18 March 1950
(Farmington Daily Times, New Mexico)
Source: NewspaperArchive.com
The whole article:
“For the third consecutive day flying saucers have been reported over Farmington. And on each
of the three days their arrival here was reported between 11 and noon.
Three persons called the Daily Times office to report seeing strange
objects in the air just before noon.
Persons along Main
[Street] once
again once again could be seen looking skyward and pointing.
High winds and dust storm prevented clear
vision.
______
Fully half of this town’s population still is certain today that it saw
space ships or some strange aircraft–hundreds of them–zooming through the skies
yesterday.
Estimates of the number ranged from ‘several’ to more than 500. Whatever
they were, they caused a major sensation in this community, which lies only 110
air miles northwest of the huge Los Alamos
atomic installation.
The objects appeared to play tag high in the air. At times they streaked
away at almost unbelievable speeds. One witness who took a triangulation
sighting on one of the objects estimated its speed at about 1,000 miles an hour,
and estimated its size as approximately twice that of a B-29.
Farmington residents stood in the streets yesterday watching the first reported
mass ‘flying saucer’ flight ever sighted. Traffic was slowed to avoid hitting
sky gazers. The office of the Farmington Daily Times was deluged with calls
from persons who saw the objects.
A Red Leader
Scores described the objects as silvery discs. A number agreed they saw
one that was red in color – bigger and faster, and apparently the leader.
Clayton J. Boddy, 32, business manager of the Farmington
[Daily] Times and former Army Engineers captain in Italy, was one
of those who saw the startling objects.
Boddy was on Broadway when ‘all of a sudden I noticed a few moving
objects high in the sky.’
‘Moments later there appeared what seemed to be about 500 of them,’
Boddy continued. He could not estimate their size or speed, but said they
appeared to be about 15,000
feet high.
Boddy’s accout was confirmed by Joseph C. and Francis C. Kalloff [or Kelloff], retail
grocers from Antonito, Colo., who were in Farmington to inspect the site of a
proposed new store, and by Bob Foutz and John Burrell of Farmington. The
Kellofs [or Kalloffs] said the objects appeared to be flying in formation.
One of the most impressive accounts came from Harold F. Thatcher, head
of the Farmington
unit of Soil Conservation service. Thatcher made a triangulation on one of a
number flying craft. He said if it had been a B-29 it would have been 20,000 feet high and
travelling more than 1000
miles per hour.
Knows Engineering
‘I’m not a professional engineer,’ Thatcher said, ‘but I have engineers
working under me and I know a little engineering, enough to know how to work
out a rough triangulation on an object.’
Thatcher emphatically denied an earlier report that the objects could
have been small pieces of cotton fuzz floating in the atmosphere.
‘It was not cotton,’ he said. ‘I saw several pieces of cotton fuzz
floating around in the air at the time, but I was not sighting on any cotton.’
The ‘cotton’ report was started by State Patrolman Andy Andrews, who quoted
several Farmington
residents as asserting it was cotton
they saw. The residents denied Andrews’ report.
The first reports of flying saucers were noted a few minutes before 11 a. m. yesterday. For a full
hour thereafter people deluged the Times office with reports of the objects.
A second large-scale sighting occurred at 3 p. m. At that time Mrs.
Wilson Jones, 27, and Mrs. Roy Hicks, 33, housewives, reported seeing the
objects to the north of Farmington,
flying in perfect formation. Others reported the same sight.
Johnny Eaton 29, a
real estate and insurance salesman, and Edward Brooks, 24, an employee of the
Perry Smoak garage, were the first to report the same sight.
Not Airplanes
Brooks, a B-29 tail gunner during the war, said he was positive the
objects sighted were not airplanes. ‘The very
maneuvering of the things couldn’t be that of modern aircraft,’ he said.
John Bloomfield, another employee of Smoak’s garage, said the objects he
saw travelled at a speed that appeared to him to be about 10 times faster than
that of jet planes. In addition, he said, the objects frequently made
right-angle turns.
‘They appeared to be coming at each other head-on,’ he related. ‘At the
last second, one would veer at right angles downward. One saucer would pass
another ahead and then immediately the one to the rear would zoom into the
lead.’
Marlow Webb, another garage employee, said the objects to the naked eye
appeared to be about eight inches in diameter as seen from the ground. He
described them as about the size of a dinner plate.
‘They flew sideways, on edge and at every conceivable angle,’ he said.
‘This is what made it easy to determine that they were saucer-shaped.’
None of the scores of reports told of any vapor trail or engine noise.
Nor did anyone report any windows or other markings on the craft.
In general Farmington
accepted the phenomenon calmly, although it was reported that some women
employees of a laundry became somewhat panicky.
Opinion Divided
Opinion was somewhat divided among those who saw the objects as to
whether they were from another planet or were some new craft of our own
nation’s devising. Some expressed the opinion the entire incident was the
fulfilment of a Bible prophecy.
From sifting all reports, the Farmington
[Daily] Times
compiled this ‘timetable of sightings:
1. 10:15 a. m., five to nine ‘saucers’ zoomed over the town’s business
area for 10 minutes before moving out of sight to the northeast.
2. 10:00 a. m. [it is probable that the time is
incorrect], report of ‘hundreds’ seen west of town.
3. 10:30 a. m., red ‘saucers’ seen over town.
[4.] 10:35 a. m., three objects staged ‘dog fight’ over town.
5. 11:15 a. m., clearest view of a large number of ‘saucers.’
6. 11:30 a. m., all disappeared.
7. 3 p. m., fleet of ‘hundreds’ seen flying in formation to the
southwest from the northeast.”
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(Farmington Daily Times/thinkaboutitdocs.com
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Farmington, New Mexico
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Satellite photo of Farmington, New Mexico (tageo.com)
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