Mexican mystery missile (1947)
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🗓️ Event
Contents 8
| Date | October 1947 |
|---|---|
| Topics | Crashes & retrievals (topic), Nuclear & missile sites (topic) |
| People | John Homer |
| Testimony | Shellenberger testimony, p. 39 |
| Year | 1947 in UFO history |
| Timeline | 1947 on the UAP Timeline |
| Sources | 3 |
On the morning of 12 October 1947 a flaming object streaked across the sky and crashed near Guadalupe, Chihuahua, in Mexico, across the Rio Grande from Fabens, Texas. The Mexican Army said it was another American V-2 rocket; the U.S. Army said it had launched nothing, and the object was never explained in the surviving records.[1][2]
The crash
Witnesses described a blue or silver object, about a metre long, with a flame at the rear and no smoke, travelling east to west from the direction of the United States at about 8:30–9:30 a.m. It exploded with a double detonation beyond the horizon and left a sizeable crater, causing no casualties or damage. At least four people saw it, and the Associated Press placed the impact in the Samalayuca mountains, less than ten miles from the site of a V-2 crash that May.[1]
Mexico's claim
A sergeant of the Mexican Army's 35th Infantry Battalion visited the crater and reported to his zone commander that the object was a V-2, and the Mexican War Department officially announced that it was a V-2 like the one in May. The U.S. military attaché commented that the sergeant was not competent to judge, and that an official U.S. statement was needed because Mexican sovereignty was involved.[1]
The U.S. investigation
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Major General John Homer, commander of Fort Bliss, who had witnessed the May crash, investigated personally and interviewed Mexican witnesses. He reported that no V-2 had been fired that day, that no guided missiles or rocket planes were missing from area airfields, and that the story was "inflated"; available information, he said, was not adequate to estimate the cause. According to the daily log of Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Hoyt Vandenberg, the State Department asked for an Army Air Forces investigation on 27 October; every station that could have launched a missile reported negative results, and the case was referred to the Inspector General. Local papers suggested a meteorite.[1][2]
The May 1947 precedent
Suspicion of a stray rocket was not far-fetched. On 29 May 1947 a captured German V-2 launched from White Sands veered off course and crashed just south of Ciudad Juárez, creating an international incident. The October object is remembered as Mexico's "mystery missile".[1][3]
In the testimony
The testimony cites: Majic Eyes Only, p 81.
People and topics
- John Homer — Fort Bliss commander who investigated the 1947 Mexican "mystery missile".
- White Sands — The New Mexico missile test range.
On the Timeline
- Selman Graves and the Paradise Valley crash claim (October 1947) — Pilot Selman Graves says he saw a crashed craft and two humanoid bodies recovered in Paradise Valley, Arizona.
- Pretty memo on the Horten brothers (1947) (16 December 1947) — A U.S. Army officer reports locating the German Horten brothers, designers of flying-wing aircraft.
See every 1947 event on the UAP Timeline →
References
- "The October 1947 Mexican 'mystery missile' crash", Project 1947 · project1947.com · archived copy
- Patrick Gross, Albuquerque Journal, 16 October 1947, UFOs at close sight · ufology.patrickgross.org · archived copy
- "Remember the time we bombed Mexico with German rockets?", Gizmodo · gizmodo.com · 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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