Chester Lytle's Kirtland sighting
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🗓️ Event
Contents 8
| Date | 1 January 2008 |
|---|---|
| Topics | Crashes & retrievals (topic), Beings & bodies (topic), Nuclear & missile sites (topic) |
| People | Chester Lytle, Robert Hastings, William Blanchard, Kevin Randle |
| Testimony | Shellenberger testimony, p. 166 |
| Year | 2008 in UFO history |
| Timeline | 2008 on the UAP Timeline |
| Sources | 6 |
Chester "Chet" Lytle was an engineer who manufactured components for the first atomic bombs and later specialised in nuclear weapons stockpiling. In a recorded 1998 interview with researcher Robert Hastings he described seeing a domed disc at Kirtland Air Force Base in the 1950s and said that Roswell's former base commander, William Blanchard, had told him the 1947 crash involved an alien craft and bodies.[1][2]
Lytle
Lytle ran his own engineering firm in Albuquerque. During the Manhattan Project his company designed and manufactured the implosion trigger for the first atomic bomb, tested at Alamogordo in 1945, and afterwards it continued to make components for nuclear weapons. He worked for the Atomic Energy Commission on nuclear weapons stockpiling and on classified military projects from radar to aircraft autopilots, holding top-secret clearances with the AEC, the Department of Defense and the CIA.[1]
The interview
Kevin Randle and Donald Schmitt introduced Hastings to Lytle in 1990, and in 1998 Lytle gave him a two-hour recorded interview, later published in Hastings's 2008 book UFOs and Nukes. Lytle described seeing, through a telescope at Kirtland in the 1950s, a disc with a dome and two other objects while a nuclear weapon was being loaded into a B-29; the sighting was shared with Army Major General Kenner Hertford of the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project. He also said he had seen fast, highly manoeuvrable unknown objects on radar at White Sands.[1]
The Blanchard story
Lytle said that in mid-February 1953, after a visit to Alaska, Blanchard — then a senior Strategic Air Command officer — flew him back to Chicago, and that when talk turned to recent sightings by Air Force personnel in Alaska, Blanchard told him an alien spacecraft had been recovered near Roswell in July 1947 with four dead humanoid bodies. Lytle said other sources told him some bodies went first to Muroc Army Airfield and then all to Wright Field, and that he had heard of autopsies.[1][2]
Assessment
Randle found Lytle credible but noted that the Roswell part is second-hand testimony that cannot be checked with either man, since Blanchard died in 1966 and Lytle in 2003, and that it departs from other accounts. He treated it as an anecdote calling for corroboration rather than proof.[2][3]
People and topics
- Chester Lytle — Manhattan Project engineer who described a UFO at Kirtland.
- Robert Hastings — Researcher who has collected accounts of UFOs at nuclear weapons sites, author of UFOs and Nukes.
- Kirtland Air Force Base — The Albuquerque air base at the center of the Bennewitz affair.
- William Blanchard — Roswell base commander in 1947 who later became Air Force vice chief of staff.
- Roswell — The New Mexico town at the center of the 1947 crash story.
- U.S. Air Force — The U.S. military service that ran the official UFO projects from 1947 to 1969.
- Roswell incident — The July 1947 recovery of debris near Roswell, New Mexico, announced as a "flying disc" and then explained as a weather balloon.
- Kevin Randle — Roswell researcher and author of many books on crash-retrieval claims.
On the Timeline
- Dan Burisch and J-Rod (2008) — Dan Burisch claims he studied an extraterrestrial being at the S-4 facility.
- Needles crash reports (2008) (14 May 2008) — Residents near Needles, California report a crash followed by helicopters and convoys.
See every 2008 event on the UAP Timeline →
References
- "Chester Lytle", Roswell Proof · roswellproof.com · archived copy
- Kevin Randle, "Blanchard, Lytle and Roswell", A Different Perspective (Aug 2008) · kevinrandle.blogspot.com · archived copy
- Roswell incident — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- UFOs visited nuclear weapons sites, former Air Force officers say — History News Network · historynewsnetwork.org · archived copy
- 579th Strategic Missile Squadron Atlas F sites, Walker AFB · atlasmissilesilo.com · archived copy
- Chester Lytle on Roswell and Kirtland — RoswellProof via UFO Scans · ufoscans.com · archived copy
Further reading
- Roswell incident — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- UFOs and the Air Force: records — National Archives · archives.gov · archived copy
- Wright-Patterson Air Force Base — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Hangar 18 (the legend and 1980 film) — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- UFO documents — CIA Reading Room · cia.gov · archived copy
- Kirtland Air Force Base — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
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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