The Lubbock Lights
Date: August 1951
Location: Lubbock, Texas, United States
In the summer of 1951, the authorities of Lubbock, Texas, and Albuquerque, New Mexico, were flooded with calls from residents who reported seeing a number of lights in the sky flying in a V formation. Apart from the visual sightings, the unidentified lights were captured on film and tracked on radar, becoming what is now known as the Lubbock Lights.
An Atomic Energy Commission’s Sandia Corporation employee and his wife were enjoying the summer evening in their backyard in Albuquerque when a salient light caught the attention of the couple. As the light got closer to the house, the couple noticed that the light was a V-shaped aircraft flying at an altitude of eight hundred to one thousand feet. At the aircraft’s end were six to eight bright bluish lights. The size of the aircraft was described as being larger than a B-36 aircraft, which has a wingspan of 230 feet. Without emitting any noise, the V shaped object hovered above their house as it continued flying toward the city.
The couple had seen B-36 bombers flying over their house multiple times and they were familiar with the shape and characteristics of the aircraft. Conversely, the V shaped aircraft was completely unfamiliar to them. As the unidentified aircraft disappeared over the horizon, the couple called the local authorities, who relayed the report over to air traffic control operators. The operators were able to confirm that there were no known aircraft flying over the designated location; the only two aircraft flying over Albuquerque were a Constellation aircraft, which was flying fifty miles west of the city, and an air force B-25, which was flying south.
The report was the beginning of a busy night for the authorities. Just twenty minutes later, the second and most credible report was made by a group of university professors in Lubbock, Texas. The group of professors consisted of Dr. W. Robinson, professor of Geology; Dr. A. Oberg, professor of chemical engineering; W. Ducker, head of the petroleum engineering department; and Dr. E. F. George, professor of physics; who were drinking tea and conversing about micrometeorites in Robinson’s backyard. Their conversation ended abruptly as they noted a number of bluish-green lights flying in a semicircular formation. Naturally, the professors were knowledgeable enough to distinguish a meteor from an unnatural phenomenon and this was a clear-cut example of the latter. For a number of seconds, the professors counted a total of fifteen to thirty lights flying over the house before they disappeared into thin air.
For the next hour the professors talked amongst themselves of what the lights could have been, but the sighting was too short for them to discern any notable characteristics. Luckily enough, just an hour later, the lights reappeared. This time the lights were not flying in a particular formation but were maneuvering erratically before disappearing within a few seconds once again. Throughout the month of August, the four professors saw these bright lights on a total of twelve occasions.
Over the course of a month, several other reports were made by multiple individuals who reported seeing these mysterious V shaped lights in the sky. Another report was made by an elderly couple in Lubbock on August 25. As the wife was outside taking sheets off the clothesline, she was taken aback when she saw a large aircraft hovering noiselessly in the sky. The wife ran into the house, pale as a ghost, telling her husband of the sighting. Her husband was able to confirm the sight for himself. In an interview with Edward J. Ruppelt, the head of Project Blue Book, the elderly man described his wife as being “white as the sheet she was carrying” the second she walked in the house.24
One final witness report we shall look at was made by two women six days after the initial sighting. On August 31, a mother and her daughter were driving through Matador, Texas, which is 70 miles from Lubbock. At around 12:30 they noticed a strange pear-shaped object just 140 meters to the side of the road. The object was flying at a low altitude, approximately 110 meters above ground level. The ladies parked the car to the side of the road and exited to get a clearer view of the ominous object. As they got a clearer view, they noticed that it was “the size of a B-29 fuselage” and it was drifting slowly and noiselessly.25 An interesting detail that the ladies included in their report is that the UFO did not have any exhaust plumes, but it did have a porthole on its side. After a couple of seconds, the object accelerated away and disappeared, leaving no traces behind. Although the report differed from the earlier ones, this was one of numerous UFO reports made throughout the month of August.
Apart from the visual reports, on August 26, an aircraft was recorded on radar traveling nine hundred miles per hour at an altitude of thirteen thousand feet. In actual fact, two different radars were able to record the aircraft, which remained visible on radar for a total of six minutes. An F-86 military jet was also scrambled and ordered to intercept. However, once the jet climbed into the air, the target disappeared from the radar, forcing the pilot to return to base. The pilot on board the fighter jet explained how the object disappeared off the radar the second the F-86 was scrambled, as though it was aware of the jet’s position and intent.
