The Nevada Fireball: The Las Vegas UFO Crash of 1962

Wednesday, April 18, 1962. Evening. A NORAD spokesman said one sighting report came from as far away as New York. Across the West, observers reported a brilliant fireball, and later accounts spoke of thousands of witnesses in ten states.

Over central Utah, Captain Herman Gordon Shields was flying a C-119 at 8,500 feet. "The cockpit was illuminated from above," he recalled. He saw a slender object with "no exhaust, no trail following after it." Its front burned an intense white, like a magnesium fire.

South of Eureka, Bob Robinson and Floyd Evans were in a truck. Robinson put the flaming object below five hundred feet and thought he saw square windows. As it slowed and descended, the truck's engine sputtered and its headlights dimmed. Betty Robinson remembered a bright light, a loud noise and an electrical smell, saying, "It's something that I'll take to my grave."

In Eureka, a motorist described a glowing orange ball, oval in shape, with a quiet whirring noise. He said it knocked out the lights all over Eureka before climbing out again.

In Las Vegas, Sun photographer Frank Maggio watched "a tremendous flaming sword" moving almost horizontally. It was red, orange and yellow, and bright explosions broke up its trail. A final explosion sent a column of brilliant smoke up from the direction of Mesquite. The next day's front page read: "BRILLIANT RED EXPLOSION FLARES IN LAS VEGAS SKY."

At Nellis Air Force Base, radar tracked a target for 32 minutes from 7:35 p.m., and the record card said its speed varied before it disappeared at 10,000 feet after heading tentatively northeast. A Nellis spokesman was quoted: "There's only one thing wrong with that: a meteor cannot be tracked on radar. And this object was." The Air Defense Command was alerted, and jets were reportedly scrambled from Phoenix and Reno. Clark County Deputy Walter Butt led jeep teams into the Spring Mountain area, where they searched through the night without finding anything.

Project Blue Book opened two files. The Nellis radar card went from "Unidentified" to "Insufficient Data for a Scientific Analysis," while Maj. C. R. Hart suggested a U-2 or high balloon without enough data to support either. On May 8, 1962, J. Allen Hynek and Lt. Col. Robert Friend spent one day in Utah and concluded the Utah reports were a bolide. Hynek did not visit Nevada. NICAP later listed the case as a Blue Book unknown.

Physicist Robert Kadesch of the University of Utah said it "probably was a bolide" that exploded 50 to 60 miles up, and that the earth's curvature made pilots think it was below them. Police said the bright flash triggered photocells, turning off Eureka's streetlights for a few seconds. Some have also pointed to the Lyrid meteor shower. The reports disagreed on direction, with most Utah observers describing movement from east to west and Nevada observers reporting the opposite.

The crash story came later. Kevin Randle found the Sun article on microfilm and included the case in A History of UFO Crashes in 1995. Since 2008, Scott Holloway has interviewed witnesses and families, using mining records to point toward a possible crash site near Bunkerville. Preston Dennett included the case in UFOs Over Nevada. The night remains debated, with many witnesses and a radar track that never quite fit the verdict.