THE 1962 LAS VEGAS UFO CRASH

by Skylaire Alfvegren

In the wacky world of UFOs, few events are harder to explain away than those of the night of April 18, 1962. Within a span of 32 minutes, an object was reported in the skies from Oneida, New York, all the way to California. Over 1,000 witnesses reported seeing the object over Utah, Montana, Idaho, New Mexico, Wyoming, Arizona and California.

From New York, it was described as a glowing red ball heading west. Over Utah, it was described as either a blue light, or as an incandescent, white-yellow ball with a bright yellow flame trailing behind it. Many witnesses claimed it was accompanied by loud, explosion-like booms. Its brilliant, fiery trail was tracked by The North American Air Defense Command, and Air Force bases were put on alert across the country.

Bob Robinson and Floyd Evans ducked under their pick-up truck south of Eureka, Utah, before it touched down nearby with a brilliant white flash. Robinson claimed he could make out small windows on the object through its almost blinding haze. The object knocked out power in the area, and parts of Utah and Nevada were briefly lit up bright as day. A search party was sent out in Eureka, but no debris was found.

Eureka sheepherders who witnessed the crash were visited by none other than J. Allen Hynek (of Project Bluebook fame). Project Bluebook tried to chock up the object as a rare, exceedingly bright type of meteorite known as a bolide, which seems impossible when you look at the facts. It was tracked by radar and scrambled jets in two locations. (Meteors don’t show up on radar.) It traveled across the night sky at around 4,500 miles an hour, slower than your average meteor. The pilots of at least two airplanes reported the object traveling beneath them. No meteor could sustain such a flight path for thousands of miles!

Captain Herman Gordon Shields was questioned at Hill Air Force Base in Utah, and reported that his “cockpit was illuminated from above… the light intensity increased until we could see objects [on the ground] as bright as day for a radius of five to ten miles. It was bright as daylight.” When the light decreased, the pilot saw “…this object which… was illuminated. It had a long, slender appearance comparable to a cigarette in size, that is, the diameter with respect to the length of the object. The fore part, or the lower part of the object was very bright, intense white such as a magnesium fire. The second half, the aft section, was a clearly distinguishable yellowish color.”

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