"In August of 1945, two years before the Roswell incident, there was a similar if not parallel UFO crash not far from the small New Mexico community of San Antonio. My uncle, who witnessed the object come down became friends with La Paz because of it, which inturn led to him helping La Paz with the Roswell investigation."
My first meeting with famed astronomer and meteorite hunter Dr. Lincoln La Paz came about because my Uncle and La Paz knew each other.
The two of them had met two years before, in August of 1945, a meeting that came about through a series of unrelated events connected together by my uncle. Once connected, because of security reasons, they eventually came under the scrutiny of Dr. La Paz and his team.
On Monday, July 16, 1945, a few weeks before their first meeting, during the very early pre-dawn hours my Uncle, who lived in New Mexico, was startled, along with many others no doubt, by a huge flash of light that filled the whole of the night sky in a giant half bubble arc across the desert toward White Sands. Unknown to him at the time, that flash was associated with the first atomic device ever set off on the face of the earth.(see) Shortly after that test, on August 6, 1945, the Japanese city of Hiroshima was destroyed by a nuclear bomb followed three days later by a second one on Nagasaki. Reading about the destructive force, radiation fallout, and the accompanying brilliant flash resulting from the bombings it wasn't long before he put together, along with all the rumors, that the light he had observed was the product of an atomic bomb test.
In those days my uncle was not yet the notorious biosearcher he would eventually become with several plant species named after him. Nevertheless, even though early in the biosearching game, because of the strong ties he had forged over the years with a wide spectrum of the area's Native American population and a deeply dedicated interest in their use of specific or sacred plants for medicinal and ritual purposes, he wanted to investigate how any actual or potential radioactive fallout from the bomb may have adversely impacted indigenous plants. So said, he decided to field test similar and like plants both in and out of the fallout zones as quick as possible then come back over a period of time and compare how they and their offspring withstood or modified in some fashion from normal states of growth.(see)
After determining through gut-instinct and a few charts predicting the areas most likely to have the strongest and weakest radioactive outflow --- from prevailing winds and such --- he began biosearching in a series of ever widnening concentric rings beyond the fence outward from ground zero, a location that has since been given the name Trinity Site. Mid August of 1945 found him well into the rugged terrain on BLM land some 25 miles or so from ground zero, not far from the small New Mexico community of San Antonio.
CITY OF SAN ANTONIO IS ABOUT 28 MILES NW OF TRINIY SITE
(for larger size click image then click again)
To beat the heat of the noonday sun my uncle had been doing his testing in both the early morning hours or near sunset, holing up the rest of day among the rocks and cliffsides away from the sun. On one of those mid August days, after spending a good part of the afternoon in a relative cool shaded area, including a nice siesta induced nap, my uncle gathered up his stuff and headed out to continue his biosearching, slowly wending his way on foot some distance into a section that was too rough for his vehicle. As the day was edging toward dusk he was jarred from his concentration first by the feeling of an intense blast of heat followed by a deep chest shuddering air-vibration caused by a huge, weird-shaped flying object, seemingly made of metal and whining like a sick vacuum cleaner that streaked in out of the sky almost directly overhead on a slightly down-angle from parallel to the ground. The object, as it crossed out of sight barely maintaining its height advantage above the undulating canyons and rock strewn hills, all the while traveling at an ultra high speed, by the sound of it, slammed hard, and somewhat explosively so, possibly before it even hit, into the rocks and soil some distance away.
Thinking it might have been an airplane, although it didn't look like any airplane he had ever seen, with a good chance of injured passengers or crew, he felt he should see what happened and lend assist if possible. He backtracked to his truck, gathered up a few provisions, water, and a medical kit and headed in the direction of the suspected crash. By the time he reached the ridge just above the object the sun had gone down beyond the horizon and it was starting to get dark, too dark he felt to scale down to the craft so, seeing no sign of life or bodies, he camped for the night on the ridge. The next day just as the sun was beginning to rise, albeit still in the morning darkness, he folded up his stuff into a small pile and started down the canyon wall. Part way down and unsure of his footness in the subdued pre-dawn light, and highly unusual for him, he misplaced a step and slipped, wedging his foot somehow in a rock crevice. The more he tried to free himself the more wedged it seemed to get. When he stopped to catch his breath and refigure his options after a rather long and intense unsucessful effort to work his foot loose, with the sun beginning to beat down, he noticed that several people had worked their way down to the crash site from the opposite side. He yelled trying to get their attention with no response. He scrounged around in his over shoulder bag and dug out a World War II survival mirror he always carried in his stuff and, flashing a signal toward them, got their attention. He waved his arms and yelled again and in doing so one of the men started up the ridge wall toward him. The man moved a few large rocks my uncle was unable to reach and pushed with the full strength of his legs on another and within a few minutes my uncle was freed, albeit with a highly bruised ankle.
