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.
“Socorro, New Mexico”4 pages
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
# THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO ALBUQUERQUE INSTITUTE OF METEORITICS May 23, 1950 To: Lt. Colonel Doyle Rees, Commanding Officer 17th District, O. S. I. From: Lincoln LaPaz, Director Institute of Meteoritics Subject: Anomalous Luminous Phenomena (Seventh Report) 1. In the second report of this series, dated 1948, December 20, the writer listed ten significant differences between the bright green horizontally-moving fireballs observed in the interval 1948, December 5-20, and typical meteors. These differences were the following: (1) The horizontal nature of the paths of most of the December fireballs is most unusual. Genuine meteors are rarely observed to move in horizontal paths. (2) Again the very low height of the December fireball discussed in section 2 above sets it off in sharp contrast from the genuine meteors for which heights of the order of 40 or more miles are normally observed. (3) The velocity determined for the fireball of December 12 is much less than the velocities determined from typical meteors (and yet is considerably greater than the speeds of the V-2 Rockets or jet planes or of conventional flares). (4) In the case of meteorites that penetrate to as low levels as that determined for the fireball of December 12, the observed luminous phenomena are always accompanied by very violent noises. No noises whatever have been observed in connection with the various December fireballs so far investigated. (Note added on 1950, May 23: Possible exceptions to the noiselessness of green fireballs are the incidents of 1949, January 30, and 1949, December 4.) (5) Genuine meteors normally show remarkable variations in brightness, beginning as fine thin hair lines, which are scarcely visible to the observer, and then brightening up to flash out near the end of their paths. In the case of the December fireballs most of the observers have reported that the green balls appeared almost instantly at their full brightness.
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.