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.
To: Lt. Colonel Doyle Rees - Page 3 Subj: Anomalous Luminous Phenomena (Seventh Report) May 23,1950 to move horizontally. However, a strictly vertical infall is also very rarely observed in the case of genuine meteor falls. 3. An analysis just completed of the time distribution of the green fireballs so far observed permits us to add an 11th item to the list of differences given in paragraph 1 above. The graph of frequency versus local time which accompanies the present report shows that the maximum frequency of sighting of green fireballs (occurring at approximately 2030) coincides in time with neither the frequency maximum for ordinary meteors (occurring at approximately 0300) nor the frequency maximum for meteorite falls (occurring at approximately 1600). 4. Inspection of the graph referred to in paragraph 3 also will show that most of the green fireballs have been sighted in a time interval extending from about 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. (MST). This concentration might be even more pronounced if it were possible to screen out of the secondary maximum, around 2 a.m. (MST), all ordinary meteors which have been mistakenly identified as green fireballs. That such misidentification has occurred is strongly suggested by the near coincidence in time of the secondary maximum of the green fireballs and the well established early morning maximum of the ordinary meteors. 5. Some significance may attach to the fact that the time interval alluded to in paragraph 4 extends from about 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the Ural region of the USSR. Since missiles moving with velocities of the order of those found for the green fireballs for which real path determinations have been possible would travel from the southern Urals to New Mexico in less than 15 minutes, a possible interpretation of the concentration of sightings referred to in paragraph 4 is that the green fireballs result from guided missiles launched from bases in the Urals in the morning hours before cloudiness due to convection or blinding afternoon dust storms can interfere with non-radar tracking, such as has been used by the Optical Trajectory Section at White Sands Proving Ground. 6. There is also a pronounced concentration of green fireball incidents on the four days, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, almost all of the most widely observed incidents having occurred on Saturday or Sunday. 7. It is a curious and fairly well-established fact that there has been a distinct decline in the number of green fireball sightings during the last two months, within which the number of so-called "flying saucer" incidents in this region has attained an all-time high. 8. Although I have recently received from Dr. Joseph Kaplan of the Scientific Advisory Board a letter containing the statement "Frankly, I don't know of any U. S. experiments that would result in the appearance of these unconventional objects, and neither does Von Karman". I still
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.