The Coyame Incident: "Mexico's Roswell" Disc Crash, Chihuahua, 1974

The Coyame incident did not surface until 1992. Eighteen years after the night it describes, UFO researchers received an anonymous typed report titled "Research Findings on the Chihuahua Disk Crash." It was dated 23 March 1992 and headed "To All Deneb Team Members, From JS." Elaine Douglass of Operation Right to Know passed it to Leonard Stringfield, who published it in February 1994.

The document opens on the night of 25 August 1974. At 22:07 a US air-defence radar picked up an object over the Gulf of Mexico. "Originally the object was tracked at 2,200 (2,530 mph) knots on a bearing of 325 degrees and at an altitude of 75,000 feet." About 155 miles southeast of Corpus Christi it "decelerated to approximately 1700 (1,955 mph) knots, turned to a heading of 290 degrees, and began a slow descent." It crossed into Mexico about 40 miles south of Brownsville, Texas. "Radar tracked it approximately 500 miles to a point near the town of Coyame." There, "the object suddenly disappeared from the radar screens."

At about the same time, a small civilian plane that had left El Paso for Mexico City vanished in the same area.

Mexican teams reportedly spotted the wreckage at about 10:35 a.m. the next day. The plane was "almost totally destroyed." Nearby lay a disc "sixteen feet, five inches in diameter, convex on both upper and lower surfaces to the same degree, possessing no visible doors or windows." It was slightly less than five feet thick. "The color was silver, much like polished steel." An irregular hole about twelve inches across marked its surface.

Mexico is said to have refused US help. Fort Bliss assembled a team anyway. At 14:38 three UH-1 Hueys and a Sea Stallion lifted off. The team arrived at 16:53 in biohazard suits. "All of the Mexican recovery team members were apparently dead." No cause was ever given. At 17:14 the disc was lifted out and the site was destroyed "with high-yield explosives." By 17:46 the helicopters were back in US airspace. Where the disc went next depends on the teller. One version names Atlanta, Georgia. Another says the CIA took it.

Noe Torres and Rubén Uriarte went looking. They spoke to hundreds of people around Coyame and found few eyewitnesses. They did find debris and signs of fire. A Coyame resident, Leandro Valeriano, was photographed examining wreckage. Their books, Mexico's Roswell and The Coyame Incident, carried the case to UFO Hunters and the History Channel's UFO Files.

Stringfield himself was torn. He called the report "authoritatively written, using correct military terminology." He also wrote: "Despite the risk of publishing a bunch of baloney, the full text of the report is reproduced herewith."

Kevin Randle noted that "almost nothing is known about it including the name of the pilot." A missing flight would have left records. None have been found. Robert Bitto of Mexico Unexplained found that locals had mixed the tale up with a 1967 missile crash and a 1980 drug-plane crash. Historians tie the reports to the 1974 crash of a Cessna involved in drug trafficking.

Randle summarized it this way: "The evidence is thin but it demands more data." No radar record, no government file and no named pilot have ever surfaced. Still, the name stuck. Mexico's Roswell.