The Photograph
One important witness was Carl Hart, an amateur photographer who managed to capture the lights on film on August 31. On the night of the sighting, Hart was laying in his bed looking outside his window when a group of lights flying in a V formation started appearing out of nowhere. Hart had finally witnessed the lights everyone was talking about for himself. Using his Kodak 35mm camera, Hart was able to take a total of five photographs of the lights, which he developed the following day.
The high-quality photographs had captured what everyone in Lubbock was talking about; the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal even published the photographs in the newspaper. It did not take very long for Hart’s photographs to gain attention. Soon after, Life magazine published an article and the photographs of the Lubbock lights. The report was being covered in countries all over the world, and Ruppelt wanted to authenticate the photographs for himself to ensure that this was not a hoax or a publicity stunt. Ruppelt managed to obtain four out of the five negatives and took them to Wright Patterson Air Force Base where they were analyzed by experts.
By the time Ruppelt had collected the negatives, many people had handled the film, and although they were not in an excellent shape for analysis, the experts at the air force base were able to confirm that the images did indeed show lights flying in an inverted V formation. The question that Ruppelt wanted to resolve now was whether the lights could have been stars, but in all of the four negatives, stars were visible in the background, implying that the V shaped lights were significantly brighter than the stars in the sky. In the official report, Ruppelt states that “the photos were never proven to be a hoax, but neither were they proven to be genuine.” 26
The Investigation
Incongruous with the analysis and the witness reports, the air force stated that the lights were plovers, a type of wading bird. This ludicrous explanation was immediately dismissed, firstly for the fact that plovers cannot mysteriously appear and disappear, and secondly, due to the fact that in a span of twenty minutes the lights were seen in Albuquerque and in Lubbock.
With the backlash that the air force received, a second statement was provided that was just as confounding as the first one. Ruppelt had stated that the air force did have an explanation for this sighting, however they were unable to disclose this information to the public. In his book The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, Ruppelt said, “They weren’t birds, they weren’t refracted light, but they weren’t spaceships. The lights that the professor’s saw—the backbone of the Lubbock Light series—have been positively identified as a very commonplace and easily explainable natural phenomenon. It is very unfortunate that I can’t divulge exactly the way the answer was found because it is an interesting story of how a scientist set up complete instrumentation to track down the light and how he spent several months testing theory after theory until he finally hit upon the answer. Telling the story would lead to his identity and, in exchange for his story, I promised the man complete anonymity.” 27
Conclusion
The Lubbock Lights were witnessed by hundreds of individuals and numerous reports were made, one of which was by a credible group of university professors. Although protecting the scientist’s identity is a valid thing to do, Ruppelt could have easily provided the explanation but used a pseudonym or withheld his name from the statement. Many have wondered whether the lights were the B-2 stealth bomber, which is why the air force did not disclose the explanation.
The first operational flight of the stealth bomber took place in 1989, thirty-eight years after the Lubbock sightings, which in and of itself disproves the hypothesis. Apart from that, one common factor was that the lights hovered silently and at a low altitude. Even if it was the case that the B-2 bomber was in the sky prior to the official operational flight, if it had flown overhead it would have left a thundering noise. All military aircraft that break the sound barrier produce a sonic boom, and yet, the mysterious V-shaped aircraft was completely noiseless. Although Ruppelt stated that the lights can easily be explained by a natural phenomenon, he did not state what this phenomenon was. Over the years, several meteorological officers have stated that they cannot explain the sightings using natural phenomena.
To this day we do not know what the Lubbock lights truly were. Were they natural phenomena as Ruppelt had stated, or were they extraterrestrial aircraft? I myself believe that the latter explanation makes the most sense considering the salient characteristics, the ability for the aircraft to appear and disappear, and most of all, for the fact that even when analyzed at an air force base, no one was able to provide any explanation.
24. Ruppelt, The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects: The Original 1956 Edition, 104.
25. Ruppelt, The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects: The Original 1956 Edition, 102.
26. Ruppelt, The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects: The Original 1956 Edition, 107.
27. Ruppelt, The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects: The Original 1956 Edition, 110.