to the case and caused hundreds of hours of time to be spent
analyzing the reports have not been told before. We collected all of
these reports under the one title because there appeared to be a tie-
in between them.

The first word of the sightings reached ATIC late in September 1951,
when the mail girl dropped letters into my "in" basket. One of the
letters was from Albuquerque, New Mexico, one was from a small town
in Washington State, where I knew an Air Defense Command radar
station was located, and the other from Reese AFB at Lubbock, Texas.

I opened the Albuquerque letter first. It was a report from 34th Air
Defense at Kirtland AFB. The report said that on the evening of
August 25, 1951, an employee of the Atomic Energy Commission's
supersecret Sandia Corporation and his wife had seen a UFO. About
dusk they were sitting in the back yard of their home on the
outskirts of Albuquerque. They were gazing at the night sky,
commenting on how beautiful it was, when both of them were startled
at the sight of a huge airplane flying swiftly and silently over
their home. The airplane had been in sight only a few seconds but
they had gotten a good look at it because it was so low. They
estimated 800 to 1,000 feet. It was the shape of a "flying wing" and
one and a half times the size of a B-36. The wing was sharply swept
back, almost like a V. Both the husband and wife had seen B-36's over
their home many times. They couldn't see the color of the UFO but
they did notice that there were dark bands running across the wing
from front to back. On the aft edge of the wings there were six to
eight pairs of soft, glowing, bluish lights. The aircraft had passed
over their house from north to south.

The report went on to say that an investigation had been made
immediately. Since the object might have been a conventional
airplane, air traffic was checked. A commercial airlines
Constellation was 50 miles west of Albuquerque and an Air Force B-25
was south of the city, but there had been nothing over Albuquerque
that evening. The man's background was checked. He had a "Q" security
clearance. This summed up his character, oddballs don't get "Q"
clearances. No one else had reported the UFO, but this could be
explained by the fact the AEC employee and his wife lived in such a
location that anything passing over their home from north to south
wouldn't pass over or near very many other houses. A sketch of the
UFO was enclosed in the repo