The Nevada Fireball: The Las Vegas UFO Crash of 1962

Wednesday, April 18, 1962. Evening. Around 8:15 p.m. local time in Oneida and Cuba, New York, people saw something streaking westward. Some called it a red or blue fireball. Some called it "a red flaming sword." Others saw a long cylindrical shape like a cigarette. Later accounts would speak of thousands of witnesses in ten states.

Over central Utah, Captain Herman Gordon Shields was flying a C-119 at 8,500 feet. "The cockpit was illuminated from above," he recalled. He saw a slender object with "no exhaust, no trail following after it." Its front burned an intense white, like a magnesium fire.

South of Eureka, Bob Robinson and Floyd Evans were in a truck. Robinson thought the flaming object was no higher than five hundred feet. He believed he could see square windows. The engine sputtered. The headlights dimmed. Then the object slowed, arched over and began descending to earth. Betty Robinson remembered a bright light, a loud noise and an electrical smell. "It's something that I'll take to my grave."

In Eureka, a motorist described a glowing orange ball, oval in shape, with a quiet whirring noise. He said it knocked out the lights all over Eureka before climbing out again.

In Las Vegas, Sun photographer Frank Maggio watched "a tremendous flaming sword" moving almost horizontally. It was red, orange and yellow, and bright explosions broke up its trail. A final explosion sent a column of brilliant smoke up from the direction of Mesquite. The next morning's front page read: "BRILLIANT RED EXPLOSION FLARES IN LAS VEGAS SKY."

At Nellis Air Force Base, radar tracked a target for 32 minutes from 7:35 p.m. It flew at around 10,000 feet at varying speeds, heading northeast toward Mesquite. A Nellis spokesman was quoted: "There's only one thing wrong with that: a meteor cannot be tracked on radar. And this object was." NORAD alerted its bases. Jets were reportedly scrambled from Phoenix and Reno. Clark County Deputy Walter Butt led jeep teams into the Spring Mountain area. They searched through the night. Nothing was reported found.

Project Blue Book opened two files. The Nellis radar card was first marked "Unidentified" and later "Insufficient Data for a Scientific Analysis." Maj. C. R. Hart suggested a U-2 or a high balloon, though he said the data could not fully support it. On May 8, 1962, J. Allen Hynek and Lt. Col. Robert Friend spent a day in Utah. Hynek did not visit Nevada. Their verdict was a bolide. NICAP would later list the case as a Blue Book unknown.

Physicist Robert Kadesch of the University of Utah said it "probably was a bolide" that exploded 50 to 60 miles up. The curvature of the earth, he said, made pilots think it was below them. Police said the bright flash triggered photocells, which turned off Eureka's streetlights for a few seconds. Some have also pointed to the Lyrid meteor shower. Yet the timing is awkward. As published, the New York sightings came two hours before those in Utah. And witnesses in the east and the west described opposite directions.

The crash story came later. Kevin Randle found the Sun article on microfilm and told the story in A History of UFO Crashes in 1995. Since 2008, Scott Holloway has interviewed witnesses and families. He has used mining records to point toward a possible crash site near Bunkerville. Preston Dennett included the case in UFOs Over Nevada. The night of April 18, 1962 is still debated. Many witnesses saw it, and a radar track that never quite fit the verdict still stands in the files.