July 22, 1952 — Uvalde, Texas
THINK ABOUTIT UFO|UAP SIGHTINGS REPORT
Uvalde, Texas Silver Disc:
An Airline Station Manager Watches a Gyrating Object, July 22, 1952
At 2:46 on the afternoon of July 22, 1952, Don Epperly, the Trans-Texas Airlines station manager and weather observer at Uvalde, Texas, looked up and saw one large, round, silver object at about 20,000 feet. It gyrated for 45 seconds. Then it left at more than 1,000 mph. Epperly was a trained observer whose daily work was reading the sky.
The Uvalde, Texas UFO case is one of the handful of reports in the Project Blue Book files that the Air Force carried as an official Unknown, BBU 1536. It came on the same day as the Los Alamos and Stafford reports, at the peak of the July 1952 UFO sightings.
Date: July 22, 1952
Sighting Time: 2:46 p.m. (1446 local)
Day/Night: Day
Location: Uvalde, Texas, United States
Urban or Rural: Urban
No. of Entity(‘s): Not Applicable
Entity Type: Not Applicable
Entity Description: Not Applicable
Hynek Classification: Daylight Disc (DD)
Duration: 45 seconds
No. of Object(s): 1
Description of the Object(s): One large, round, silver object that gyrated and then departed at very high speed
Shape/Size/Color of Object(s): Round; about 50 feet in diameter (estimated); silver
Distance to Object(s): Estimated altitude of 20,000 feet
Height & Speed: Estimated altitude 20,000 feet; departed at an estimated speed of more than 1,000 mph
Number of Witnesses: 1 (Don Epperly, Trans-Texas Airlines station manager and weather observer)
Special Features/Characteristics: Gyrating motion; very high departure speed; trained weather-observer witness
Case Status: Project Blue Book: Unknown (BBU 1536)
Source: Berliner (BBU 1536); NICAP chronology; Project Blue Book Unknown case files
Summary/Description: An airline station manager and weather observer watched a silver disc gyrate at about 20,000 feet for 45 seconds and leave at more than 1,000 mph. Blue Book: Unknown.
Related Cases: Los Alamos, New Mexico, July 22, 1952; Stafford, Virginia, July 22, 1952; Brookley AFB, Alabama, July 22, 1952
Detailed Report
The NICAP chronology and the Blue Book unknowns lists record the Uvalde sighting at 2:46 p.m. on July 22, 1952. The witness was Don Epperly, station manager and weather observer for Trans-Texas Airlines.
Epperly saw one large, round, silver object at an estimated altitude of 20,000 feet. It was approximately 50 feet in diameter by his estimate. It gyrated for 45 seconds, then departed at an estimated speed well over 1,000 mph. NICAP puts it this way: “One large, round, silver object flew at more than 1,000 m.p.h. for 45 seconds, while gyrating.”
Project Blue Book carried the case as an Unknown under BBU number 1536. The case is also listed with the item number CCL #30 in the sources used for this archive. Epperly’s account is the only one recorded in the sources I could check.
RESEARCHER’S NOTES
A Trained Observer and a Single Account
- The witness: A weather observer reports clouds, aircraft and balloons for a living. He knew what usually crossed the Uvalde sky.
- Estimates: The 20,000-foot altitude and 50-foot diameter are Epperly’s estimates. A size and distance estimate for an unfamiliar object has a wide margin of error.
- Speed: “More than 1,000 mph” is also an estimate. The sources do not say how it was derived.
- Blue Book Unknown: BBU 1536 means Blue Book could not assign a conventional explanation. It does not mean the object was identified as anything else.
- Limits of the record: I had no Blue Book case file, newspaper article or interview for Uvalde. The report rests on a short summary repeated across lists.
Uvalde is a daylight sighting by a qualified observer and an unresolved official evaluation. The record is brief, and it does not support more than that.
“One large, round, silver object flew at more than 1,000 m.p.h. for 45 seconds, while gyrating.”
— NICAP chronology, Uvalde, Texas, July 22, 1952
