Rocket-Shaped UFOs
Land in Levelland
Date: November 2, 1957
Location: Levelland, Texas, United States
The Levelland sightings have compelling evidence that strongly suggests that the observed UFOs were interplanetary aircraft. Apart from the unusual features of the aircraft, the objects in this case were able to affect the operation of nearby vehicles. As we have seen in Chapter 19, it is not uncommon for UFOs to interfere with electrical systems, most notably, military systems. This capability and occurrence will become even more prominent in Part 3, which will examine cases where military jets have pursued UFOs.
Joe Salaz and Pedro Saucedo were two farmers who on November 2, 1957, came face-to-face with an otherworldly object. It was around 23:00 when Salaz and Saucedo were driving back to their homes after a day’s work. When they were four miles west of Levelland, their attention was caught by a bright blue light, flashing in the sky. The bright light proceeded to hover above their truck and, as it did so, the engine died, leaving Salaz and Saucedo stranded in the middle of the road.
At first, they thought that the bright light was lightning, which was a plausible assumption considering that thunderstorms had just passed. As Saucedo exited the vehicle to inspect the truck’s engine, he was taken aback when, just three hundred feet away, he saw a rocket-shaped object in the middle of the road. It was approximately two hundred feet long and six feet wide. Each passing second felt like an hour, however, after only a few seconds, the object shot up into the sky, emitting bright yellow flames at its end. The object shot up with such velocity that a heat wave hit Saucedo, causing him to fall to the ground. For the next three minutes, the rocket-shaped object illuminated the entire sky. Once the object disappeared out of sight, the truck’s engine revived. Saucedo recounted the event as follows:
“I was traveling north and west on route 116, driving my truck. At about four miles out of Levelland, I saw a big flame, to my right front … I thought it was lightning. But when this object had reach to my position it was different, because it put my truck motor out and lights. Then I stop, got out, and took a look, but it was so rapid and quite some heat that I had to hit the ground. It also had colors - yellow, white - and it looked like a torpedo, about two hundred feet long, moving at about 600 to 800 miles an hour.” 87
Saucedo ran back to his truck and drove as fast as his vehicle would allow him to until they arrived at Whiteface, ten miles from Levelland. There, Saucedo found a phone booth and called A.J. Fowler, the officer on duty at Levelland. Thinking Saucedo was a drunk, the officer did not take this report seriously. Within a few minutes, several other reports started coming in from individuals all over Levelland.
Just fifty minutes later, a second encounter was reported. Jim Wheeler was driving four miles east of Levelland when he had to bring his car to a stop after he had noticed a peculiar object in the middle of the road. In front of him was a two hundred-foot, egg-shaped object. At the same moment, his car engine died and the headlights went off, leaving him in the dark road with an unidentifiable and bizarre object straight ahead. Just like the previous report, after a few seconds, the egg-shaped object shot up toward the sky and disappeared out of sight. It was only until the object disappeared that the car’s engine came back to life. In his official report, Wheeler described the object as a “brightly lit egg-shaped object, about 200 feet long.” 88
Approximately an hour after the first sighting was reported, Newell Wright, a nineteen-year-old Texas Tech student, was driving back home when “his car engine began to sputter, the ammeter on the dash jumped to discharge then back to normal, and the motor started cutting out like it was out of gas.” 89 His car engine eventually died, and the headlights went off, too. As he exited the vehicle, Wright noticed that not too far away in the distance was a pear-shaped object, 125 feet long, in the middle of the road. Wright described the object to be made of a material similar to aluminum. Frightened at the odd sighting, Wright ran back to his vehicle where he proceeded to lock the doors and just stare straight ahead at the object, helplessly trying to restart the engine, although to no avail. After several minutes, the pear-shaped object shot up to the sky and disappeared in a split second, and it was only then that he was able to restart his car’s engine and drive away.
Another sighting, which was not reported to officials, was witnessed by a couple who were driving along State Farm Road 1073, just a few miles away from where Saucedo and Salaz had had their encounter. Although the couple did not see any egg-shaped objects in the sky or on the ground, their vehicle was affected after a bright flash of light lit up the night sky. Throughout their drive, they noticed that their car radio had gone static a few times, but they did not think too much of it. At one point, a bolt of bright light lit up the entire sky and the car engine died, together with the headlights and car radio. The couple did comment on how strong the lightning must have been in order for the car’s engine to die. After a couple of seconds, they were able to restart the car and continue on their journey.
The following day the husband heard of the multiple reports that were made by individuals stating their cars had malfunctioned following a brightly-lit object appearing in the sky and in the middle of the road. Although he and his wife did not see any objects, he assumed that this must have been the same phenomenon.
