Excerpt from: FLYING SAUCERS: The Startling Evidence of the
Invasion from Outer Space (original title THE GREAT FLYING SAUCER
HOAX: An Exposure of the Establishment's Flying Saucer Cover-up),
Coral E. Lorenzen, Director of the Aerial Phenomena Research
Organization (APRO), Signet Books, New York, October 1966, pages
27-29.
Our first report is of the cigar-shaped type of UFO and is significant because it took place at Holloman Air Force Base, and was photographed. Holloman is an Air Force research and development center located in the Tularosa Basin, nine miles west of Alamogordo and approximately thirty miles north of the White Sands Proving Grounds. Military and civilian personnel stationed at the base have seen many strange objects in the skies over Holloman in the past nineteen years. [Written in 1962.] The observer, an electronics engineer [Cliff Booth] who submitted the report, had previously seen high groups of shiny objects and had accepted the idea that some kind phenomena existed which had not been identified by scientific and technical people. On a hot summer day in July 1950, he was having lunch in his office at a private contractor's building at Holloman. The range telephone rang and the engineer and an Askania operator were informed by one of the range stations that an unidentified aerial object had been sighted. They were requested to proceed to another range stations, which was equipped with a manually operated Askania theodolite and located about three miles north of range control. The men rushed to the designated station and, using the azimuth and elevation readings of the object supplied to them, they focused the theodolite and found their subject….
Through the finders on the theodolite the object presented a side view to the observers and appeared to be cigar-shaped and metallic, with a straw-colored irridescent radiance or luster. Fins one-third of the way back from the front of the fuselage with a row of as least three oblong ports extending from the fins to the rear of the object and located above the center line of the fuselage complete the physical description. The ports were dark, somewhat a "smoky" gray but not luminescent. The object hovered in an almost horizontal position, elevation 20-25 degrees, azimuth northeast. Shortly after the men had focused their theodolite on the object, it began maneuvering. Turning toward the camera, the object moved in, and the men had a front view of the object – it was round, with the fins extending out from the sides. It then dropped abruptly, as though beginning to fall, but arrested the drop. Again, it moved toward the camera, turned sideways, then dropped as before, but this time it exposed the side view again.
At this point the operator left the azimuth controls, went to the range telephone and called Queen-1 to report their contact so other range facilities could be put into actions. Because the Askania manually operated theodolite required two operators, one for azimuth and one for elevation, while the operator was on the phone the engineer was unable to continue tracking the object. When the operator returned to the controls the men could not relocate the object – it was gone.
The men turned over their exposed film to the Data Reduction Division for development and analysis. They didn't hear anything for from seven to ten days; then they were called in and questioned by a young first lieutenant. They didn't recognize the officer, although he wore a Base identification badge. They were asked over and over again if they had taken pictures, and to describe over and over again the object they had observed. Then the two men were asked if they could identify the film of the object they had photographed. One of the men because quite angry about the questioning, telling the officer he had seen what he had reported, had photographed the object and was convinced the object was some sort of a vehicle from outer space. He was shown a film of fourteen frames on the Recordak projector. The black-and-white presentation showed a blurred ellipsoid with a dark center, but no details. (Puzzled about the film he later talked to a mathematician-analyst employed by Land-Air, Inc.; she conjectured the object had been oscillating in the air, preventing good photography.) The men were then told by their superiors to forget the whole thing.
CORAL LORENZEN COMMENT: Concerning the blurry film, "APRO consultants do not support this opinion (oscillating object), considering it more likely the camera recorded the existence of an enveloping field – probably ionic – not visible to the naked eye."
PROJECT 1947 COMMENTS:
1) The account of this sighting was missing from the APRO microfilm:
http://www.konsulting.com/piwigo/index.php?/category/1
However, the drawing illustrating the sighting is present at frame 635:
http://www.konsulting.com/piwigo/picture.php?/854/category/1
Why is the account missing? We don't know. Speculation might be that the account was removed and placed in a file with the draft manuscript of Lorenzen's book. It possibly was removed as a confidential source prior to the microfilm being made
2) This report is not in the Project Blue Book files.
3) There may be references to this case in "Report EHO-41 dated 25 July 1951, Holloman Air Force Base." Report EHO-41 is missing from the Project Blue Book files. However, Ruppelt mentioned the report in Status Report #5 and in his interview with LOOK magazine.
Portions of material in EHO-41 are contained in various case files in the Project Blue Book files, but the complete report is missing.
