Chuck Wade's seven New Mexico crashes
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Contents 9
| Researcher | Chuck Wade, retired civil engineer, raised in Corona, New Mexico |
|---|---|
| Claim | At least seven UFO crashes and recoveries in New Mexico, 1945–1948 |
| Earliest | "Avocado-shaped" craft, San Antonio, New Mexico, August 1945 |
| 1947 claims | 32-foot craft, Plains of San Agustin, 1–2 July; 25-foot oval craft southwest of Roswell and 12–15-foot craft northwest of Roswell, 4 July |
| Latest | 100-foot craft, Hart Canyon near Aztec, 25 March 1948 |
| Evidence offered | Unnamed military sources; metal foil from a 2004 dig on the Plains of San Agustin |
| Status | None confirmed |
| Date | 26 March 2011 |
| Topics | Crashes & retrievals (topic), Secrecy & cover-up (topic) |
| People | Jacques Vallée, Frank Scully |
| Testimony | Shellenberger testimony, p. 174 |
| Year | 2011 in UFO history |
| Timeline | 2011 on the UAP Timeline |
| Sources | 6 |
Chuck Wade is a New Mexico researcher who has argued that at least seven UFOs crashed and were recovered in New Mexico between 1945 and 1948.[1][2] He has presented the claims at the annual Aztec UFO Symposium and other conferences, and in a talk titled "Seven UFO Crashes and Retrievals in New Mexico, 1945–1948".[2][3] They include an "avocado-shaped" craft at San Antonio, New Mexico, in August 1945, a craft on the Plains of San Agustin in early July 1947, and two craft near Roswell on 4 July 1947.[2] Wade cites unnamed military sources and has shown metal fragments he believes came from the 1947 crash on the Plains of San Agustin.[1] None of these claims has been confirmed.[1]
Wade
Wade was born and raised in Corona, New Mexico, near the Foster Ranch where the 1947 Roswell debris was found. He was seven at the time. His father, Jesse Wade, owned the only bar in Corona, which his parents ran for 42 years until 1976.[1] He earned a civil engineering degree from New Mexico State University and later owned the Wade Building Company in Gallup.[1]
In a 2004 interview with Linda Moulton Howe, Wade said that one morning in the summer of 1947 the rancher Mac Brazel drove up to the bar and urged his father to come and see what had crashed on the ranch. His father refused and told Brazel to report it to Roswell.[1] Wade said a local woman, Geraldine Duboise, told him twice that Brazel then phoned Roswell from her drugstore.[1] He also said that a couple of years later Brazel's son Bill showed some of the debris in the bar, after which "the Government" confiscated it. In 1987 or so, he said, Loretta Proctor, to whom Brazel had shown some of it, told him the debris would not scratch or burn.[1]
The seven crashes
The testimony this article draws on lists the following sites from Wade's work:[2]
- an "avocado-shaped" craft at San Antonio, New Mexico, in August 1945
- a 32-foot craft on the Plains of San Agustin on 1–2 July 1947
- a 25-foot oval craft southwest of Roswell on 4 July 1947
- a 12- to 15-foot craft northwest of Roswell on 4 July 1947
According to a summary of his slides, the seventh site was in Hart Canyon, about 9 miles north of Aztec, where a 100-foot craft is said to have landed intact on 25 March 1948.[3] Wade has proposed that a mobile high-powered radar unit brought down several of the craft.[3] His count has grown over time. In 2008 the Gallup Independent reported his belief that four UFOs crashed in New Mexico in July 1947 and a fifth in 1948.[4] Wade has also connected the 1945 San Antonio story to two men who said they witnessed it as boys, an account promoted by the writer Paola Harris and the researcher Jacques Vallée.[2]
The 2004 dig
In March 2004 the researcher Art Campbell spoke at the Aztec UFO Symposium about unusual parts he believed came from a 1947 crash on the Plains of San Agustin. He and Wade then organized a joint dig there in June 2004.[1] Nine people used four 12-foot A-frames with screen baskets to sift soil and recovered a few pieces of metal foil, one about 50 square inches and one with two "seamed" edges, and a shard of "wax".[1] On 3 July 2004 Wade gave a piece to Stanton Friedman on stage at the UFO Museum in Roswell, for the museum to have it analyzed.[1] He presented the finds, under the title "Debris from Two Crashed UFOs in New Mexico, 1947", at the second annual UFO Crash Retrieval Conference in Las Vegas in November 2004.[1][5] On Coast to Coast AM in December 2004, George Noory reported Wade's view that analysis showed the metal was aluminum, iron and silicon, which Wade said could not have been made 50 years earlier.[1]
The Skeptics of Las Vegas mocked the presentation, noting that the "50 square inches" of foil was about half a sheet of notebook paper. They described it as "clearly the remnant of a crashed spaceship", and Wade's account of Brazel at the bar as "a second-hand report".[1] Nick Redfern, by contrast, called it "a fascinating and very personal lecture".[1]
Aztec
The Aztec crash of 1948, after which the symposium is named, is widely considered a hoax.[6] The story was told to the journalist Frank Scully by two con men, Silas Newton and Leo Gebauer, and published in his 1950 bestseller Behind the Flying Saucers. In Scully's version, a 99-foot craft with sixteen humanoid bodies landed in Hart Canyon in March 1948.[6] In 1952 the story was exposed as part of a scheme to sell supposedly alien technology, and the two men were convicted of fraud in 1953. Some ufologists revived it from the 1970s.[6]
Assessment
Wade's claims rest on unnamed military sources, second-hand recollections and soil finds whose analysis has not been published in any verifiable form.[1] The San Antonio story has been criticized for inconsistencies, and the Aztec case he includes is a documented hoax.[2][6] No official record supports any of the seven crashes.[1]
People and topics
- Unidentified anomalous phenomena — The U.S. government's current term for unidentified objects in the air, in space and underwater.
- Crash retrieval — The alleged recovery of crashed non-human craft by governments.
- Unidentified flying object — An object in the sky that can't be identified; the older term for UAP.
- Plains of San Agustin — A New Mexico plain named in some Roswell crash accounts.
- Roswell — The New Mexico town at the center of the 1947 crash story.
- Jacques Vallée — Computer scientist and astronomer, author of the Forbidden Science journals and a central figure in UFO research.
- Frank Scully — Variety columnist whose 1950 book Behind the Flying Saucers told of crashed saucers and dead aliens.
On the Timeline
- Nick Redfern's Air Force contact (2011) (31 March 2011) — Nick Redfern says an Air Force investigator offered to meet him about UAP.
- Homeland Security and BAASS (2011) (June-July 2011) — Homeland Security officials explore setting up BAASS as a UAP program in the government.
See every 2011 event on the UAP Timeline →
Further reading
- Aztec, New Mexico (1948 UFO hoax) — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
References
- Roswell witness file: Chuck Wade — Patrick Gross · ufologie.patrickgross.org · archived copy
- zbook.org · zbook.org · archived copy
- 7 UFO Crashes (Chuck Wade presentation slides) · scribd.com
- Gallup Independent, 24 October 2008 · gallupindependent.com
- Crash Retrieval Conference Proceedings, 2nd Annual (Nov 2004) · archive.org
- Aztec crashed saucer hoax · en.wikipedia.org
Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia article “Aztec crashed saucer hoax”, 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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