Before Roswell ~ New Mexico UFO Crash of 1945

 the-wanderling.com
 
“In August of 1945, two years before the Roswell incident, there was a similar if not parallel UFO crash not far from the small New Mexico community of San Antonio. My uncle, who witnessed the object come down became friends with La Paz because of it, which inturn led to him helping La Paz with the Roswell investigation.”    

ROSWELL 1947 AND DR. LINCOLN LA PAZ: Was He There?

My first meeting with famed astronomer and meteorite hunter Dr. Lincoln La Paz came about because my Uncle and La Paz knew each other.  The two of them had met two years before, in August of 1945, a meeting that came about through a series of unrelated events connected together by my uncle. Once connected, because of security reasons, they eventually came under the scrutiny of Dr. La Paz and his team.  

On Monday, July 16, 1945, a few weeks before their first meeting, during the very early pre-dawn hours my Uncle, who lived in New Mexico, was startled, along with many others no doubt, by a huge flash of light that filled the whole of the night sky in a giant half bubble arc across the desert toward White Sands. Unknown to him at the time, that flash was associated with the first atomic device ever set off on the face of the earth. Shortly after that test, on August 6, 1945, the Japanese city of Hiroshima was destroyed by a nuclear bomb followed three days later by a second one on Nagasaki. 

Reading about the destructive force, radiation fallout, and the accompanying brilliant flash resulting from the bombings it wasn’t long before he put together, along with all the rumors, that the light he had observed was the product of an atomic bomb test.  In those days my uncle was not yet the notorious biosearcher he would eventually become with several plant species named after him. 

Nevertheless, even though early in the biosearching game, because of the strong ties he had forged over the years with a wide spectrum of the area’s Native American population and a deeply dedicated interest in their use of specific or sacred plants for medicinal and ritual purposes, he wanted to investigate how any actual or potential radioactive fallout from the bomb may have adversely impacted indiginous plants. So said, he decided to field test similar and like plants both in and out of the fallout zones as quick as possible then come back over a period of time and compare how they and their offspring withstood or modified in some fashion from normal states of growth.  After determining through gut-instinct and a few charts predicting the areas most likely to have the strongest and weakest radioactive outflow — from prevailing winds and such — he began biosearching in a series of ever widnening concentric rings beyond the fence outward from ground zero. Mid August of 1945 found him well into the rugged terrain on BLM land some 25 miles or so from ground zero, not far from the small New Mexico community of San Antonio. To beat the heat of the noonday sun my uncle had been doing his testing in both the early morning hours or near sunset, holing up the rest of day among the rocks and cliffsides away from the sun. 

On one of those mid August days, after spending a good part of the afternoon in a relative cool shaded area, including a nice siesta induced nap, my uncle gathered up his stuff and headed out to continue his biosearching, slowly wending his way on foot some distance into a section that was too rough for his vehicle. As the day was edging toward dusk he was jarred from his concentration first by the feeling of an intense blast of heat followed by a deep chest shuddering air-vibration caused by a huge, weird-shaped flying object, seemingly made of metal and whining like a sick vacuum cleaner that streaked in out of the sky almost directly overhead on a slightly down-angle from parallel to the ground. The object, as it crossed out of sight barely maintaining its height advantage above the undulating canyons and rock strewn hills, all the while traveling at an ultra high speed, by the sound of it, slammed hard, and somewhat explosively so, possibly before it even hit, into the rocks and soil some distance away.    

Thinking it might have been an airplane, although it didn’t look like any airplane he had ever seen, with a good chance of injured passengers or crew, he felt he should see what happened and lend assist if possible. He backtracked to his truck, gathered up a few provisions, water, and a medical kit and headed in the direction of the suspected crash. By the time he reached the ridge just above the object the sun had gone down beyond the horizon and it was starting to get dark, too dark he felt to scale down to the craft so, seeing no sign of life or bodies, he camped for the night on the ridge. The next day just as the sun was beginning to rise, albeit still in the morning darkness, he folded up his stuff into a small pile and started down the canyon wall. Part way down and unsure of his footness in the subdued pre-dawn light, and highly unusual for him, he misplaced a step and slipped, wedging his foot somehow in a rock crevice. The more he tried to free himself the more wedged it seemed to get. 

