00
Summary: Major Jesse Marcel, Captain Sheridan Cavitt, and an enlisted man gathered two carloads of strange material at the debris site, carrying it back to Roswell Army Air Field.
Source: Larry Hatch, *U* computer database, Redwood City, 2002
Date: July 7, 1947
Location: Tacoma, Washington
Time: Unknown
Summary: A group calling itself the “Center & J Street Neighbors” reported discs landing on a neighborhood roof and disgorging several “little people,” who vanished as reporters approached.
Source: HUMCAT, quoting a newspaper source
Source Status: The original source material itself frames this account under the heading “levity,” identifying it as a joke or prank report rather than a genuine sighting claim.
Date: July 7, 1947
Location: Andrews AAF, Washington, D.C.
Time: 02:00
Summary: A special flight reportedly departed for Andrews AAF in Washington, D.C., said to be carrying debris and bodies from the Roswell recovery.
Source: Undocumented
Source Status: INSUFFICIENT DATA — no primary source located for this specific flight claim.
Date: July 7, 1947
Location: Tucson, Arizona
Time: 16:50
Summary: Three patients at the Veterans Hospital saw a flying saucer. Lewis Zesper, a former Army pilot, described it as oval, about 25 feet in diameter, light metallic gray, wobbly in flight, at an estimated altitude of 4,000 feet and a speed exceeding conventional jet aircraft.
Source: Flagstaff Arizona Daily Sun, July 8, 1947; Prescott Evening Courier, July 8; Phoenix Gazette, July 8
Date: July 7, 1947
Location: Tucumcari, New Mexico
Time: 18:00
Summary: Mr. and Mrs. F.P. Lawrence saw something flat and round, like the reflection of a mirror, moving west; they weren’t certain whether it was traveling at great speed or not.
Source: Undocumented
Date: July 7, 1947
Location: El Paso, Texas
Time: 20:45
Summary: An unidentified woman saw something grayer than silver crossing the sky from south to north.
Source: El Paso Times, July 8, 1947
Date: July 7, 1947
Location: 7 miles north of Shreveport, Louisiana
Time: Morning
Summary: Military aircraft pilot Harston saw a bright, silver object about the angular size of the moon.
Source: Project 1947; McDonald list
Editorial note: A separate, unrelated item from the same date is noted in the original source material: a 16-inch disc made of AN-A-13T specification aluminum, 1/16″ thick, fell into a Shreveport street; a mysterious tube inside was identified as a fluorescent light starter, not exotic technology. Credited to Kevin Randle’s research, this item is already correctly documented as a mundane, identified object rather than an unexplained case.
Date: July 7, 1947
Location: Hickam Field, Hawaii
Time: 09:00
Summary: Civil Service employee Saito saw a large, silver, balloon-like object with a silvery disc beneath it, no attaching cables visible, slowly ascending to the northwest at 6,000 feet.
Source: McDonald list; FOIA; FUFOR Index (BBU)
Date: July 7, 1947
Location: Muroc Army Air Field, California
Time: 10:10
Summary: AAF experimental test pilot Major Jowell C. Wise, powering up an XP-84 jet on the runway, looked up along with others and saw to the north a yellowish-white sphere, about 5-10 feet in diameter, oscillating in a “forward whirling” motion without losing altitude at roughly 10,000-12,000 feet, moving west to east at approximately 200-225 mph.
Source: FOIA (BBU)
Date: July 7, 1947
Location: Willow Springs, Illinois
Time: Noon
Summary: Robert Meegan and his 14-year-old son John, working their farm near the Des Plaines River not far from Argonne National Laboratories, heard a buzzing noise overhead and saw 13 round objects, all heading east, single-file in a straight line — round, flat-bottomed, roughly house-sized, bluish-gray in color, flying on a straight and level course to the east.
Source: Undocumented
Date: July 7, 1947
Location: Lakeland, Florida
Time: 13:00-14:00 EST
Summary: Sign painter Griffin saw five round, shiny objects to the northeast, climbing at 7,500 feet; a shrill noise was heard.
Source: Brad Sparks; Battelle/BBSR14; Mary Castner/CUFOS (BBU)
Date: July 7, 1947
Location: Arlington, Virginia
Time: 22:30-23:00 EDT
Summary: AAF Lt. Col. Cobb saw a “blob,” the size of a small airplane, reflecting white light, flying at less than 500 feet above ground to the southeast at approximately 1,350 mph.
Source: FOIA; FUFOR (BBU)
Date: July 7, 1947
Location: Phoenix, Arizona
Time: Dusk
Case Status: Unexplained
Summary: William A. Rhodes took two or three photographs of a heel-shaped object with a concave trailing edge, circling and banking north of town above his home, showing a white spot near the object’s center. It approached from the west with an audible “whooshing” sound, but Rhodes reported hearing no sound at all during its three clockwise circuits above him. It then sped off to the southwest at phenomenal speed, again silently, with twin vapor trails visible from the two points of the concave trailing edge. The case was extensively investigated by military intelligence; all prints were confiscated, and Rhodes turned over his negatives to FBI agents and an Army counterintelligence agent weeks later. [Full Report]
Source: Phoenix Arizona Republic, July 9, 1947; San Diego (CA) Union, July 9; Los Angeles Herald-Express, July 9 Source Status: VERIFIED — named witness, contemporaneous multi-newspaper coverage, and a documented federal investigation with confiscated physical evidence, giving this case one of the more substantial documentary trails of the entire wave.
