White Sands blown-window crash claim (1948)

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Contents 4
White Sands blown-window crash claim (1948)
Stars fill the sky above the the ground-based electro-optical deep-space surveillance telescope located on White Sands Missile Range--the location of…
Stars fill the sky above the the ground-based electro-optical deep-space surveillance telescope located on White Sands Missile Range--the location of… Photo: U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Dennis Hoffman · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons
Date1948
TopicsCrashes & retrievals (topic), Beings & bodies (topic), Secrecy & cover-up (topic)
PeopleLeonard Stringfield, Linda Moulton Howe
TestimonyShellenberger testimony, p. 40
Year1948 in UFO history
Timeline1948 on the UAP Timeline
Sources4

White Sands blown-window crash claim (1948) — An anonymous source claims a disc crashed at White Sands with its occupants dead from a blown-out window.

This account describes a disc that crashed at or near White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico in 1948. According to the story, the craft was largely intact, but its small occupants were dead, apparently because a window had blown out and they had decompressed. The source adds that the government bought the surrounding land to keep the site secret.

The story comes from the crash-retrieval reports compiled by Leonard Stringfield from 1978 into the 1990s, based on informants he identified only by initials or not at all, to protect them from official reprisal. Later retellings, including on Linda Moulton Howe's Earthfiles website, repeated and expanded it. No documents, named witnesses or physical evidence have been produced.

White Sands was the main U.S. rocket and missile test range at the time, home to captured V-2 launches, early guided missiles and high-altitude research balloons. Several crash stories from the region have been tied by historians to those programs. A 2007 report in the University of New Mexico's student newspaper about a "cryptic video" said to point to a White Sands crash generated interest but no confirmation.

People and topics

Linda Moulton Howe receiving Emmy Award for Audio Achievement in documentary A Strange Harvest
Linda Moulton Howe receiving Emmy Award for Audio Achievement in documentary A Strange Harvest Photo: Larry W. Howe · CC BY 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons
  • White Sands — The New Mexico missile test range.
  • Crash retrieval — The alleged recovery of crashed non-human craft by governments.
  • 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.
  • Earthfiles — Linda Moulton Howe's website.

On the Timeline

Location of White Sands Missile Range.
Location of White Sands Missile Range. Photo: U.S. Army · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons

See every 1948 event on the UAP Timeline →

References

Further reading

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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