After thanking the man and telling him how grateful he was for the assist my uncle told him who he was and why he was there. The man said they were there for basically the same reason. He said two of the others with them had been on horseback searching for lost livestock the day before and in the process of doing so saw the object flash across the sky then crash. After the two reached the site and saw the object from above the arroyo they returned home and related what they saw and heard. They decided to go back the next day and investigate. He told my uncle there didn't seem to be any signs of life or bodies, and for sure, the thing didn't seem to be an airplane even though it was obvious it was airborne just before it hit the ground. Even though my uncle was able to see the size and shape of the object quite clearly and the fact that it "slid" quite some distance before it came to rest partially buried against the canyon wall from his hillside perch, there was something so strange about it he really wanted to see the object up close. Except for being partially buried and a good sized hole that seemed to have been blown out of the curved side angled away from him, the object, if it was an airplane, considering the object's speed and all the sound and noise he heard the day before, appeared strikingly intact and undamaged. Because of how bad his ankle felt he didn't want to climb down and back up so he decided he would instead, just return to his truck and come back when his leg felt better. A week or two later he did just that. After cryptically asking around if anybody knew or heard anything about something crashing out near San Antonio and with none of his inquiries returning positive results, he, assuring himself he wasn't being watched or followed, slipped back into the area inconspicuously as possible in order to get a closer look at the object.
However, before that above revisit to the crash site, after barely making it back to his truck the same morning he wedged his foot in the rocks he had only just returned to his home near Santa Fe and soaked his ankle for the rest of the day and most of the night when an hour or so after sunrise the next day two men in civilian clothes came to the door flashing badges and telling him he had to go with them. They took him to Los Alamos in an area within the secure complex that had it's own second set of gates and guards. He was held overnight without explanation or charges then put in a small room by himself where, over a period of time he was questioned several different times by several different people. Questions about why he had been out there in the first place. Questions about his interest in the outflow patterns of the radioactive fallout. Questions about how he even knew about such things. In the third or fourth interrogation session it came up that not only did my uncle know Albert Einstein they were also friends.
No sooner had my uncle mentioned he knew Albert Einstein and that the two were actually friends than a man burst into the room and started asking him all kinds of questions about Einstein and the nature of their relationship, how they met, etc. After a few minutes the man took the receiver off the hook of a phone mounted on the wall, dialed three or four numbers, stretched the long cord out into the hallway letting the door close back on the cord so my uncle couldn't hear. Then, about five minutes after the man put the phone back on the hook and left another man came into the room and told the interrogator he could go, that they were "done here" and my uncle was free to go. As he was being escorted down the hall by two "MP types" toward the main door and presumably some sort of transportation home, the man walked with him. He asked my uncle if he would be willing to join him for coffee in one of the base cafeterias and continue discussing Einstein "off the record." For some reason, liking the man, even after, for no known reason, being treated rather harshly by some throughout the process, my uncle agreed.
The man turned out to be Dr. Lincoln La Paz and the jump from the interrogation room to coffee off the record was the start of a long friendship. After that they crossed paths many, many times --- and of those many times at least three that I recall when I was present.[1] [2]
The first time I met La Paz it was a year later, maybe two, after their 1945 meeting. My uncle and I were camping-out along the crest of Meteor Crater exploring one of the ancient pit houses along the rim. My uncle had decided to stay a few days after having met with a long time friend of his, the famed meteorite hunter Dr. H.H. Nininger the founder of the first meteorite museum in the world. In those days Nininger was in the process of turning a 1930s stone building called the observatory, located on old Route 66 within eyesight of the crater, into a museum. During the time we were there Nininger visited our camp on the edge of the rim several times. On one of those occasions Nininger met La Paz, who either came to visit my uncle or just happened upon us. Matter of fact my uncle spent most of the time keeping the two them at arms length as they had strong differing views as to how meteorites should be collected and if they should or even could be "sold" to the public. True, I was just a boy at the time and didn't get the full and total gist of the situation, but La Paz felt they should not be, Nininger held an opposite view and they discussed it at length, sometimes very animated and loud. They both also had opposite views as to Native Americans legends about the crater and if it was an off limits sacred place or not. Nininger thought it was. La Paz felt otherwise and cited the pit houses as proof. Nininger said they were ceremonial in nature and intended only for rituals and such. Again, La Paz felt otherwise. A few years later La Paz launched an investigation to prove his point.[3]
The second time La Paz crossed paths with my uncle with me present happened a few days after we had camped out under the stars somewhere in the New Mexico desert near Fort Sumner on the night of, it is thought, Friday, July 4, 1947. Around midnight my uncle, who had not fallen asleep as I had, saw a brilliant meteor-like object streak across the night sky arcing downward toward the horizon, all the while dissipating a string of quickly extinguishing small glowing hunks or particles dropping in it's wake. Thinking it was a meteor and that his friend La Paz might be interested in a fresh strike, my uncle began an effort to contact him.