When he stopped to catch his breath and refigure his options after a rather long and intense unsucessful effort to work his foot loose, with the sun beginning to beat down, he noticed that several people had worked their way down to the crash site from the opposite side. He yelled trying to get their attention with no response. He scrounged around in his over shoulder bag and dug out a survival mirror, flashing a signal toward them that got their attention. He waved his arms and yelled again and in doing so one of the men started up the ridge wall toward him. The man moved a few large rocks my uncle was unable to reach and pushed with the full strength of his legs on another and within a few minutes my uncle was freed, albeit with a highly bruised ankle.  After thanking the man and telling him how grateful he was for the assist my uncle told him who he was and why he was there. 

The man said they were there for basically the same reason. He said two of the others with them had been on horseback searching for lost livestock the day before and in the process of doing so saw the object flash across the sky then crash. After the two reached the site and saw the object from above the arroyo they returned home and related what they saw and heard. They decided to go back the next day and investigate. He told my uncle there didn’t seem to be any signs of life or bodies, and for sure, the thing didn’t seem to be an airplane even though it was obvious it was airborne just before it hit the ground. Even though my uncle was able to see the size and shape of the object quite clearly and the fact that it “slid” quite some distance before it came to rest partially buried against the canyon wall from his hillside perch, there was something so strange about it he really wanted to see the object up close. Except for being partially buried and a good sized hole that seemed to have been blown out of the curved side angled away from him, the object, if it was an airplane, considering the object’s speed and all the sound and noise he heard the day before, appeared strikingly intact and undamaged. 

However, because of how bad his ankle felt he didn’t want to climb down and back up so he decided he would instead, just return to his truck and come back later when his leg felt better.[1]  He had only just returned to his home near Santa Fe and soaked his ankle for most of the night when an hour or so after sunrise two men in civilian clothes came to the door flashing badges and telling him he had to go with them. 

They took him to Los Alamos in an area within the secure complex that had it’s own second set of gates and guards. He was held overnight without explanation or charges then put in a small room by himself where, over a period of time he was questioned several different times by several different people. Questions about why he had been out there in the first place. Questions about his interest in the outflow patterns of the radioactive fallout. Questions about how he even knew about such things. In the third or fourth interrogation session it came up that not only did my uncle know Albert Einstein they were also friends.  No sooner had my uncle mentioned he knew Albert Einstein and that the two were actually friends than a man burst into the room and started asking him all kinds of questions about Einstein and the nature of their relationship, how they met, etc. After a few minutes the man took the receiver off the hook of a phone mounted on the wall, dialed three or four numbers, stretched the long cord out into the hallway letting the door close back on the cord so my uncle couldn’t hear. 

Then, about five minutes after the man put the phone back on the hook and left another man came into the room and told the interrogator he could go, that they were “done here” and my uncle was free to go. As he was being escorted down the hall by two “MP types” toward the main door and presumably some sort of transportation home, the man walked with him. He asked my uncle if he would be willing to join him for coffee in one of the base cafeterias and continue discussing Einstein “off the record.” 

For some reason, liking the man, even after, for no known reason, being treated rather harshly by some throughout the process, my uncle agreed.  The man turned out to be Dr. Lincoln La Paz and the jump from the interrogation room to coffee off the record was the start of a long friendship. After that they crossed paths many, many times — and of those many times at least three that I recall when I was present.[2]  The first time I met La Paz it was a year later, maybe two, after their 1945 meeting. My uncle and I were camping-out along the crest of Meteor Crater exploring one of the ancient pit houses along the rim. My uncle had decided to stay a few days after having met with a long time friend of his, the famed meteorite hunter Dr. H.H. Nininger the founder of the first meteorite museum in the world. 

In those days Nininger was in the process of turning a 1930s stone building called the observatory, located on old Route 66 within eyesight of the crater, into a museum. During the time we were there Nininger visited our camp on the edge of the rim several times. On one of those occasions Nininger met La Paz, who either came to visit my uncle or just happened upon us. Matter of fact my uncle spent most of the time keeping the two them at arms length as they had strong differing views as to how meteorites should be collected and if they should or even could be “sold” to the public. 

