UFO sightings at White Sands Missile Range | UFO CHRONICLE – 1957

UFO Sightings on November 3, 1957

By Kevin Randle A Different Perspective 12-21-14

      In my quest to verify UFO information that has been reprinted and analyzed for years, and as I was working on my last UFO book, I began looking at the UFO sightings at White Sands Missile Range on November 3, 1957. To put this into context, the Levelland sightings took place during the evening and night of November 2. About the time the sightings were ending in Levelland, they were beginning at White Sands some 250 miles away. Those who made the first reports in New Mexico had not heard of the sightings in Texas and were unaware of what was happening.

Two MPs on patrol out near the Trinity Site, on the northern edge of the missile range saw something strange. In a sworn statement given to his commanding officer written on the day of the event, November 3, Glenn Toy said:

At about 0238 – 0300 Sunday Morning [November 3, 1957] I, CPL X [Glenn H. Toy] and PFC Y [James Wilbanks] were on patrol in Range Area when we noticed a very bright object high in the sky. We were proceeding north toward South Gate and object kept coming down toward the ground. Object stopped approximately fifty (50) yards from the ground and went out and nothing could be seen. A few minutes later object became real bright (like the sun) then fell in an angle to the ground and went out. Object was approximately seventy-five (75) to 100 yards in diameter and shaped like an egg. Object landed by bunker area approximately three (3) miles from us. Object was not seen again. /END OF STATEMENT

Wilbanks also gave a statement to his commander. Later Toy would be interviewed by an Air Force investigator but Wilbanks was unavailable. According to the files, he was on a three-day pass. Thinking about it, and knowing what I know about Army regulations, this made no sense to me. A three-day pass has a limited travel radius because the Army didn’t want soldiers attempting to travel farther than was safe. They didn’t want soldiers killed in traffic accidents. Besides that the soldier had to leave contact information. Had the Army wanted him to return, they could have gotten him back so that the Air Force could interview him. Why hadn’t that been done?

According to one source who had been there in 1957, Wilbanks was not available because he was in the hospital, the result of the sighting. That information was kept out of the Air Force file and to cover the point, the story of the three-day pass was created.

For those who have only bothered to look at the Air Force file on the case, we see that these two soldiers were young, Toy was 21 (according to one document in the Project Blue Book files) at the time and Wilbanks younger. The Air Force thought that discussions of flying saucers might have influenced their reports by, according to the Air Force records, “the famous Levelland case,” though nothing had been reported prior to Toy and Wilbanks’ sighting. Both suggested they had heard nothing about this until after the event.

The Air Force eventually solved the sighting. According to the Project card, Toy and Wilbanks were “very young (18 20), impressionable & on duty in a lonely, isolated desert post. Interviewers agreed that their sightings were magnified out of proportion.” According to the Air Force, it was the moon.

To get to that point, the Air Force ignored the information from the witnesses which suggested that the object was close to the ground. They ignored the estimate of the size and that there were references on the ground to help Toy and Wilbanks in those estimates. It wasn’t as if the object was a pinpoint of light in a dark sky with no points of reference.

While it seems that the Air Force made a solid investigation, they actually spent little time on it, sent a single officer to White Sands, and then slapped an explanation on it as quickly as possible. Reinhold Schmidt who claimed to have been taken on-board a UFO that had landed in Nebraska in the days that followed the White Sands sightings, was interviewed by officers from the Continental Air Defense Command and Army Intelligence. For some reason they thought this case more important, though Schmidt had a shady background and he was talking about seeing the inside of the craft, escorted by alien creatures.

The point here? The Air Force, in 1957, was not engaged in investigating UFOs, but was more interested in offering explanations. These cases prove the point. Ignore the reliable reports from military personnel, slap ridiculous explanations on them with little or no real investigation, and move onto the obvious frauds which can be explained easily. Make it seem as if there is a real interest in all UFO cases, but remember, they controlled the sighting at White Sands. It wasn’t very dramatic so there wasn’t a widespread interest in it.

Instead, make a real show of investigating a case that was an obvious fraud. Send in several officers and then explain the sighting with solid information. It creates a mindset in the general public that allows the Air Force to avoid having to answer any tough questions about UFOs. It buries the important sightings at White Sands where people were injured by the UFO (this would be the Stokes UFO sighting on November 5 not far from Alamogordo and that might include Wilbanks), and focuses on the ridiculous.

These White Sands sightings deserve another look. They deserve a proper investigation and there are enough problems with the official files that show something more was happening there at the time. But then, the Air Force didn’t want an answer for the case, other than one they dreamed up. Looking at the facts might suggest something other than the moon.

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See Also:

Army Reports Huge UFO Hovering Over First Atomic Bomb Explosion Site | UFO CHRONICLE – 1957

'Huge Oval-Shaped' UFO Hovering Over A-Bomb Bunker at Trinity Site | UFO CHRONICLE – 1957

Motorists Were Terrified By 'Hovering UFO' Report Police | UFO CHRONICLE – 1957

Egg Shaped Objects [UFOs] Reported By Many Sections of State

Enormous, Egg-Shaped UFO Sighted Near Missile Testing Site | UFO CHRONICLE – 1957

Egg-Shaped UFO Kills Car Engines & Headlights | UFO CHRONICLE 11-4-1957

Huge UFO Scares West Texans | UFO CHRONICLE – 1957

Egg-Shaped UFO Stalls Cars On Highway | UFO CHRONICLE – 1957

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