UFO Appeared to Monitor Nuclear Bomb Test in Nevada

"... the jeep was about halfway between him and the buildings when a silvery metal object lifted-off the ground behind the buildings and hovered in the air."

Since 1973, I have interviewed 169 US military veterans regarding their UFO/UAP encounters at nuclear weapons test ranges and deployment sites during the Cold War era and beyond. Their testimonies appear in my book, UFOs and Nukes: Extraordinary Encounters at Nuclear Weapons Sites. In September 2026, I received an unsolicited email from a woman who does not wish to be identified. She wrote, Many years ago, probably around 1996, my father was dying of Stage-4 colon cancer. He was in his seventies and had fought the cancer bravely for several years. We were watching TV together in his

By Robert Hastings The UFO Chronicles © All Rights Reserved 9-26-2026

living room when something came on the television that mentioned UFOs. My dad said softly, “They're real, you know." I was a bit shocked, because a comment like that was totally out of character for him. Then he told me the following story:©The UFO Chronicles. All rights reserved.

During 1951 and 1952, he had been in the Air Force Reserves. He had volunteered to participate in multiple atom bomb tests that were being held in Nevada. He and the other military volunteers sheltered in open-air ditches while a bomb was detonated from the top of a tall metal tower. Once the heat and shockwave had passed, the men got out of the ditch and watched the mushroom cloud rise into the sky. Before one test, a mock town had been built, directly in the path of the explosion. It was designed to find out how structures would respond to the blast.

While waiting to be ordered into the ditch, my father noticed near the buildings the glint of sunshine on metal. He asked the officer-in-charge if they had positioned an airplane among the structures that were to be subjected to the blast. My dad was concerned that a civilian pilot might have had difficulties and might have seen the "town" and landed his private plane on the flat desert floor, seeking help.

The officer checked with someone and immediately called for a jeep. The test was halted and the jeep headed-off at full speed toward the buildings. Dad said that the jeep was about halfway between him and the buildings when a silvery metal object lifted-off the ground behind the buildings and hovered in the air. He thought it must be a helicopter, but then the object tilted upward and shot-off at an unbelievable speed. The test was cancelled and, after a while, a military truck arrived and the military observers were ordered inside it.

Then the black canvas tarp was closed, so that it was not possible to see outside. The truck started moving across the desert. But, instead of moving in a fairly straight line, it seemed to twist and turn in different directions. Dad thought that they were trying to deliberately confuse the volunteers about where they were going. Eventually they arrived at what looked sort of like a wooden ranch bunkhouse and were ordered inside.

Sometime later, a high-ranking officer came in and told the volunteers that they had seen nothing. They were ordered to tell no one, including their wives, and told never to discuss the incident amongst themselves. They were threatened with severe consequences if they talked, and they all had to sign a document.

They were ordered back into the truck, the tarp was closed again, and eventually they were taken back to the base. Dad thought that they might have witnessed some secret technology but, as the years passed and such tech was never used, he wondered what he had actually seen.

When he finished the story, my father was very tired and he went to bed. The next morning at breakfast I told him that I had some questions about his account. He reacted with anger and told me that he should have never said anything. I responded by saying that I sincerely doubted the military would come after a Stage-4 cancer victim in his seventies.

He angrily said that wasn't the point. He had signed an oath and then broken his promise to never mention what had happened that day in Nevada. He said he was ashamed of himself. We never spoke of it again. Years after his passing, I did tell my husband and grown sons his story. My eldest son remarked, "That was Grandpa, alright. A sense of honor was so important to him."

I found this person’s account regarding her father’s experience credible and thanked her for her email. I told her that I had heard many similar stories over the years, from other veterans who had witnessed UAP activity during the nuclear tests in Nevada or on atolls in the Pacific Ocean in the 1950s. Those verbatim interviews appear in my book.

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See Also:

Did a Nuke Missile Take Down an Alien Craft? – A Journalistic Investigation

UFOs & NUKES | Carpio Grano, North Dakota: UFO Lands Near Minuteman Missile Base; Affects Radio Transmissions - Defensive Measures Taken!

Investigation of UFO Reported Landing on 24 March 1967 Near Malmstrom AFB

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