Daniel Fry's White Sands Saucer Ride

Daniel Fry worked as a technician for Aerojet General at White Sands Proving Ground, New Mexico. July 4, 1950. Fry had missed the last bus to the Independence Day celebrations in Las Cruces. The air conditioning in his quarters had failed. So at about 8:30 in the evening he walked out along a dirt road past the rifle range at the base of the Organ Mountains.

Then the stars began to go out, one after another. Something dark was coming down towards him. It came in at no more than fifteen or twenty miles per hour and seemed to "glide in as lightly as a bit of thistle down." It settled "without the slightest bump or jar." Apart from the crackling of brush beneath it, it made no sound.

Fry described an ovate spheroid about thirty feet in diameter, flattened so that it stood about sixteen feet high. Close up it was polished silver metal with a very slight violet iridescence. Then a voice spoke: "Better not touch the hull, pal, it's still hot!" Fry stumbled backwards into the sand. "Take it easy, pal, you're among friends."

The speaker called himself A-lan. Fry never saw him. A-lan said he was speaking from a mother ship 900 miles up and controlling this uncrewed cargo carrier remotely. He had spent two years learning Earth's language and idiom so he could sound like a "Yank."

An oval hatch opened on four seats like body contour chairs. Fry went aboard. The craft climbed to 35 miles at around 8,000 mph, then dropped to 20 miles over New York City. A beam made the door transparent.

The city below was "a vast array of millions of blue white diamonds, scintillating and coruscating against a black velvet background." The round trip took about 30 minutes. Back in the desert, the craft "leaped upward as though it had been released from a catapult." It showed a band of orange light that ran through the spectrum before it disappeared.

A strong sense of depression settled over Fry. His own technical work suddenly seemed pitifully obsolete. He said he kept the story to himself for four years. In 1954 he published The White Sands Incident and began lecturing. In 1955 he founded Understanding, Inc., which peaked at about 1,500 paid members.

In June 1954 Fry took a polygraph on Paul Coates's television show Confidential File. Examiner Chris Gugas concluded: "In my opinion Mr. Fry HAS BEEN DEFINITELY DECEPTIVE." Fry replied that he had answered some preliminary questions falsely on purpose, and that the operator could not tell true answers from false.

Fry later said the flight really took place on July 4, 1949, and he repeated this at a 1989 MUFON conference. His later films of a spinning craft over Merlin, Oregon, are widely judged fakes. Timothy Good said the object looked like lampshades suspended with fine twine. Even Randy Morrison, who defends Fry, concedes the films were faked. From the night itself there are no photos, no radar returns and no physical traces.

Fry became a fixture of the contactee circuit and attended George Van Tassel's Giant Rock conventions for about 20 years. His friendly voice from the sky fits the 1950s pattern of Space Brothers with a message of peace, alongside George Adamski. He died in Alamogordo, New Mexico, on December 20, 1992. The ride to New York still rests on his word alone.