Documents / Report
This U.S. Department of War release compiles 1949 records tied to Sandia Base, New Mexico. It includes a Sandia Base security inspection reply and a W. D. Crozier letter to Lincoln LaPaz. It also contains Crozier and Seely's report on collecting airborne copper particles after the July 24, 1949 fireball near Socorro, which they judged negative or inconclusive. LaPaz's sixth report on green fireballs disputes parts of that finding, and a Fourth Army report describes unusual lights around the Q Area at Camp Hood, Texas, in March 1949.
From the source:Release of 2026-05-22 Incident: 1948-1950, New Mexico. This file contains 116 pages of documentation from the Armed Forces Special Weapons Program (AFSWP) – the direct, post-World War II successor to the Manhattan Project – and from the U.S. Air Force – relating to a series of sightings and investigations in Sandia, New Mexico, from 1948-1950. This file contains 209 sightings of “green orbs,” “discs,” and “fireballs” reported near the military base. Witnesses reported unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) maneuvering, flying out of sight, disappearing, or exploding. The documents also include the results of contemporary investigations into residual copper powder found in some areas where sightings were reported. A few of these investigations became the basis for Project Grudge, which collected reports of unidentified flying objects from various other military installations – also included in this collection.
“Headquarters”18 pages
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
# AN ATTEMPT TO COLLECT AIRBORNE PARTICLES # ASSOCIATED WITH THE FIREBALL OF JULY 24, 1949 By W. D. Crozier and Ben K. Seely NEW MEXICO SCHOOL OF MINES METHOD A fireball was reported to have passed over the general neighborhood of Socorro, New Mexico, at 8:26 p.m., July 24, 1949. Impactment equipment, developed in connection with the aerosol research project of the New Mexico School of Mines, was available, and it was decided to make systematic collections of airborne material in the hope of obtaining material that could be associated with the fireball. For the present report it is sufficient to state that the equipment processed air at the rate of about 34 liters per minute, the particles being separated from the air by impactment against an adhesive-coated plate in an air jet. Approximately ninety per cent of airborne particles with diameters greater than one micron are collected. The adhesive used on the collecting plates (microscope slides) was a glycerin gelatin mixture with an addition of rubeanic acid (dithiooxamide.) This reagent was used to enable identification of copper or copper compounds; it also enables identification of nickel and cobalt. After making the collections, the slides were covered with a Saran film, after which they were exposed to strong ammonia vapor for fifteen minutes to effect partial solution of any copper or copper oxide particles. ## RESULTS The first collection was made at 10:00 a.m., July 25, about thirteen and one half hours after the fireball was seen. The air was taken about twelve feet above ground level, on the campus of the School of Mines. The first run was for three minutes, processing about 102 liters of air. Several large particles were found in it that gave positive copper tests. In at least one of these the copper reaction was seen before the ammonia treatment, indicating the presence of at least a trace of a soluble copper compound. The sizes of particles seen in the first collections ranged up to over one hundred microns in the largest dimension: the largest particles gave the impression of being fragments of a somewhat fibrous material, with the smaller
Report, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 116 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.