April 18, 1962 —
Evening. A red, glowing object is first seen at a great height over Oneida, New York, heading west silently. There are reports from Kansas and Colorado. NORAD radar picks up the object; ADC alerts several bases, including Nellis AFB near Las Vegas, Nevada. Fighters are scrambled from Luke AFB near Phoenix, Arizona, and the jets are possibly heard over Nephi, Utah, after the object passes overhead. Capt. Herman Gordon Shields, flying a C-119 two miles west of Levan, Utah, sees it as a slender object. A man in Silver City, Utah, claims that the object is a glowing ball of light about the size of a soccer ball. He says it is white with a yellowish tint and a bright yellow jagged flame coming from the rear: “As the object passed over Robinson [in Ogden, Utah?], it slowed down in [the] air, and after, [a] gasping sound was heard, the object spurted ahead again. After this procedure was repeated three or four times, the object arched over and began descending to earth after which the object turned bluish color and then burned out or went dark. After the object began to slow down it began to wobble or fishtail in its path.” Several people see the object over Eureka, Utah, apparently crashing and interrupting electrical service from a power plant close to the landing site. It is described as a “glowing, orange oval which emitted a low, whirring sound.” It takes off a few minutes later, continuing to the west. The object lights up the streets of Reno, Nevada, and then turns to Las Vegas. It blares brightly like a “tremendous, flaming sword” over Nellis AFB and then disappears from their radar scopes at 10,000 feet. Witnesses say the object is traveling almost horizontally northeast of Las Vegas until a final explosion occurs from the direction of Mesquite, Nevada. Sheriff’s deputy Walter Bun, who leads the search and rescue unit, moves the unit into the Spring Mountain area in jeeps to search for wreckage. They search through the night, and when the sun comes up they continue using aircraft. They do not find anything of importance except some ashes that might easily be the remains of a campfire started by a hunter some weeks earlier. When no one reports a downed or missing aircraft, Bun and the other deputies call off the search. The object seems to have changed direction, because at Reno it passes west to east, in Utah it is seem going southeast to northwest, and at Nephi it travels west.
The duration of the sighting, from New York to Nevada, is only 32 minutes, giving a speed of 4,500 mph, below the speed of meteors. On May 8, the Air Force sends Hynek and Lt. Col. Robert Friend to Utah with Douglas M. Crouch, chief of criminal investigation at Hill AFB, south of Ogden, Utah. They determine it is a bolide. Blue Book lists it as two sightings: a multiple radar sighting at Nellis on April 18 with no visual (despite hundreds of observers in Las Vegas), and a bolide over Utah that it claims occurs on April 19. In reality, the Utah and Nevada sightings are only minutes apart (8:15 p.m. Mountain Time). However, there is quite a bit of information from numerous sources concerning this major incident, including Project Blue Book documents, and now possible confirmation by a radar man at ATIC. The case is also not explained in a Blue Book monthly sighting listing for April 1962. It is interesting that every one of these states except Utah has or was in the process of obtaining ICBM bases: New York (Plattsburg AFB); Kansas, (Forbes AFB and McConnell AFB); Utah (Minuteman production at Air Force Plant 77 at Hill AFB); Idaho (Mountain Home AFB); Montana (Malmstrom AFB); New Mexico (Walker AFB); Wyoming (F. E. Warren AFB); Arizona (Davis Monthan AFB); California (Beale AFB). [Eberhart]
Sources:
“Brilliant Red Explosion Flares in Las Vegas Sky,” Las Vegas (Nev.) Sun, April 19, 1962, pp. 1, 24;
“Meteor Lands in Utah, Lights Western Skies,” Los Angeles Times, April 19, 1962, p. 15;
https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-los-angeles-times/94770755/
“Brilliant Fireball Flashes in Skies,” Salt Lake City Deseret News, April 19, 1962, pp. 1, 5;
https://www.newspapers.com/article/deseret-news/94770911/
https://www.newspapers.com/article/deseret-news/94771052/
“Meteor Startles Reno,” Reno (Nev.) Gazette-Journal, April 19, 1962, p. 1;
https://www.newspapers.com/article/reno-gazette-journal/145614990/
Brad Sparks, Blue Books Unknowns Catalogue, Case 1514, p. 291;
Frank Edwards, Strange World, Ace ed., 1964, pp. 38–41;
Kevin D. Randle, A History of UFO Crashes, Avon, 1995, pp. 79–94;
Kevin Randle, Levelland, 2021, pp. 87–99;
Jerome Clark, The UFO Encyclopedia, 3rd Ed., pp. 333–335;
Jerome Clark, The UFO Encyclopedia, 4th Ed., pp. 370–372, 892;
NICAP, “National Air Defense Alert”;
Francis Ridge, “A Puzzling Radar Incident: An Interview with a Man That Knew Quintanilla”;