In that it was long before the days of cell phones it took a couple of days for the two to connect. La Paz informed my uncle that from all indications whatever he saw streak across the sky that night it was NOT a meteor nor a known aircraft of some type but an object not to dissimilar than what he had come across near San Antonio. Whatever it was, after talking with La Paz my uncle was chaffing at the bit to go to the suspected impact site and see for himself if there was any truth behind the so called Hieroglyphic Writing that La Paz heard rumors of as being on some of the metal scraps.
When my uncle and La Paz met up after the phone call it was along some deep-rutted dirt road out in the middle of nowhere. La Paz was traveling with his wife and two daughters, the three of which stayed in the car while La Paz got out. He and my uncle walked around a few yards off the road and into the scrubbrush talking for awhile. Maybe twenty minutes into their conversation a military jeep without any numbers, markings or insignias came bouncing across the desert toward us with two men, one a GI, who was driving, the other dressed in civilian garb sitting on the passenger side. Both joined La Paz and my uncle. Without me having a clue as to what was going on my uncle walked over to our truck followed by the civilian and pulled a canvas shoulder bag from a box in the pick-up bed along with a pair of binoculars and a couple of canteens, one on a WW II pistol belt I always wore when we were in the field. As he motioned me toward him, the civilian got into our truck, started the engine, turned the vehicle around and drove away on the same road we came in on. La Paz got in his car and drove off as well. My uncle and I got into the jeep with the GI and headed toward the debris field.[4]
On July 10th, 1947, La Paz reported seeing a huge eliptical-shaped object flying in the sky, interestingly enough, near Fort Sumner. In a Life Magazine article dated April 7, 1952 (Incident 2, page 84 (see)) La Paz, who is left unnamed in the article, is quoted as saying: "The object 'exhibited a sort of wobbling motion' and then disappeared behind some clouds. It reappeared and 'projected against the dark clouds gave the strongest impression of self-luminosity.'" The object then moved slowly from south to north and two and a half minutes behind a cloudbank. According to La Paz's calculations, confirmed by his wife, the object was huge, as large or larger than the infamous "Battle of Los Angeles" object as presented in UFO Over Los Angeles seen by thousands in February, 1942, being some 235 feet long and 100 feet thick, its horizontal speed ranged between 120 and 180 miles per hour and its vertical rise between 600 and 900 miles per hour. (NOTE: according to reports as cited in the above link, the Los Angeles UFO was, however, thought to be closer to the size of a Zeppelin at 800 feet in length).
See: COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND ASTRONAUTICS, U.S. House of Representatives, July 29, 1968, Case 21.
The next time I saw La Paz was about two months later. He contacted my uncle to join him in figuring out the trajectory of the object that crashed and I tagged along. The idea by La Paz was to have my uncle, the bio-searcher that he was, determine if and where any of the growth may have been moved, removed or replanted.[5] It was a long and time consuming job but with my uncle's information along with the information gathered by other team members, the direction along the debris field was roughly figured out giving La Paz an arrow. Retracing several miles in both directions of the suspected trejectory, both in the air and on the ground, in an effort to confirm their conclusions, they discovered a previously unknown and unspoiled touchdown point five miles from the debris field where the sand had somehow been crystallized. The plants and scrub brush growing along the periphery of the glass-like sand and gravel were not so much burnt or scorched as they were more-or-less trying to return to a natural growth stage after being severely wilted, apparently from whatever crystallized the sand two months earlier. As well, the top portion of the sand and gravel in a definite north-south orientation in the major width between the scrub brush seemed to give off a very slight, practically non-observable blue hue in the bright sunlight. The hue was caused by what appeared to be a transparent turquoise-like patina, almost as though a fine veneer or micro-thin spray had fallen over the top surface of the sand. The fused glass site, the debris field and the Capitan Mountains site were found to be all perfectly aligned. The following, describing the aspects of it all, is found in the source so cited:
"(The biosearcher) in observing the plant lean-bias and reading the surface direction of the heat bite on the leaves and stalks and discounting the possibility of fulgurites caused by lightning strikes in the sand, suspects an extremely hot but very quick touchdown or possible low pass-by by the object, suggesting it may have been, except for some minor lift ability, out of control or not EVEN controlled. He is almost certain the debris pieces at the Brazel ranch belong to a totally separate object, but even so there still remains the possibility that this one was shedding or jettisoning similar parts or even breaking apart as it went along. Having either lost its power source or not having one, thus not being able to change speed, direction, or climb sufficiently, the main body, possibly still traveling hundreds of miles per hour, crosses the basically flat desert terrain within seconds, all the while radiating heat. Failing in an effort to gain sufficient altitude to clear the crest of the oncoming mountains, the object bounces hard into the short rough upslope of the landscape with a forced reduction of speed through the trees and dirt, sliding sideways into the rocks and boulders on the side of the Capitan Mountains, some thirty-five or so odd miles to the south southeast."
