What happened
Late on 2 November 1957, a month after Sputnik, farm workers Pedro Saucedo and Joe Salaz phoned the Levelland, Texas, police: driving west of town they had seen a blue flash, their truck's engine and lights had died, and a glowing, rocket-like object had roared low overhead with a rush of wind and heat before the truck came back to life. The officer on duty, A. J. Fowler, took it for a joke. An hour later motorist Jim Wheeler reported a brilliantly lit, egg-shaped object about 200 feet long sitting on the road east of town; his car died until it rose away. Through the night more calls came in from different roads: a couple, Jose Alvarez, a Texas Tech student, a farmer and others, most describing a glowing oval on or near the road and engines and headlights that failed, then recovered when it left. Sheriff Weir Clem and the fire chief saw a bright light themselves. Fifteen reports reached police in a few hours.
The official explanation
Blue Book sent Staff Sgt. Norman Barth, who spent about seven hours in Levelland and interviewed three witnesses. Noting storms in the area earlier, the Air Force concluded ball lightning or St. Elmo's fire was responsible and blamed the stalls on wet circuits; it said only three people had seen the object up close. Harvard astronomer Donald Menzel agreed, arguing conditions were ideal for ball lightning and that the other reports were stirred up by excitement.
The anomalous case
More than a dozen people, on separate roads miles apart and largely unaware of each other, reported the same pattern in a few hours: a large glowing oval, engines and headlights failing as it came close, and everything recovering when it left. Ball lightning is typically small and lasts seconds; it has never been shown to stop car engines, and these witnesses described an object up to 200 feet long sitting on the road. J. Allen Hynek, the Air Force's own consultant, later wrote that he regretted hastily agreeing with the ball-lightning verdict while busy tracking Sputnik, and that observers reported overcast and mist but no lightning. Physicist James McDonald told Congress in 1968 there had been no thunderstorm, only a trace of rain. Blue Book's investigator interviewed only three of about fifteen witnesses, and the sheriff and fire chief, who saw lights themselves, were left out of the final report.
The strongest argument that this was something genuinely unknown or classified, with each claim attributed to the person who made it.
Documents
- Project Blue Book: Levelland UFO case, November 2-3, 1957 (case file via The Black Vault) official, theblackvault.com
- Project BLUE BOOK records (National Archives, microfilm T-1206) official, archives.gov
Sources
- Levelland UFO case Wikipedia
- The Vault Files: The Levelland UFO Incident (1957) The Black Vault (John Greenewald Jr.)
Witness reports elsewhere
These archives can't be republished here, so we link to them instead.