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.
“Edwards Air Force Base”1 page
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
# The University of New Mexico
Albuquerque
Institute of Meteoritics
December 30, 1948
TO: Lt. Colonel Doyle Rees, Commanding Officer District No.17 Office of Special Investigations
From: Lincoln LaPaz, Director Institute of Meteoritics
Subject: Anomalous luminous phenomena (Third Report)
In the second report of this series, a description was given of the real path through the atmosphere of the green fireball of 1948, December 12, $ 9^{n-2} $ (plus or minus $ 30^{s} $ ). On the basis of corresponding observations made from station near Starvation Peak, New Mexico, and a second station near Los Alamos, New Mexico, this fireball was found to have appeared near a point with the coordinates: latitude $ 35^{\circ} $ 50' N, longitude $ 106^{\circ} $ , 40' W, and to have disappeared near a point with the coordinates: latitude $ 35^{\circ} $ 45' N, longitude $ 107^{\circ} $ 05' traversing an almost horizontal path, at an elevation of about 10 miles above sea level, with a length of about 25 miles, at a velocity of approximately 10 miles per second. (The minimum path length consistent with the observation was found to be about 11 miles, the corresponding velocity then falling between 3 and 6 miles per second, depending on the duration adopted.)
On the basis of corresponding observations of the greenish-white fireball of 1948, December 20, $8^{h} 54^{m}$ p.m. made by two pairs of Los Alamos observers, it has now become possible to work out another approximate real path. As we be apparent from the original accounts of the observations made by AESS Inspectors William D. Wilson, Buford G. Truett, Clifford E. Strang, and Physiology Inspector George S. Skipper, the fireball of 1948, December 20 was observed under less favorable conditions than the green fireball seen by five persons on the night of December 12. However, on the basis of the original accounts of the observers named above, of sketches supplied by these four individuals on December 29 and of transit observations made by Captain M. E. Dee and the undersigned on the same date at the points of observation (viz., $35^{\circ} 48'$.9, $106^{\circ} 18'$.4 for Strang and Skipper and $35^{\circ} 55'$, $106^{\circ} 23'$.4 for Wilson and Truett), it has been possible to establish reasonable concordance between various points on the fireball path as seen by the two groups of observers. Because of the very short baseline (only 8 miles long) between the two points of observation and the difficult conditions under which the first of December 20 was observed, it is my opinion that the real path derived from the December 20 observations deserves considerably less weight than that obtained from the December 12 observations. 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.