(source)
Although I wasn't present, ten years later, circa 1957, a friendly discussion between La Paz and the bio-searcher circulating around their combined efforts at Roswell ensued. According to my uncle the meeting occurred late one afternoon through evening at Clines Corners at the intersection of Route 285 and old Route 66 (now I-40) some 60 miles east of Albuquerque. In conversation with the bio-searcher La Paz concluded the object that went down in the dark that night over New Mexico was an unoccupied probe from another planet. My uncle speculated at most it was probably a Sputnik type thing, an artificial satellite, which at the time of the conversation was a relatively new reality for almost everybody, but some ten years before, in 1947, was something nobody ever heard of --- AND probably why nobody could figure out what it was. If one were to speculate now with information available to us today there is a good chance both were quasi-right because three years later there came to be known an object called a Bracewell Probe, a sort of combination of both of their theories [6] More than likely its orbit began decaying, it started dragging the upper atmosphere, then broke apart scattering the lightweight and apparently what was left over unburnable material, including a few pieces described as I-beams inscribed with Hieroglyphic Writing, all over the desert floor. The much larger and heavier object, possibly a shuttle craft, entry vehicle, remote control drone, or unmanned search unit of some sort, ending up on the side of the Capitan Mountains, going down for unknown reasons in an effort to locate or retrieve the downed satellite --- AND no doubt, the primary reason for so much radar activity reported over the central New Mexico area in the days preceding the crash. The bio-searcher suggests to La Paz it was quite possible the craft may have landed previously, and maybe even on more than one occasion to pick up or obtain the most important material or parts, thus the reason why only so much of nothing but scraps and pieces remained at the debris field.(see)
AND NOW THIS:
New Mexico UFO Crash Encounter In 1945
There must be something to the law of unintended consequences. The original intent of me writing all of the above was to layout for readers of my works a simple comprehensive overview of how my uncle and Dr Lincoln La Paz met and became friends in the first place. In the very opening paragraphs I state that their first meeting came about through a series of unrelated events connected together by my uncle that once connected eventually came to the attention of La Paz. Then I go about laying out those events. However, whatever good intentions I may have had, that is, how La Paz and my uncle met and became friends seems to have been lost in mix, being fully overshadowed by my uncle's 1945 San Antonio New Mexico UFO crash encounter. The way people jump up and down about it, it is almost as though what I have written, ends with the San Antonio encounter and therefore, nothing presented about La Paz and my uncle following the encounter amounts to much. Like I continue to tell people, except for a few succulent tid bits of information I offer in Kensington Stone, other that what I have presented above I cannot add much more to it. As I say in Footnote [1]:
"My uncle died in 1989 and to his knowledge, from the time of having first seen the object until the time of his death, even though he personally knew a road had been constructed within a week or two to the site and the object apparently removed using the same road --- which would entail a great amount of forethought and logistics, not to mention time, money, men, and equipment --- no one else had ever come forward and said they saw anything remotely related to the event."
Thus ends one person's 1945 San Antonio New Mexico UFO crash encounter. The graphic at the top of the page? The ghost-like shadow is all that remains of an unknown individual vaporized in a micro-second by the Hiroshima bomb. The person is still silhouetted against the wall by intense heat and light from the blast.
FOR A FREE NO SIGN-UP INDIVIDUAL ONLINE COPY OF ANY OF THE THREE COMICS PLEASE CLICK IMAGE ---
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ROSWELL 1947 AND DR. LINCOLN LA PAZ: WAS HE THERE?
SAN CLEMENTE ISLAND AND THE 1942 UFO
ROSWELL CRASH: UFO DOWN
ROSWELL: CIRCA 1947
DR. LINCOLN LA PAZ
FOO FIGHTERS
UFO OVER L.A.
THE BATTLE OF LOS ANGELES
ROSWELL ARCHAEOLOGISTS
THE DIRT BEFORE THE DIG
THE WANDERLING
(please click)
Footnote [1]
---------WORLD WAR II ESM/1 EMERGENCY SIGNALING MIRROR
When my uncle first saw the object streak across the sky and seemingly crash a week or so before, because he had been so focused going from one plant to the next biosearching for so many days he didn't realize he may have had inadvertently wandered from BLM open-range onto leased or owned ranch land, possibly the Padilla Ranch owned and operated by longtime local San Antonio rancher Faustino Padilla. Since he wasn't sure of the exact location where the object came down and didn't think he could find it by officially accessing it through ranch hierarchy or some shortcut route, nor did he want to explain his actions or what he saw to anybody, he basically retraced his original route when he came across it in the first place. Much to his surprise, when he topped the ridge and looked down into the area where he had last seen the thing, nothing was there. Matter of fact, where the terrain had been so rugged that he had to leave his vehicle and walk in originally and still had to, on the opposite side of the ridge he saw a new, albeit roughly hewn yet semi-adequate road, that had been graded or carved down to the dry bottom of the deep arroyo where the object had been. Even a good portion of the 300 foot long skid mark that the object left in it's wake before it slammed hard into the cliffside appeared to be modified. Even though roughly done, without knowing something crashed at the location nobody would ever give it a second look, especially after a summer downpour or two.
