95th Bomb Wing History, 1960: A Glowing UFO Over a B-52 at Biggs AFB
Three sentries at Biggs AFB reported a glowing bluish-white object passing within eight feet of a parked B-52 on alert in March 1960. The wing's full AFR 200-2 message, with its checks of radar, Holloman and White Sands, is bound into the history.
What this record is
This is the monthly history of the 95th Bombardment Wing (Heavy), a Strategic Air Command B-52 wing at Biggs Air Force Base in El Paso, Texas, under Fifteenth Air Force. It covers 1 to 31 March 1960. According to the title page (page 3 of the PDF), it was written by the unit historian, SSgt Michael Coley, Jr., under the base information officer, Capt Charles H. Clapsaddle, and approved by the commander, Col Gerald G. Robinson. The history was classified SECRET because it quoted classified source documents at length, and it was declassified in 1979.
The PDF runs to 904 pages. The narrative is short, and most of the file is supporting documents: teletype messages about alert force intelligence, nuclear accident (“Broken Arrow”) exercises and training missions. The wing’s introduction on page 15 names the sighting of an unidentified flying object as one of the three major events of the month, together with a theft of arms from base supply and planning for an operation called HIGH TRIP. That is why the record is in the UAP transfer.
What it says about UFOs
The UFO material is a short narrative entry and one five-page message. The contents page (page 5 of the PDF), the chronology (page 11) and the glossary (page 13) each point to it. The chronology lists it under 24 March: “UFO Sighted! Seven High”. The narrative on page 77 explains that SEVEN HIGH was an alert. Of the 13 SEVEN HIGH alerts called at Biggs in March, only one “seemed more than just routine”. That was a sighting of an unidentified flying object by flight line security guards, and on 26 March a full report went out under AFR 200-2.
That report is on pages 585 to 593 of the PDF. It is a CONFIDENTIAL priority message from the Biggs commander to Air Defense Command at Ent AFB, the 33rd Air Division at Oklahoma City, the Air Technical Intelligence Center at Wright-Patterson, Air Force intelligence at Headquarters USAF, and the Air Force information office, with information copies to Fifteenth Air Force and SAC. It follows the numbered format of paragraph 15 of AFR 200-2, dated 14 September 1959.
It describes one round object, glowing bluish white, with no discernible features or details (“just glowing light”) and no tail, trail or exhaust. Two observers said it passed within eight feet of a parked B-52. The first put its size as a half-dollar held at arm’s length. A third observer saw it at almost the same moment over his own head, where he had no reference point, and compared it to a basketball at arm’s length. One observer said it sounded like a whirling child’s top with holes in its side, or like an object moving very fast through the air. The observers first noticed it because of the sound.
The message gives each man’s elevation and azimuth. Observer one saw the object descend at about ten degrees, pass over the B-52’s fuselage and start climbing at about 35 degrees. The other two saw it in level flight before it climbed. It did not change heading. Two of the men said it vanished almost instantly, and the third said it seemed to fade into the distance. It was in view for four, two to three, and six to eight seconds. The date-time group is 251050Z, which is before dawn on 25 March local time, at night, in the alert aircraft area of Biggs. The history’s chronology gives 24 March. The three observers were airmen third class serving as sentries with the 95th Combat Defense Squadron, and their supervisors considered them reliable. The weather was a high cirrus overcast, twenty miles’ visibility, no thunderstorms, and 51 degrees Fahrenheit.
The investigating officer was Capt Lawrence A. Smith, commander of the 95th Combat Defense Squadron. He reached the scene within a few minutes but saw nothing himself. He judged the witnesses reasonably reliable and wrote that the incident apparently occurred substantially as reported, “although positive evidence is lacking”. The weather, and the apparent lack of any aircraft, missile or balloon activity, tended in his view to support what the sentries said.
The message then lists the checks that were made. The provost marshal at White Sands Missile Range reported that nothing had been seen there and that Army intelligence had no reports of unusual incidents. Holloman AFB in New Mexico had no aircraft in the air. The Army had no aircraft or missiles aloft. The radar division of the Signal Missile Support Agency at White Sands did not have its radar working before 0530. The Biggs tower had seen nothing unusual, and the senior radar approach controller on shift reported no unusual sightings.
Two more sightings came in from the same area within the hour. After what the message calls intensive interrogation, the Air Force judged them vague and “probably the result of nervous tension”. At 1225Z the same morning, seven men, two of them original observers, heard a sound very like the first one but saw nothing. No source for the sound was found.
Context
AFR 200-2 was the Air Force’s UFO regulation throughout the Project Blue Book years. It told base commanders to investigate locally and to report in a fixed format to ATIC, Air Defense Command and headquarters. The site’s page on the 1962 edition of AFR 200-2 describes the later version of the same rulebook. A SAC alert pad was one of the most closely guarded places in the Air Force. Anything that came near a nuclear-armed B-52 on alert would get serious attention, and that goes some way to explaining the neighbouring White Sands and Holloman checks.
Status
The case is a good specimen of a Blue Book-era base report that went out unresolved. The investigating officer found the sentries credible and eliminated local aircraft, missiles and balloons as far as he could by telephone. He did not claim to know what they saw. Seconds-long sightings at night are hard to judge. A small, close object, such as a bird lit from below or a bright meteor seen over the aircraft, can be misjudged in distance and size, and the three men’s size estimates differ a good deal. The whirring sound is the detail least easily explained by a meteor. The record also shows the Air Force discounting follow-up reports as nerves. It documents what three guards reported and what the base checked. It does not show that anything unusual was there.