The Equis Files

The Southwest has long been a hot spot for UFO activity. Perhaps it’s the wide-open skies, or the thin mountain air, or the abundance of military air assets, but for whatever reason, mysterious sightings have been regular occurrences around El Paso and Southern New Mexico. This was especially true during the golden age of flying saucers, just after Word War II through the 1950s. Today, we look back at the region’s best alleged visits from outer space from that era.

1947: The Flying Disc Craze

On June 24, 1947, amateur pilot Kenneth Arnold kicked off the modern era of UFO sightings when he claimed to have seen nine “saucer-like” aircraft flying past Mount Rainier. The term “flying saucer” was born and sightings exploded across the country, particularly in the Southwest.

The mania peaked with the infamous crash in Roswell, New Mexico where debris recovered was initially reported to be from a “flying disc.” The debris was later determined to be from a weather balloon.

The military tried to quash UFO rumors but it was too late, the flying disc craze had captured El Paso. Multiple sightings were reported throughout the summer.

Officials explained away the phenomenon as mass hysteria or military testing. High altitude balloons that released tinfoil devices for radar testing was given as one possible explanation, but not everyone was buying it.

Top secret testing by the government was not ruled out as a possibility.

“We are playing around with all sorts of freak things,” admitted Col. Alfred Kalberer, an intelligence officer with the Eighth Air Force.

If the discs did belong to the government, they were not recognizing international boundaries. Some were seen flying into Mexico. One might have crashed south of the border, although it was more likely a meteorite.

The military checked it out just to be sure, supported by Mexican cavalry on horseback. The search turned up no evidence of the crash.

1950: I’m Your Venus

After a lull, UFO activity picked back up in 1950 as a second disc epidemic threatened the Borderland. The Air Force sent jets scrambling in search of strange objects, exciting the downtown El Paso crowds.

This time, Venus was given as the likeliest explanation. The planet was particularly close to Earth that spring, to the point where it was visible during the daytime.

While Venus explained most sightings, not all were satisfied. Venus couldn’t have been the ball shaped object seen swinging side to side before zooming out of sight.

Jerry Moss, a student at Texas Western College, was unconvinced what he saw was Venus or an Air Force experiment. He told of his experience in the student paper.

“The thing I observed was a solid, massive entity, apparently circular from my point of view,” he wrote. “It moved smoothly and noiselessly.”

1952: UFOs in Technicolor

By 1952, flying saucers were part of the public imagination and hoaxes were widespread. The El Paso Herald-Post used photos of a pie plate to show just how easy it was to pull off a hoax.

Hoax or not, flying saucer season returned in September of 1952, this time in technicolor, as the El Paso Times put it.

The Times switchboard was flooded with calls reporting a bright red object in the sky over South El Paso. A later report said it was a long object, yellow or white in color, moving slowly to Ysleta. The U. S. Weather Bureau conveniently claimed it had released a weather balloon in the area that evening.

The next year, the military got serious about the UFO situation. Biggs Field was provided a diffraction grading camera to capture images of any unidentified objects. The camera was equipped with dual lenses, with one lens designed specially to identify the nature and source of lights.

1957: Fire in the Sky

Meanwhile, across the state in Levelland, just outside of Lubbock, one of the most infamous UFO incidents occurred. A large bright object flew over the highway, causing car engines to fail. Some said the object was egg shaped, others described it like a torpedo. The event drew national attention, but were similar events to the east overlooked? Around the same time, an El Paso couple claimed to have seen three glowing objects near Las Cruces that they believed to be connected.

An even more spectacular sighting occurred near Alamogordo where an engineer from Holloman Air Force Base claimed a strange glowing object caused his car battery to steam and left him with a severe sunburn. The engineer said his car’s radio faded as the object approach then the engine gave out. He noticed several other cars had been stopped on the highway and the drivers, most of who were engineers or technicians from White Sands, were getting out of their cars and looking to the sky.

“As it passed at its closet point I could feel a kind of heat wave, but there was no sound,” the engineer said.

Ball lightning or St. Elmo’s fire was given as the most likely explanation.

Beyond the Infinite

At the end of the fifties, UFO sightings remained a cultural sensation.

Holloman Air Force Base and White Sands Missile Range continued to be a major draw for extraterrestrial visitors. One visit in 1958 was photographed by a government employee and released by the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization.

A couple years later, a “bright green object trailing orange flame” streaked across the skies of Southern New Mexico and was investigated by Air Force officials.

At the dawn of the sixties, spacecraft design may have moved on from the traditional saucer. An El Paso woman spotted a flying arrowhead.

“It was huge - bigger than any aircraft we have, and it seemed to be made of some soft material like parachute fabric,” the woman said.

History may not repeat itself, but like Hollywood, it loves sequels and reboots. As a new arms and space race heats up, UFO sightings have returned, but with a new name, better suited for modern, more sophisticated audiences: Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, or UAPs. Rest assured, we have top men working on it right now.