Although it was apparent considerable modification had been done to the terrain on the far side of the arroyo, his side had been left untouched. Not only was he easily able to find the rocks where he had got his leg stuck he also found his survival signal mirror. After using the mirror to get the attention of the people at the object that day, in the confusion of getting his foot free and the need of his own assist in doing so in conjunction with that of the man, he sat the mirror against some rocks within reaching distance then simply left without it. When he returned, although the mirror had fallen down a little ways into the rocks, it was basically where he left it. While he saw no apparent signs of anybody having been there since he left, on the mirror were what appeared to be an attempt to scratch or etch half dime-size markings on the surface that bore a strong visual resemblance to runic script he had seen years before on the Kensington Stone. Although the rune-like etches could have possibly been caused by falling against the rocks, if you held the mirror in the intended fashion, the marks were located perfectly at 12, 3, 6, and 9 o'clock (or held flat or overhead, the Cardinal points North, East, South and West) positions. My uncle gave the mirror to La Paz and never saw it again. The following quote is from the Kensington Stone link cited above:
"(My) uncle showed me why the Kensington Stone had any sort of importance to him in the first place --- and of all things, it involved my newly acquired signaling mirror. As I was tearing open the package the mirror was wrapped in my uncle was going through a bunch of sketches and drawings he had in a rather large portfolio that he brought with him from Santa Fe. Eventually he pulled out a piece of paper that had on it what I would call nothing more than a fairly nondescript pencil rubbing. When my uncle placed the paper on the mirror, what appeared to be some sort of unrecognizable letters created by the rubbing could be seen centered half way between each of the corners. To me it was a huge 'so what moment,' that is, until he told be what it was all about."
What it was all about was that the signaling mirror had a see-through crosshair sighting or viewing device in the center and the rune-like scratch marks were at the four Cardinal points my uncle thought, if they were not accidental but somehow intentional, the markings could possibly be astronomical in nature. That is why he contacted the noted astronomer Dr. Lincoln La Paz.
For you the reader who may need a quick reminder, the time period we are talking about here when my uncle, after seeing, then coming across the crashed remains of an airborne object of an unknown nature somewhere outside of San Antonio, New Mexico in August of 1945, was way before anything like flying saucers or UFOs came into the public eye. Not only was San Antonio crash two full years before Kenneth Arnold saw what he called flying saucers or flying discs traveling in a formation over Mount Rainier on June 24, 1947 --- the event that almost single handedly set into motion the whole modern-day flying saucer movement --- it was also two years before the July 4, 1947 Roswell incident, perhaps the foremost all time winner when it comes to UFOs in the public eye.
WAR OF THE WORLDS
(please click image)
Like many of his day my uncle experienced the aftermath of, or at least familiar with, the Orson Welles' 1938 radio broadcast of the "War of the Worlds." The night of the broadcast, especially on the east coast where it was being sent out live and supposedly taking place, thousands of listeners reportedly took the presentation to be a real news broadcast of an invasion from Mars and actually panicked into the streets. Even so, during the first several years following the San Antonio event my uncle just did not pull forward the Welles incident in his thoughts enough to place any of what he saw or experienced into a "coming from another world" or "outer space" context --- and for sure, nothing that appeared to be an invasion. Although he had personally seen, experienced, and participated in what many outsiders might consider strange surrounding some aspects of the various Native American cultures he interacted with, some even hinting at or framed in primitive extra-terrestrial parables --- none leaned outwardly toward what one would think of as a modern day science fiction.
For a complete unabridged YouTube audio video presentation of Orson Wells 1939 radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds please click HERE
My uncle died in 1989 and to his knowledge, except for his reporting it to La Paz, which fell on deaf ears, all the time he was alive from the time of having first seen the 1945 San Antonio UFO crash until the time of his death, even though he personally knew a road had been constructed within a week or two to the site and the object apparently removed using the same road --- which would entail a great amount of forethought and logistics, not to mention time, money, men, and equipment --- not one person had ever come forward and reported anything about it and/or said they saw anything remotely related to the event. It wasn't until Roswell UFO and similar happenings such as the 1953 Kingman UFO that my uncle was able to look back in time and realize he had been witness to something truly remarkable.
As a kid it seems like a large portion of almost everything I learned came from reading comic books. Over and over, even today in the stuff I write I often refer back to something I read at one time or the other in a comic book, that is, except maybe for one major time when there was not just comic books involved, but the coming together of BOTH comic books AND Saturday afternoon matinee movies of the day. That time I flew well over two-stories high in a Da Vinci-like flying machine I built myself as described in Tarzan and the Huntress.
Besides comic books though, almost anybody who is familiar with or has read any amount of my online works also knows that as a kid I was just as big on box top and the like offers. As I viewed it, comic book ads were a quick jump from box top offers, falling into a similar or like category. After I answered the comic book ad to become a Junior Air Raid Warden, and at the time I don't think I was even in kindergarten yet, the rest was easy.
