1958: Alamogordo New Mexico Sighting

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THINK ABOUTIT SIGHTING REPORT

Date:  October 10 1958

Sighting Time:  A few minutes before six o’clock p.m.

Day/Night:  Sunset

Location:  Alamogordo New Mexico

Urban or Rural: – Rural

No. of Entity(‘s):  

Entity Type:  

Entity Description:  

Hynek Classification:  DD (Daylight Disc) Metallic or whitish object seen in the day.

Duration:  

No. of Object(s):  1

Height & Speed:  

Size of Object(s):  

Distance to Object(s):  about 200 miles away at the time

Shape of Object(s):  elongated cigar

Color/Description of Object(s):  several bands of shadow along the “fuselage,” each accompanied by a brighter spot

Number of Witnesses:  Multiple

Source:  

Summary/Description:  EXPLODING THE ..HOLLOMAN CIGAR”

By L. J. Loru,NzrN ll’e include a detailed account of the Holloman “Great Cloud Cigar” for the primary purpose of demonstrating (1) hou, easilY’ tt conventional occurrence can be misinterpreted and (2) the importance ol noting the smallest detail and following up alL leads. i+* A few minutes before six o’clock p.m. 10 October, several people in Alamogordo saw an unusual sight. We shall restrict our account to the experience of four people who had the benefit of a pair of 7 x 50 binoculars in their observation. These were our good friends John and Norma Romero, Coral and myself. The Romeros saw the object first from their front porch. Norma ran across the street to alert us while John climbed to his rooftop and took some pictures. After one quick glance at the bright silver-rose slit in the sky I ran for the binoculars-took them to the back yard and looked. The shape appeared as an elongated cigar making an angle of about 30 degrees with the horizon.

