Project Blue Book case file: Levelland, November 2-3, 1957 (81 pages)

Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.

The new type of UFO with electromagnetic (E-M) powers first attracted notice in this country by allegedly appearing near Levelland, Texas, on the night of November 2. 1957, a few hours before Sputnik II went into orbit. A small town with a population of some 8000, Levelland lies on the plains of western Texas about sixty miles from Plainview, site of a famous meteor shower and only twenty-five miles from Lubbock, which a few years earlier had gained national fame with its "Lubbock lights" (p. 000). The region is normally an arid one, but at the beginning of November it was experiencing unusual weather—electrical storms and rain (the month proved to be the wettest ever recorded in western Texas).

About 11:15 that Saturday night, a farmworker named Pedro Saucedo (or Saucido) with his friend Joe Palaz (also given in various printed accounts as Palav, Salav, Salaz, Salvaz) was driving home from Levelland. A few miles northwest of the town he had turned off Route 116 into a side road, when both men noticed a flash of light in a field at the right. Evidently unalarmed, he continued driving and talking until suddenly the engine died and the lights went out. While trying to restart the motor, Saucedo (the similarity between "Saucedo" and "saucer" presents a diverting coincidence) glimpsed over his left shoulder something that looked like a flaming ball or a fiery tornado drifting rapidly toward the truck. A veteran of combat in Korea, Saucedo reacted instantaneously to the blazing unknown. As he described the experience later that night, "I jumped out of the truck and hit the dirt because I was afraid. I called to Joe but he didn't get out. The thing passed directly over my truck with a great sound and a rush of wind. It sounded like thunder and my truck rocked from the flash. . . . I felt a lot of heat." Crawling out and seeing the object disappear in the direction of Levelland, he restarted the engine and drove back to Levelland to report the incident to the sheriff [2].

The sheriff was soon receiving reports from other persons who had been driving in the same area at about the same time. They said that they, too, had seen a blazing object which they described as a "flying egg" or "egg-shaped fireball." Their cars, like Saucedo's, had stalled and then restarted when the object disappeared. A number of townspeople telephoned the authorities to report bright flashes in the sky, and the police comment that "everyone who called was very excited" [3] was probably an understatement.

Under headlines such as "Mystery Object Stalls Autos in West Texas," these stories hit newspapers all over the nation. The news spread fast. All day Sunday dozens of persons in Texas and New Mexico were relating that they, too, had seen fiery objects and flashes of light in the sky the night before. An amazingly large number of citizens seem to have been out late that stormy Saturday night, but apparently none of them noticed any ordinary lightning- only phantom "somethings" variously described as a burning mass, a big light, an egg-shaped object 200 feet long lighted up as though it were on fire, something like neon lights, objects that were red, glowing, brilliant, fiery, bluish-green, or pulsating green.

Not surprisingly, with all this publicity, the original incident quickly began to take on new dimensions. Saucedo amplified his first statements and recalled that the object had been "torpedo-shaped," "like a rocket, but much larger," and that lights on the object had seemed to be winking on and off [4]. One book has since described the phenomenon as "a huge torpedo-shaped machine. . . . It had a bluish-green glow, and it appeared 150 to 200 feet long." [5, p. 114] Those who wanted to believe in flying saucers easily ignored the discrepancy between the "flaming ball" or "fiery tornado," originally described by Saucedo, and a bluish-green torpedo-shaped machine more than 150 feet long.

For days the Russian satellites had to share the spotlight with the American flying eggs, while both amateur and professional investigators tried to solve the mystery. UFO addicts unhesitatingly deduced the presence of a flying saucer with E-M powers. Various astronomers, when urged by newsmen, reluctantly advanced off-the-cuff theories based on the meager printed accounts. Dr. La Paz, of the Institute of Meteorities in New Mexico, suggested that the things seen at Levelland might have been fireballs. A reporter assigned to