Officer Fowler had received multiple phone calls the night of November 2 from different people, all reporting the same incident. After receiving all those calls, Sheriff Weir Clem and Deputy Pat McCulloch were sent out to patrol the streets of Levelland, attempting to find the egg-shaped object that multiple people had reported seeing. At around 01:30, as they were driving along Oklahoma Flat Road, five miles from Levelland, the two officials noticed an oval-shaped light. The object was so bright that the two compared it to a red sunset. Just 300 yards from their position, the object lit up the entire highway, flying at an alarmingly low altitude. The object only remained in view for a few seconds before it disappeared out of sight.
By the end of the night, a total of fifteen reports were made, all of which were made by individuals in the Levelland area. The reports all described an oval-shaped object landing on the ground or hovering in the sky, which caused their car’s engines and electrical systems to fail. The systems and the car would only start functioning again after the object disappeared out of sight.
The Investigation
The Levelland sightings were investigated by the United States Air Force’s Project Blue Book, led by Dr. J. Allen Hynek at the time. Early on in the investigation, Hynek made it clear that the sightings and the vehicles malfunctioning could not have been a coincidence. A total of fifteen reports were made by independent individuals, all reporting the same incident.
“In terms of probabilities, that all seven cases of separate car disablement and subsequent rapid, automatic recovery after the passage of the strange illuminated craft, occurring within about two hours, could be attributed to coincidence is out of the statistical universe —if the reports are truly independent (and they are, according to the tests we’ve used throughout).” Hynek wrote. 90
Surprisingly, even though these reports are evidently not a result of a weather phenomenon, the air force concluded that the sightings were ball lightning or St. Elmo’s fire, which is luminous plasma created by a strong electrical field in the atmosphere. Before analyzing these two hypotheses, one important factor that must be mentioned is the fact that the air force investigator only spent a couple of hours at Levelland. How could fifteen independent reports be investigated in just a matter of hours? How could the air force come to a definite conclusion if a proper investigation had not been carried out?
The first hypothesis proposed by the air force was that the sightings were ball lightning. Donald Menzel, an astronomer, astrophysicist and perhaps the biggest UFO skeptic, describes ball lightning as a “luminous ball whose diameter ranges from a few inches to several feet; the color may be red to orange or blue to white. These lightning balls appear most frequently toward the end of an electrical storm. They can hang motionless or drift in the air, gliding down chimneys and across the floor to radio or TV sets, float, a few inches above the ground or high in the sky.” 91
Apart from the bright lightning and the bright color, this explanation does not describe the reports made by the fifteen witnesses. Although Menzel provides an explanation as to what ball lightning is, he fails to explain how this correlates to an egg-shaped object landing on the ground, malfunctioning vehicles, and then shooting back up toward the sky and disappearing. It seems as though this explanation was used solely because thunderstorms were reported in the area on the day of the sightings.
The second hypothesis is that the sightings were St. Elmo’s fires. This weather phenomenon appears as a bright light in the sky, very similar to ball lightning. Once again, this explanation does not corroborate with the witness reports. How can a brightly lit, egg-shaped object that causes a vehicle’s engine to die and then shoots up in the sky before disappearing, be confused with bright plasma in the sky? The two are vastly different and difficult to misidentify.
This investigation was met with a lot of backlash. Dr. James McDonald, a senior physicist, spoke at the United States House of Representatives in 1968 and argued how it could not have been possible that these sightings were natural phenomena caused by an electrical field in the sky. McDonald stated that there was no lightning or thunderstorms; there was only a slight trace of rain. Moreover, at least ten vehicles were stopped and had malfunctioned due to the UFO’s presence, and this was most certainly not a coincidence. Hynek, too, stated that the conclusion the air force came to was hasty and inaccurate. In his book titled The UFO Experience Hynek stated: “Observers reported overcast and mist but no lightning. Besides, had I given it any thought whatever, I would soon have recognized the absence of any evidence that ball lightning can stop cars and put out headlights.” 92
Conclusion
The facts speak for themselves. It is evident that the egg-shaped object was not a natural weather phenomenon. The air force’s reaction and investigation foreshadowed how future UFO cases were to be handled; by completely dismissing them. As Hynek and McDonald stated, the explanations were insufficient and evidently not supported by any evidence.
87. J. Allen Hynek, The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry, (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company. 1972), 260,
88. Hynek, The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry, 160.
89. Hynek, The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry, 161.
90. Hynek, The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry, 164.
91. Donald H. Menzel and Lyle G. Boyd, The World of Flying Saucers: A Scientific Examination of a Major Myth of the Space Age (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1963), 176.
92. Hynek, The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry, 165.