White Sands tracking-camera saucer claim
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🗓️ Event
Contents 9
| Date | July 1991 |
|---|---|
| Topics | Nuclear & missile sites (topic), Military encounters (topic) |
| People | Leonard Stringfield, Linda Moulton Howe |
| Testimony | Shellenberger testimony, p. 110 |
| Year | 1991 in UFO history |
| Timeline | 1991 on the UAP Timeline |
| Sources | 7 |
The White Sands tracking-camera saucer claim is an account by an unnamed retired U.S. Air Force sergeant, published in Leonard Stringfield's crash-retrieval "Status Report VI" in July 1991. The sergeant said he had seen a report showing that range tracking cameras photographed a saucer-type craft that had landed on the north range of White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, near Tularosa.[4][5] According to Michael Shellenberger's 2024 UFO timeline, submitted to the House Oversight Committee, the images showed a large, round, dome-shaped disc resting slightly tilted near a hillside, with personnel in suits climbing on it. The sergeant said the report was a technical study prepared by a German team headed by Ernst Steinhoff and Wernher von Braun.[4] The report has never been produced, and the sergeant has never been named.
The account
Shellenberger's timeline summarises the sergeant's claims as follows.[4]
- The landing. A saucer-type craft landed on the north range of White Sands Missile Range, near Tularosa.
- The images. Askania and Mitchell tracking cameras showed the craft resting near a hillside, slightly tilted. It was a large, round, dome-shaped disc with a flat bottom, no landing gear or windows, but an access opening.
- Personnel. Base personnel wearing suits were around the craft, some climbing on top of it.
- The document. The report he saw was a technical description for the Air Materiel Command (AMC) and the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC). It recorded the craft's dimensions, materials and structure, along with radar data.
- Authors. The report had been prepared by a German scientific team headed by Ernst Steinhoff and Wernher von Braun.
A summary of the same passage on the UFOScans archive gives the same details, describing the sergeant as claiming to have viewed a technical report on the landing.[5] The account is therefore second-hand: the sergeant described a document and its images, not something he saw himself. Neither summary gives a date for the alleged landing.[4][5]
The source
Stringfield wrote seven "Status Reports" on alleged crash retrievals between 1978 and 1994, and died on 18 December 1994. Status Report VI: The Inner Sanctum, from July 1991, was later reprinted in parts on Linda Moulton Howe's Earthfiles website. Part 6 was posted on 31 March 2004.[3] The page is behind a subscription wall. Its free introduction carries Stringfield's warning that "survivors in-the-know, going back to the 'Roswell' UFO crash era... are thinning out", their memories fading. He urged researchers "to get all the facts we can from these old-timers – now".[3]
According to the Wikipedia account, Howe is an investigative journalist and documentary maker known for her work on cattle mutilations and her belief that the U.S. government works with aliens.[1] In 1983 the AFOSI agent Richard Doty showed her fabricated documents at Kirtland Air Force Base. Doty later admitted that this was connected to AFOSI's disinformation against Paul Bennewitz: "We gave Linda some good information, and some bad information. She chose the bad information."[1] The skeptic Joe Nickell has called her a "credulous journalist".[1] Earthfiles is her news site.[2]
Related accounts
Other stories of craft on the ground at White Sands and nearby Holloman Air Force Base have circulated for decades. In March 1973, MUFON's Skylook reported a civilian mechanic's account of a domed disc hovering 50 yards from him at Holloman in the summer of 1958.[7] Shellenberger's timeline also lists unconfirmed reports of a 1956 landing at White Sands witnessed by dozens of personnel. (See White Sands landing reports (1956).)[6]
Assessment
The account rests on an anonymous sergeant's memory of a document he said he saw, reported decades later, with no date for the event and no copy of the report or film.[4][5] The naming of famous German rocket scientists as the report's authors is unverified in the sources read here. Stringfield's own introduction acknowledged that his informants' memories were fading.[3]
Notes on the earlier version
- Film classified. The earlier version said the sergeant "said the film was taken away and classified". That is not in the summaries read here, which describe a technical report containing the camera images.[4][5]
- Earlier photographs. The earlier version said White Sands' tracking cameras "did photograph unidentified objects in the early 1950s, which is documented in Air Force records". That is not covered in the sources read here.
- "High-speed cameras". The earlier version spoke of high-speed tracking cameras. The account names Askania and Mitchell cameras.[4]
People and topics
- White Sands — The New Mexico missile test range.
- U.S. Air Force — The U.S. military service that ran the official UFO projects from 1947 to 1969.
- Leonard Stringfield — Former Air Force intelligence officer and NICAP researcher who collected anonymous crash-retrieval accounts from 1978 to 1994.
- Linda Moulton Howe — Journalist and filmmaker who runs the Earthfiles website and has reported many crash-retrieval claims.
On the Timeline
- Roper Organization abduction survey (1991) (22 May 1991) — Vallée says Liechtenstein's prince funded a study of alien abduction claims through Robert Bigelow.
- Tim Cooper's German saucer source (1991) (July 1991) — A retired colonel says early UAP were first thought to be German and used unknown materials.
See every 1991 event on the UAP Timeline →
Further reading
- White Sands Missile Range — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
References
- Linda Moulton Howe — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Earthfiles — Linda Moulton Howe's news site · earthfiles.com · archived copy
- earthfiles.com · earthfiles.com · archived copy
- Michael Shellenberger, written testimony to the House Oversight Committee (13 November 2024), p. 110 · oversight.house.gov
- "Part 6: UFO Crash/Retrievals: The Inner Sanctum – Status Report VI", UFOScans · ufoscans.com
- Michael Shellenberger, written testimony to the House Oversight Committee (13 November 2024), p. 58 · oversight.house.gov
- "White Sands Sightings Kept Secret, Now Told", Skylook (March 1973), PDF · dailydialectics.com
Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia article “Linda Moulton Howe”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
This page was last edited on 29 October 2026. Articles are written in our own words from the sources listed under References; disputed claims are attributed to the people who made them.
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