After the war my uncle would take me to a giant army surplus store called Palley's. Every time we would go I always returned with a bunch of World War II army surplus stuff like canteens, pistol belts, parkas, infantry backpacks and Army M43 folding shovels. When my uncle returned to Santa Fe and I started living with a foster couple, comic book mail order took up the slack. Below is just like all the stuff I used to order. Since I was just a kid with no mother and father and living with a foster couple at that, the question always comes up, "Where did I get the money?" Not being totally truthful about my age I worked at a place called The Normandie Club.
Notice in the ad below that in those days a kid could even order knives, machetes, and axes if they were so predisposed. Notice as well that the two smaller versions of the surplus ad, although similar to the color ad, both offer signaling mirrors for 35 cents. By responding to a similar war surplus type ad my dad actually bought a brand new, or at least never used, World War II jeep right off the docks in San Francisco. The jeep, along with hundreds of others, were piled up on the docks just about to be shipped off to the South Pacific when the war ended. The government was selling them off as fast as they could, first come first served for as little as $225.00 bucks.(see)
THE NORMANDIE CLUB
At first my uncle was never sure of the exact days or dates in August of 1945 that he was out biosearching and saw the craft come down, then quickly followed by the interrogation sessions at Los Alamos and the meeting of La Paz. However, because of an offhand comment by La Paz when the two of them were having coffee he was able to narrow it down to within a specific day or so. Although at the time it wasn't known by the general public, during the period of time we are talking about here, a serious radiation mishap occurred at Los Alamos that killed one of the scientists working there. His death did not actually happen until several weeks after the accident, and it wasn't until his death that it was reported --- and then, at the time, the real cause of his death was not released. In any case the accident happened on August 21, 1945. During my uncle's conversation with La Paz over coffee and the fact that it circulated around radiation and it's effect on living things --- such as my uncle's interest on radiation impact on plants --- La Paz let slip that a fellow scientist was severely burned by an overdose of radiation the day before. At the time my uncle didn't think about it one way or the other as connecting any of it to a date. However, later in life it dawned on him he was able to narrow down the events within a day or two when he put together the date of the radiation accident and his talk with La Paz. As the newspaper article right, released September 20, 1945 and referring to a worker at Los Alamos who died September 15, will attest to, he died as a result of burns from an "industrial accident" on August 21. Using the date of August 21st as steadfast, backtracking in time with known accountable days would have put my uncle out under the object during it's flyover most likely on August 16th or 17th with his viewing the object with his ankle stuck in the rocks the next day, being on the 17th or 18th.
Although the name of the man involved in the industrial accident on the 21st was released as early as the article, the actual cause of death was not released until years later. For a full account of the incident, now available to the public and online, please see:
Harry K. Daghlian, Jr
Footnote [5]
Throughout the years there has been a constant barrage, if not a steady stream of questions, about my uncle reportedly engaging in any number of events that appear to have fallen into a highly confidential or classified category and how was it possible he did so considering the need for security clearances to participate at such levels --- especially so those done with La Paz. The following shows up in ROSWELL INCIDENT: Updated:
"(O)ver the heated objections of Rickett, La Paz, who has a top secret clearance from his World War II job at the Proving Grounds, brings in a mysterious bio-searcher who knows southwest indigenous plants intimately. Although the bio-searcher does not have anything close to a security clearance, he is a longtime trusted friend of La Paz and known to have an even longer working relationship with Albert Einstein. Since La Paz has carte blanche over the operation there is not much Rickett can do about it except harbor hard feelings."
La Paz and others operating out of Los Alamos fell under the purview of General Leslie Groves who ran the Manhattan Project. Groves had a much different approach to security clearances than typically found across top secret military projects. It has been reported that Groves "would have brought in Attila the Hun if had known about quantum mechanics." Where a person might not have obtained the necessary security clearance to work on radar at the MIT lab where radar work was being done it was a much different attitude at Los Alamos under Groves.
For example, Groves appointment of Robert Oppenheimer to head up the Manhattan Project secret weapons laboratory. A huge outcry was expressed about Oppenheimer, circulating mostly around him being a security risk because many of his associates were communists, including his brother Frank, Frank's wife Jackie, Oppenheimer's former girlfriend Jean Tatlock and his wife Kitty. Even so Groves personally waived the security requirements and issued Oppenheimer a clearance on 20 July 1943.
Although General Grove was no longer at the Los Alamos facility at the time of the Roswell incident, it was his philosophy that continued to permeate the atmosphere surrounding La Paz's approach regarding the biosearcher, much to the dismay of U.S. Army Counter-Intelligence Corps master sergeant Lewis "Bill" Rickett and his most likely more traditional or stricter adherence to security clearance guidelines (Lewis "Bill" Rickett was the non-commissioned officer in charge of the CIC office at Roswell in 1947 and the Rickett cited in the above quote).