(See fig. 1.) The upper end (which I called the “front”) was clearly defined against the blue-white sunset sky, the “tail,” however tapered to a more nebulous outline.There were no clouds near the “object,” but (this bothered me from the start) it had a color much the same as many sunset clouds I’ve seen. I saw several bands of shadow along the “fuselage,” each accompanied by a brighter spot. Remembering Aime Michel’s “great cloud cigar” accounts, I said to myself, “Thi is it! A ‘great cloud cigar’! The characteristic cloudy shroud is partly obscuring the port holes”-I handed the glasses to Norma and ran for the phone. I called Al Brown-no answer. Terry Clarke-no answer. Better try Holloman control tower-they shouldn’t miss this Meanwhile, Norma was seeing approximately the same thing I had seen except the object began to assume a more vertical position while a bright light started blinking at the nose. She handed the glasses to Coral. The blinking light continued as did the motion toward vertical alignment. When she turned the glasses over to John, the light had “gone out.” Unable to raise anyone on the phone, I came back out for another look. Coral took over the phone. Norma pointed the thing out to me again. It was smaller and about four degrees higher in the sky. John had seen it move upward quite rapidly, he said. As he gave the glasses back to me, the thing had begun to tilt toward the north. As I got the glasses re-focused, ow cigar appeared once more at a 30 degree angle -this time the high clearly-defined end was toward the north and-it was beginning to turn black at the tip! It moved slightly upward toward the north in a gentle arc, diminishing in size as the blackness gradually covered its entire length. It disappeared as a black horizontal line against the blue-white sky. Before discussing the incident at all. the four of us went into the house and drew sketches of what we had seen. They agreed remarkably. To our query, Holloman reported an L-17 and a 8-26 in the air at the time. No jets, they said. The Alamogordo Daily News carried the story the next day. Terry Clarke sent the story to UPI. To our surprise, the newspaper article in a final paragraph carried a statement bY an unnamed representative of a Holloman contractor. One of their jet planes had been flying in from the West Coast at sunset, he said. That’s what we had seen. It was about 200 miles away at the time. I called the “News” editor. He had no doubt the man was sincere, he said. No-he couldn’t give me his name, sorry! “What about the Air Force statement that there were no jet Planes uP?” I asked. This was a new plane just coming in, not assigned to Holloman as yet they had no record of it at the time, was the reply. On the face of it, the whole idea seemed ridiculous-but I wasn’t quite sure. Well, there seemed to be one good way to find out. A new jet coming in to Holloman would be part of the Convair proiect. Fran Parker, Chief Test Pilot for Convair at Holloman, is a good friend of mine. I gave him a eall and on his invitation went to his home to talk it over. . . “Don Humphreys was bringing in a new F-106A from the coast,” Fran began. “I was sweating him out because the sun was going down and we’re not supposed to land anything here after dark. Around six o’clock we saw his con (eontrail) in the west and watched it until I was sure what it was. For a while after it cleared the horizon, it hung like a long, thin ovoid in the sky-a real saucer shape. I remarked at the time that we would probably get some flying saucer reports out of this. It was a real unusual effect. If I hadn’t been expecting Don and watching for a plane, I don’t know whether I’d have spotted it for a contrail or not-it was real weird, what we call a “short con.” It follows the plane for a few hundred yards and dissipates. In the sunset it was reflecting light like any cloud.” Then I told Fran what we had seen. I drew sketches. He scratched his head, “I don’t know-maybe you were looking at something else.” After a lengthy discussion, Fran suggested that I call on him the next day at work. He pointed out that there had been quite a few people out on the ramp with him-some of whom had watched longer than he had. (Fran had returned to his office as soon as he was satisfied that Humphreys would soon be on the ground). Maybe some of them could be of help. Frankly, I thought I’d be wasting my time, but I went. As I toured the Convai installation with Fran and listened to the various accounts something began to puzzle me-it had been bothering me all along but now it hit me in the face. There had been a lot of people watching the sky that evening at Holloman. They had seen a contrail at the same time we had seen a UFO. Both groups had been looking toward the west. Why hadn’t we seen their contrail? Why hadn’t they seen the UFO? Was it possible that we were both watching the same thing? I decided to find out. My first clue was furnished inadvertently by a technician who had been with the Convair Mobile Communications unit during the incident. He told how he had watched the contrail from the time Fran had called it to his attention and made several attempts to establish radio contact. They had succeeded about the time Humphreys was over the San Andreas Mountain range, giving him some preliminary landing instructions whereupon he altered his course slightly and had begun to let down. “When he turned and started down,” said our informant, “he came out of the con layer and his trail shrank up and disappeared pretty fast. But he was so high that he looked like he was going up instead of down.” I thought this one over and drew a few sketches. To an observer on the ground, the angular acceleration of an aircraft approaching at constant speed and altitude increases at an exponential rate. A plane approaching at high altitude could be Ietting down and still give the appearance of climbing. A diminishing contrail moving into the earth-shadow at sunset could give the illusion of an object turning black and moving into the distance. I continued to accompany Fran on a tour of the plant. We stepped into the main hangar where the F-106’s are housed. “The 106-4 carries a rotating beacon behind the cockpit,” he was saying. “This is something new. It rotates about one revolution per second.” Well, there it was-the “flashing light on the nose.” Although the plane must have been a good 50 miles away at this point, it had momentarily assumed an angle that beamed that beacon straight at Alamogordo. The “nose” of the contrail would of course be the location of the aircraft-too far away for us to make out -even with the 7×50’s. I was convinced. Aftermath The new UFO investigation officer at Holloman, Captain Woods, called Mr. Romero and requested an appointment with him to fill out a report for HQ USAF. He had a letter from them marked “immediate action,” he said. John told him that a complete report had appeared in the “News” and that APRO could help him with any details. Capt. Woods apparently did not wholly approve of this response. He made one feeble attempt to pull rank. Was John refusing to cooperate with the Air Force, he wanted to know? “Oh no, we reported the inci said John. This reply seemed to take the Captain by surprise for he soon brought the conversation to a close. He did not call APRO. Two days later, Major Hillis, former UFO officer at Holloman, called Coral. What could we tell him about the incident? Briefly, Coral outlined our findings. “Are you sure?” asked Hillis. “Pretty sure,” said Coral-“they can’t all be real one, you know.” “I guess that’s right,” said Hillis thoughtfully. He sounded disappointed. October L6 rolled around. About 5:4b in the afternoon I was in our front yard. Norma called to me from across the street and pointed skyward. There it was again. I got out the glasses once more and any remaining doubt faded away. This time the jet was higher in the sky and a little closer. Through the glasses I could make it out quite clearly, preceding a brilliant sunset-lit tadpole-shape contrail.