White Sands landing reports (1956)
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🗓️ Event
Contents 8
| Date | September 1956 |
|---|---|
| People | Leonard Stringfield |
| Testimony | Shellenberger testimony, p. 58 |
| Year | 1956 in UFO history |
| Timeline | 1956 on the UAP Timeline |
| Sources | 4 |
Stories of a domed disc landing near personnel at White Sands, New Mexico, are often dated to 1956. The report usually cited for them, published in MUFON's Skylook journal in March 1973, actually describes a sighting at nearby Holloman Air Force Base in the summer of 1958.[1]
The Skylook report
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In "White Sands sightings kept secret, now told", the journal reported that California investigator Paul Cerny had interviewed an aircraft mechanic, called "Mr. X", who said that at dusk one evening in summer 1958, while working on a plane's landing gear outside the main hangars at Holloman, he saw a silent disc-shaped object no more than 50 yards away. He described a hat-shaped craft about 25 feet across with a dome, oblong portholes giving off bluish light, a rotating ring of louvre-like parts around the rim, and three ball-like landing gear. By the time he called his colleague, it shot away.[1]
Afterwards
Mr. X said Air Force representatives soon showed both mechanics a book of more than 300 pages of UFO photographs, asked them to pick the closest match, told them the control tower had also watched the object, and had them sign statements promising not to discuss it. Cerny's account was first published in the Santa Ana Register in November 1972.[1]
Other White Sands reports
Leonard Stringfield later published a claim from a retired sergeant that White Sands tracking cameras photographed a craft on the ground; that account is unverified.[1]
Assessment
The witness was anonymous and no official record of a landing has been released.[1]
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.
- Unidentified flying object — An object in the sky that can't be identified; the older term for UAP.
- MUFON — The largest civilian UFO organization in the United States.
- Project Blue Book — The Air Force's public UFO investigation from 1952 until its closure in December 1969.
On the Timeline
- Navy pilots' shoot-down orders claim (1956) (5 July 1956) — Unnamed Navy pilots claim standing orders to shoot down hostile UAP over the Pacific.
- Joshua Goldberg and Air Force gravity research (Late 1956) — Wright-Patterson's labs hire physicist Joshua Goldberg to manage relativity and gravity contracts.
See every 1956 event on the UAP Timeline →
References
- "White Sands sightings kept secret, now told", Skylook / MUFON UFO Journal (March 1973), PDF · dailydialectics.com · archived copy
- Stringfield 1991 report on a White Sands landing — UFOScans · ufoscans.com · archived copy
- Project Blue Book: White Sands, 3 November 1957 — The Black Vault · theblackvault.com · archived copy
- dailydialectics.com · dailydialectics.com · archived copy
Further reading
- White Sands Missile Range — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Holloman 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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