As for Groves waiving of the requirements for Oppenheimer's top secret security clearance, it should be noted that a formal hearing in 1954 resulted in Oppenheimer's top secret security clearance being revoked. If the biosearcher ever had an "official" security clearance issued for anything beyond his assistance as required by La Paz in his investigations is not known.
Footnote [6]
Members of the scientific community, including La Paz knew of the actual potential possibility of artificial satellites circling the Earth both in fact and theory since at least 1954, and most likely well before. The following is from an Aviation Week story which appeared as one paragraph in the "Washington Roundup" column on August 23, 1954:
SATELLITE SCARE
Pentagon scare over the observance of two previously unobserved satellites orbiting the earth has dissipated with the identification of the objects as natural, not artificial satellites. Dr. Lincoln La Paz, expert on extraterristrial bodies from the University of New Mexico, headed the identification project. One satellite is orbiting at about 400 mi. out, while the other track is 600 mi. from the earth. Pentagon thought momentarily the Russians had beaten the U.S. to space explorations.
If the aforementioned satellites were in fact "natural" or their identification of such was disinformation is not known. So too, what happened to those satellites not much is known. The article below appeared several weeks prior to Aviation Week's comments and what most likely led to the reply by La Paz ensuring the fact that the satellites were natural:
SEE:
THE GREAT 1947 SUNSPOT, ROSWELL, AND CORONAL MASS EJECTIONS
THE SEARCH FOR EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL ARTIFACTS AND 1991 VG
CASE 21. Ft. Sumner, New Mexico, July 10, 1947
A midday sighting by a University of New Mexico meteoriticist, Dr. Lincoln La Paz, and members of his family was summarized by Life magazine years ago (Ref. 87) without identifying La Paz's name. Bloecher (Ref. 8) gives more details and notes that this is officially Unidentified:
At 4:47 p.m. MST on 7/10/47, four members of the La Paz family nearly simultaneously noted "a curious bright object almost motionless" low on the western horizon, near a cloud bank. The object was described as ellipsoidal, whitish, and having sharply-outlined edges. It wobbled a bit as it hovered stationary just above the horizon, then moved upwards, passed behind clouds and re-emerged farther north in a time interval which La Paz estimated to be so short as to call for speeds in excess of conventional aircraft speeds. It passed in front of dark clouds and seemed self-luminous by contrast. It finally disappeared amongst the clouds. La Paz estimated it to be perhaps 20 miles away, judging from the clouds involved; and he put its length at perhaps 100-200 ft.
Discussion. -- This observation is attributed by Menzel (Ref. 24, p. 29) to "some sort of horizontal mirage, perhaps one of a very brilliant cloud shining like silver in the sunlight -- a cloud that was itself invisible because of the darker clouds in the foreground." As nearly as I am able to understand that explanation, it seems to be based on the notion that mirage-refraction can neatly superimpose the image of some distant object (here his "brilliant cloud") upon some nearer object in the middle distance (here his "darker clouds"). That is a fallacious notion. If any optical distortions did here bring into view some distant bright cloud, it would not be possible to receive along immediately adjacent optical paths an image of the intermediate clouds. Furthermore, the extremely unstable lapse rates typical of the southwestern desert areas under afternoon conditions produce inferior mirages, not superior mirages of the looming type here invoked by Menzel. Rapid displacements, vertically and horizontally, are not typical of mirage phenomena. Hence Menzel's explanations cannot be accepted for this sighting.
SYMPOSIUM ON UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECTS
HEARINGS BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND ASTRONAUTICS
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
NINETIETH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
JULY 29, 1968
My uncle just didn't think up the idea of radiation testing of the soil out of whole cloth. The idea stemmed from an incident that occurred in 1943, a rather unfortunate incident by the way, that not only impacted him adversely, but could have killed him.
In 1943 the U.S. was at war. My uncle, a staunch patriot, was a civilian and for sure a non-combatant, actually falling more into a role of a conscientious objector type than anything else. He had long been established as an artist in the Santa Fe, Taos area, but he was as well what I have called in the above main text a biosearcher. Prior to his death in 1989 he had, as a biosearcher, more than a half dozen plant species named after him following years of trekking, searching, and discovering previously unknown and unnamed plants all over mostly remote and hidden areas and sections of the desert southwest. In 1943 he was biosearching alone in the then largely uninhabited mountainous and desert-like terrain in the central section of New Mexico between the New Mexico and Arizona border on the west and the north-to-south flowing Rio Grande on the east.
