(Alamogordo Daily News, New Mexico)
Source: NewspaperArchive.com
The whole article:
“ ‘It all happened so fast that I don’t know whether I can give you the
answers you want or not,’ was the way that James Stokes, Alamogordo, opened an interview this morning
relative to the unidentified flying object he saw yesterday afternoon near Orogrande.
‘The whole experience is weird, and very frankly I was scared to death, but
I’ll tell you what I can,’ he said.
Stokes reported that while driving on Highway 54 about 10 miles south of
Orogrande yesterday afternoon [4 November 1957], at 1:10, he noticed that his
car radio began to fade out, and then the engine of his car slowed, and finally
quit.
‘There It Was’
‘I thought it very strange, but did notice that other cars had pulled
off, so I did, too, and the motor of my car quit entirely. I got out of the car
and noticed another fellow pointing toward the sky, so I had a good look
myself. There it was. Coming in from the northeast was the object. It swooped
on toward Orogrande and headed out north. It disappeared quickly. We watched
skyward, and it came in once more on the same path, and headed out north once
more. We watched it until it disappeared, and that is all there is to it.
‘The object was rather egg-shaped, the color of an egg or perhaps
‘mother of pearl’ color, it was definitely a solid, material thing, but there
was no noise, no smoke nor vapor trail.’
Extremely High Speed
Stokes, a veteran of 24 years with the U. S. Navy and now retired from
Naval service, is employed on a classified experimental project at Holloman. He
said that he had lived in Alamogordo
and had been employed at AFMDC for the past 18 months, and that this is the first
time he had ever had such an experience.
‘Judging from the distance the object
covered and the extremely short time it took to cover it, I’d judge that it
must have been traveling at a rate of Mach 1 or Mach 2,’ he said. ‘Again I must
point out that these are purely guesses, and that I was scared, that time was
so short, but there were people from six other cars watching the same thing.
The object appeared to be about 1,500 to 3,000 feet in altitude.
I made this guess based on the heights of the cloud formations that were floating
overhead, and that the object flew into now and then. It must have been about
300 to 500 feet
long and was of material—would have been something like
100-200 feet
in thickness. There were no windows, or observation platforms visible on the
object,’ he continued.
Stokes was reported to have been ‘sunburned’ by the
object. He said that he felt the rising of temperature and that his face was
‘slightly burned.’ However the burns were not serious and were not painful
today. Outside of the heat from the object, Stokes said there was no pain from
the burns.
He also pointed out again that there was no noise from
the object. ‘When it changed directions it didn’t turn, nor bank. It just went
the other way,’ he said. ‘We were able to view it only about two or three
minutes at the most,’ Stokes continued.
Stokes made notes on what he had seen, and even made a diagram of its
location in relation to the mountains to the east and Highway 54. He said he
talked with a Mr. Duncan of Las Cruces,
who took pictures on a 35 [millimeter] camera. He also talked with an Allan
Baker from White Sands Proving Ground, whose auto had also been stalled by the
appearance of the object.
‘I couldn’t give any opinion as to what it was. I just don’t know. First
thought that came to mind was that it was St. Elmo’s fire, but I had seen that
before and never in so large a form as this. I am convinced that its color was
egg-white, that no other colors were visible, and that it was a very
fast-flying object,’ he said.”
My comment:
This is an electromagnetic (EM) interference (stalled cars and radio
signal interference)/medical incident (sunburn) UFO case.
Orogrande, New
Mexico, is located 51 kilometres (32 miles) to the south of
Holloman Air Force Base and White
Sands Missile
Range.
