When the object passed over Nephi, Utah, people on the ground heard jets following it. The object then landed at Eureka, Utah. Several witnesses saw it as a “glowing, orange oval which emitted a low, whirring sound.” When it landed, it disrupted the electrical service from a nearby power station. It then rose, maneuvered, and headed toward Nevada. It was seen at Reno, then turned south and was spotted somewhat east of Las Vegas, when it went off the radar screens. Many witnesses saw it as a “tremendous flaming sword.” By now, it had been seen by thousands of people. It exploded near Mesquite, Nevada, at which time it was being pursued by armed jet interceptors from Nellis AFB.
The Las Vegas Sun reported the incident in its April 19 edition under the headline, “Brilliant Red Explosion Flares in Las Vegas Sky.” The article broached the UFO topic and mentioned the air force alert in several states. The Clark County sheriff’s office was swamped with calls, investigated the incident, but found nothing of consequence. On May 8, 1962, the air force sent Blue Book chief Robert Friend and J. Allen Hynek to investigate. Their results were quite unsatisfactory. The two did not go to Nevada, but confined themselves to central Utah. Despite their knowledge that jets had pursued the object, they concluded it was a bolide, an especially fiery meteor.
Blue Book ultimately listed the sighting as two separate incidents, in a manner so slippery and misleading that intentional deception seems likely. First, it listed an April 18 multiple radar sighting at Nellis AFB, which it initially labeled as unidentified, then changed to “Insufficient Data for a Scientific Analysis.” The report noted that the object’s speed varied, that it was initially observed at ground level, then disappeared at ten thousand feet. It stated “no visual,” despite the many people in Las Vegas who telephoned the sheriff’s office. The “second” incident, investigated by Hynek and Friend in Utah, was listed as a bolide, and said to occur on April nineteenth. Except that this was uniquely logged in Zulu, or Greenwich Mean Time, which added seven hours and thus gave the wrong date! In reality, the Utah and Nevada sightings occurred within minutes of each other (around 8:15 P.M. Mountain Time or 7:15 P.M. Pacific Time). Even so, the official file on the Utah incident conceded that the power in Eureka was knocked out and that fighters had been scrambled from Nellis AFB.
On September 21, 1962, Maj. C. R. Hart of the air force Public Information Office responded to a letter from a New York State resident about the UFO. Air force records, he said, listed the April 18 Nevada sighting as “insufficient data” but stated that the object’s movement suggested a “U-2 or high balloon.” He also stated that it was “not intercepted or fired upon.” All of the claims and suggestions in this letter were entirely wrong. A U-2 is fast, but not Mach 7 fast, and the idea of a balloon causing the sighting was absurd. Moreover, the juxtaposition of a U-2 and balloon as alternate explanations was nonsensical: their respective movements and speeds were totally distinct.
For the next few years, only Frank Edwards mentioned this incident, and he confined himself to the Sun article. Much later, Kevin Randle dug deeper, interviewed many witnesses, and reviewed the Blue Book files, where he discovered the time discrepancy. Randle also communicated with an anonymous man who claimed to be an officer at Nellis AFB at the time of the crash. He and thirty others, claimed the man, were driven into the desert early the next morning to retrieve the crash debris. They were loaded into a bus with blacked-out windows, but one window was not entirely covered, and the man claimed to have seen a damaged saucer-shaped craft.
Although no independent source has confirmed the story, we may at least acknowledge that an object able to scramble jet interceptors from two air bases, and apparently crashed, would warrant a top-level military retrieval. This much is clear: a UFO did crash or explode near Las Vegas on the evening of April 18, 1962, and the air force hid the event from the public and in its official records. Precisely what crashed remains unknown, but the pursuit of the object by U.S. jets appears to preclude natural phenomenon or American experimental aircraft as the explanation.
UFOS IN AMERICA: 1962