True, I was just a boy at the time and didn’t get the full and total gist of the situation, but La Paz felt they should not be, Nininger held an opposite view and they discussed it at length, sometimes very animated and loud. They both also had opposite views as to Native Americans legends about the crater and if it was an off limits sacred place or not. Nininger thought it was. La Paz felt otherwise and cited the pit houses as proof. Nininger said they were ceremonial in nature and intended only for rituals and such. Again, La Paz felt otherwise. A few years later La Paz launched an investigation to prove his point.[3]  The second time La Paz crossed paths with my uncle with me present happened a few days after we had camped out under the stars somewhere in the New Mexico desert near Fort Sumner on the night of, it is thought, Friday, July 4, 1947. Around midnight my uncle, who had not fallen asleep as I had, saw a brilliant meteor-like object streak across the night sky arcing downward toward the horizon, all the while dissipating a string of quickly extinguishing small glowing hunks or particles dropping in it’s wake. Thinking it was a meteor and that his friend La Paz might be interested in a fresh strike, my uncle began an effort to contact him.  In that it was long before the days of cell phones it took a couple of days for the two to connect. La Paz informed my uncle that from all indications whatever he saw streak across the sky that night it was NOT a meteor nor a known aircraft of some type but an object not to dissimilar than what he had come across near San Antonio. Whatever it was, after talking with La Paz my uncle was chaffing at the bit to go to the suspected impact site and see for himself if there was any truth behind the so called Hieroglyphic Writing that La Paz heard rumors of as being on some of the metal scraps.  When my uncle and La Paz met up after the phone call it was along some deep-rutted dirt road out in the middle of nowhere. La Paz was traveling with his wife and two daughters, the three of which stayed in the car while La Paz got out. He and my uncle walked around a few yards off the road and into the scrubbrush talking for awhile. Maybe twenty minutes into their conversation a military jeep without any numbers, markings or insignias came bouncing across the desert toward us with two men, one a GI, who was driving, the other dressed in civilian garb sitting on the passenger side. Both joined La Paz and my uncle. Without me having a clue as to what was going on my uncle walked over to our truck followed by the civilian and pulled a canvas shoulder bag from a box in the pick-up bed along with a pair of binoculars and a couple of canteens, one on a WW II pistol belt I always wore when we were in the field. As he motioned me toward him, the civilian got into our truck, started the engine, turned the vehicle around and drove away on the same road we came in on. La Paz got in his car and drove off as well. My uncle and I got into the jeep with the GI and headed toward the debris field.[4]  On July 10th, 1947, La Paz reported seeing a huge eliptical-shaped object flying in the sky, interestingly enough, near Fort Sumner. In a Life Magazine article dated April 7, 1952 (Incident 2, page 84 (see)) La Paz, who is left unnamed in the article, is quoted as saying: “The object ‘exhibited a sort of wobbling motion’ and then disappeared behind some clouds. It reappeared and ‘projected against the dark clouds gave the strongest impression of self-luminosity.’” The object then moved slowly from south to north and two and a half minutes behind a cloudbank. 

According to La Paz’s calculations, confirmed by his wife, the object was huge, as large or larger than the infamous “Battle of Los Angeles” object as presented in UFO Over Los Angeles seen by thousands in February, 1942, being some 235 feet long and 100 feet thick, its horizontal speed ranged between 120 and 180 miles per hour and its vertical rise between 600 and 900 miles per hour. (NOTE: according to reports as cited in the above link, the Los Angeles UFO was, however, thought to be closer to the size of a Zeppelin at 800 feet in length).  See: COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND ASTRONAUTICS, U.S. House of Representatives, July 29, 1968, Case 21.   The next time I saw La Paz was about two months later. He contacted my uncle to join him in figuring out the trajectory of the object that crashed and I tagged along. The idea by La Paz was to have my uncle, the bio-searcher that he was, determine if and where any of the growth may have been moved, removed or replanted.[5] It was a long and time consuming job but with my uncle’s information along with the information gathered by other team members, the direction along the debris field was roughly figured out giving La Paz an arrow. Retracing several miles in both directions of the suspected trejectory, both in the air and on the ground, in an effort to confirm their conclusions, they discovered a previously unknown and unspoiled touchdown point five miles from the debris field where the sand had somehow been crystallized. The plants and scrub brush growing along the periphery of the glass-like sand and gravel were not so much burnt or scorched as they were more-or-less trying to return to a natural growth stage after being severely wilted, apparently from whatever crystallized the sand two months earlier. As well, the top portion of the sand and gravel in a definite north-south orientation in the major width between the scrub brush seemed to give off a very slight, practically non-observable blue hue in the bright sunlight. The hue was caused by what appeared to be a transparent turquoise-like patina, almost as though a fine veneer or micro-thin spray had fallen over the top surface of the sand. The fused glass site, the debris field and the Capitan Mountains site were found to be all perfectly aligned. The following, describing the aspects of it all, is found in the source so cited:

“(The biosearcher) in observing the plant lean-bias and reading the surface direction of the heat bite on the leaves and stalks and discounting the possibility of fulgurites caused by lightning strikes in the sand, suspects an extremely hot but very quick touchdown or possible low pass-by by the object, suggesting it may have been, except for some minor lift ability, out of control or not EVEN controlled. He is almost certain the debris pieces at the Brazel ranch belong to a totally separate object, but even so there still remains the possibility that this one was shedding or jettisoning similar parts or even breaking apart as it went along. Having either lost its power source or not having one, thus not being able to change speed, direction, or climb sufficiently, the main body, possibly still traveling hundreds of miles per hour, crosses the basically flat desert terrain within seconds, all the while radiating heat. Failing in an effort to gain sufficient altitude to clear the crest of the oncoming mountains, the object bounces hard into the short rough upslope of the landscape with a forced reduction of speed through the trees and dirt, sliding sideways into the rocks and boulders on the side of the Capitan Mountains, some thirty-five or so odd miles to the south southeast.”

Although I wasn’t present, ten years later, circa 1957, a friendly discussion between La Paz and the bio-searcher circulating around their combined efforts at Roswell ensued. According to my uncle the meeting occurred late one afternoon through evening at Clines Corners at the intersection of Route 285 and old Route 66 (now I-40) some 60 miles east of Albuquerque. 

In conversation with the bio-searcher La Paz concluded the object that went down in the dark that night over New Mexico was an unoccupied probe from another planet. My uncle speculated at most it was probably a Sputnik type thing, an artificial satellite, which at the time of the conversation was a relatively new reality for almost everybody, but some ten years before, in 1947, was something nobody ever heard of — AND probably why nobody could figure out what it was. If one were to speculate now with information available to us today there is a good chance both were quasi-right because three years later there came to be known an object called a Bracewell Probe, a sort of combination of both of their theories [6] More than likely its orbit began decaying, it started dragging the upper atmosphere, then broke apart scattering the lightweight and apparently what was left over unburnable material, including a few pieces described as I-beams inscribed with Hieroglyphic Writing, all over the desert floor. The much larger and heavier object, possibly a shuttle craft, entry vehicle, remote control drone, or unmanned search unit of some sort, ending up on the side of the Capitan Mountains, going down for unknown reasons in an effort to locate or retrieve the downed satellite — AND no doubt, the primary reason for so much radar activity reported over the central New Mexico area in the days preceding the crash. The bio-searcher suggests to La Paz it was quite possible the craft may have landed previously, and maybe even on more than one occasion to pick up or obtain the most important material or parts, thus the reason why only so much of nothing but scraps and pieces remained at the debris field.(see)   AND NOW THIS:  

There must be something to the law of unintended consequences. The original intent of me writing all of the above was to layout for readers of my works a simple comprehensive overview of how my uncle and Dr Lincoln La Paz met and became friends in the first place. In the very opening paragraphs I state that their first meeting came about through a series of unrelated events connected together by my uncle that once connected eventually came to the attention of La Paz. Then I go about laying out those events. 

However, whatever good intentions I may have had, that is, how La Paz and my uncle met and became friends seems to have been lost in mix, being fully overshadowed by my uncle’s 1945 San Antonio New Mexico UFO crash encounter. The way people jump up and down about it, it is almost as though what I have written ends with the San Antonio encounter and therefore, nothing presented about La Paz and my uncle following the encounter amounts to much. Like I continue to tell people, except for a few succulent tid bits of information I offer in Kensington Stone, other that what I have presented above I cannot add much more to it. As I say in Footnote [1]:       

“My uncle died in 1989 and to his knowledge, from the time of having first seen the object until the time of his death, even though he personally knew a road had been constructed within a week or two to the site and the object apparently removed using the same road — which would entail a great amount of forethought and logistics, not to mention time, money, men, and equipment — no one else had ever come forward and said they saw anything remotely related to the event.”    Thus ends one person’s 1945 San Antonio New Mexico UFO crash encounter.