Date: July 8, 1947
Location: Acres Home, Texas
Time: Unknown
Summary: A merchant seaman telephoned the Houston Post claiming a big silver disc landed in front of him in the Acres Home addition; a little man, two feet tall with a basketball-sized head, climbed out, shook his hand, then climbed back in and departed. Asked by the reporter if the figure looked like a man from Mars, the seaman reportedly replied, “I dunno, I never seen a man from Mars.”
Source: HUMCAT, quoting a newspaper source
Source Status: The tone and content of this account (a wire-service style joke exchange with a reporter) reads as tongue-in-cheek period journalism rather than a serious sighting claim; retained for the historical record of how newspapers covered the wave, not as an established event.
Date: July 8, 1947
Location: Near Los Angeles, California
Time: Unknown
Summary: An F-51 pilot’s sighting, listed by Air Force Captain Edward Ruppelt as one of the cases cited in the Air Force’s top-secret “Estimate of the Situation” document, which concluded UFOs were likely interplanetary in origin.
Source: Edward Ruppelt
Date: July 8, 1947
Location: Muroc Army Air Field, California
Time: 09:45 PDT
Summary: AAF 1st Lt. Joseph C. McHenry, T/Sgt Joseph Ruvolo, S/Sgt Gerald E. Nauman, and Miss Jannette Marie Scotte, at 10:00 AM, saw two saucer or disc-shaped objects, silver and apparently metallic, flying a wide circular pattern at roughly 7,500-8,000 feet, 350-400 mph, heading approximately northwest toward Mojave. Before the first two objects disappeared, a third similar disc or spherical silver object was seen, with five additional witnesses, to the north flying tight circles at 7,000-8,000 feet, maintaining altitude in a manner beyond the capability of known aircraft, with no sound or trails. Duration: 3-4 minutes.
Source: Undocumented (BBU #50)
Date: July 8, 1947
Location: Muroc Army Air Field, California
Time: 11:50-12:00
Summary: AAF experimental test pilot Capt. John Paul Stapp, a Mr. Lenz from Wright Field, and two others in an observation truck at Area 3 of Rogers Dry Lake for a P-82 ejection seat test saw a round, silver or aluminum-white object, initially thought to be a parachute, about 25 feet wide, falling from below the 20,000-foot test aircraft altitude at three times the rate of an ejection seat test, drifting horizontally toward Mt. Wilson at under 50-80 mph — when close to the horizon it appeared oval, with two thick fins or knobs on its upper surface that seemed to rotate or oscillate, no propellers visible, slowly disappearing below distant mountain tops after 90 seconds. Independently, from 5-8 miles away, Muroc CO Col. Signa A. Gilkey, engineer Major Richard R. Shoop, and his wife saw the apparently same object — thin, metallic aluminum-colored, the size of a pursuit aircraft, reflecting sunlight and oscillating — descend to ground level, then rise again and move slowly off in the distance, for a total of 8 minutes, with no sound or trail.
Source: FOIA; Jacques Vallée, Magonia 60
Date: July 8, 1947
Location: 40 miles south of Muroc Army Air Field, California
Time: 16:00
Summary: Exactly four hours after the Muroc ejection-seat-test sighting, the pilot of an F-51, flying at 20,000 feet about 40 miles south of Muroc, sighted a “flat object of a light-reflecting nature,” with no vertical fin or wings. It was above him when first seen; he attempted to climb toward it but his F-51 could not reach that altitude. All nearby airbases were contacted but reported no aircraft in the area.
Source: Edward Ruppelt, p. 22 (exact quote)
Date: July 8, 1947
Location: Roswell, New Mexico
Time: Noon
Case Status: Unexplained
Summary: Colonel William Blanchard ordered 2nd Lt. Walter Haut, public information officer for the 509th Bomb Group at Roswell AAF, to issue a press release announcing that the Army had found the remains of a crashed flying saucer. Haut delivered the release to Frank Joyce at radio station KGFL; Joyce waited for Haut to return to base, called to confirm the story, then sent it out on the Western Union wire to the United Press bureau — the single most consequential press release in the history of American ufology.
Source: Undocumented (widely corroborated across standard Roswell timelines)
Date: July 8, 1947
Location: Capitan Mountains, New Mexico
Time: 12:00
Summary: A separately claimed second crash site with reported alien bodies. An FBI Dallas teletype states that 8th Air Force headquarters notified the FBI by telephone that an object purporting to be a flying disc had been recovered on this date: “hexagonal in shape and was suspended from a balloon by cable, which balloon was approximately twenty feet in diameter.” The disc and balloon were reportedly being transported to Wright Field by special plane for examination.
Source: FBI Dallas field office teletype
Editorial note: This is a distinct, separately documented claim from the Roswell/Foster Ranch and Plains of San Agustin narratives, describing a hexagonal disc attached to a balloon rather than a crashed saucer with bodies — the “alien bodies” framing in the summary above is not supported by the FBI teletype’s own language, which describes only a disc and balloon. This discrepancy is flagged rather than resolved.
Date: 1947: Flying Disc Photographed By Youth
1947: July UFO|UAP & Entity Sightings Archive — Part 1 | 1947: July UFO|UAP & Entity Sightings Archive — Part 3