In the process of his biosearching he came across two men, and unusually so, both Asian. One of men was flat on his back all but unconscious and visibly quite ill after apparently having been bitten by a rattlesnake with the bite being left untreated. My uncle, after using the healing properties of indigenous plants he gathered up, soon found the man up and around. One of the men who had a rudimentary use of English told my uncle they were Japanese, were testing soil samples for radioactivity, and had been left off in Mexico by a submarine. By then my uncle was wanting to beat a hasty retreat but before he could one of the men shot him right in the back at point blank range. They took his truck and although they left him to bleed out he survived. In 1985 a book titled The Japanese Secret War authored by Robert K. Wilcox was published. In the book Wilcox writes about the two Japanese men my uncle encountered and the U-boat they arrived in, of which I turn around and write about as found in the sourced link below the quote so cited:
"Wilcox's book that, for the first time brought to the public's attention Japanese agents having been in the desert southwest during World War II specifically tasked with testing soil samples for radiation, was published in 1985. It was in 1970, fifteen years before Wilcox's book was published that my uncle told me about his 1943 encounter with Japanese spies soil testing deep into state of New Mexico and the fact that according to their own testimony, they had initially been brought to Mexico via German U-boat from Europe. "
THE JAPANESE SECRET WAR
JAPANESE MIDGET SUBMARINES
THE JAPANESE PLAN TO NUKE LOS ANGELES
TRINITY SITE
Below, for your own edification, is a list of the websites wherein I mention the 1945 U.S. New Mexico nuclear test at Trinity Site in some fashion, most commonly related back to my uncle and thus then, how atomic bombs and atomic bomb tests, German or American, circle back to what I have presented elsewhere in my works:
"My stepmother, who you may recall was quite wealthy, in her new found motherhood role, noticed my younger brother and myself, along with a bunch of other neighborhood kids, spent an inordinate amount of time 'playing cowboys' --- with cowboy hats, capguns, holsters, boots, etc., and in doing so we often ended up in the street. Using her logic, she thought, what could be better than having their own real ranch to play on, especially so, not in the street."
So that's what she did, she bought a ranch. A whole section of land in size, that is, one square mile, with twenty acres set aside on one corner for the ranch house, barn, horse corrals, you name it. Then off we went to ride real horses and shoot real guns, of which the ranch house had a number of them --- some on the wall and above the doors such as a lever action 30-30 Winchester, a shotgun or two, a couple of .22 rifles, and a genuine antique 1847 Colt Walker handgun in a case. Every once in awhile I would take the 4.5 pound Colt out of the case and run around playing cowboys with it, sometimes even mixing genres by wielding the colt in one hand and a Buck Rogers Disintegrator in the other. In that the Colt was a black powder revolver and since nobody knew how to load it and everybody was afraid to, it was never loaded. In my later teenage years the Colt was sent to a gunsmith for some reason or the other and while there the gunsmith let me fire three rounds through it.
No sooner had we moved onto the ranch than my dad started to look around at tractors and such. Instead he decided on a four wheel drive World War II jeep to tool around in. Even though none of us kids were old enough to drive legitimately on any of the paved roads around or near the ranch, on the dirt roads and the scrub bursh desert lands surrounding the ranch, as well as on the ranch itself, we drove all over the place.
My dad actually bought the Jeep after answering an ad similar to the one below. The ad offered surplus Jeeps for $278.00. After looking into it he discovered he could actually purchase a brand new, or at least never used, World War II Jeep for $225.00 cash right off the docks in San Francisco, which in reality turned out to be not docks in San Francisco, but across the bay in the naval ship yards at Vallejo or Alameda.
I still remember as a boy showing up with my dad and brothers. The whole place turned out to be a huge labyrinth of buildings, cranes, railroad tracks, and narrow between the structures roadways. On the docks were literally hundreds and hundreds of jeeps lined up row after row along with all kinds of other military hardware and equipment. The jeeps themselves had been taken right off the factory assembly line to the docks months before for transshipment to the South Pacific just as the war ended and when I was there with my dad as a kid, all of them were still just sitting there gathering dust and getting flat tires.
Other than learning a new word and having it added to my vocabulary, i.e., cosmoline, except for one thing, I don't recall anything specifically about the logistics of how or what my dad had to do to get the jeep, how long it took, how much paperwork he had to shuffle, or how the jeep was prepared so we could drive it home, only that it was and we did --- drive it home, that is. The one thing I remember is that the man who sold my dad the jeep told him he couldn't pick it up until the next day because of some longshoreman rule. The thing is, my dad brought two longshoremen with him and the man who sold my dad the jeep gave it to him. The two longshoremen were provided by a longtime old friend of my stepmother named Johnny Roselli.
During the heat of the summer my dad didn't want to drive down California's central valley on Highway 99 or cross over the Sierras to use the 395, although once to either highway it would have been the most direct to the ranch. Instead he chose to drive down the California coastline on Highway 1 --- and what a trip it was no matter what highway we would have used. A jeep, no top, my dad and three kids, no real back seats and all before seat belt days. At first the jeep wouldn't go over 45 miles an hour. When we stopped for gas for the first time and with my dad complaining, the attendant, who had been in the Army and knew about jeeps said it was because of a "governor," a device or some such thing the Army put on vehicles to ensure they weren't driven too fast. The attendant took a screwdriver, fiddled with a few things, and the next thing we knew the jeep could do over 60! A couple of days later after camping along the way we were back at the ranch.
From there we went from a bunch of kids tooling around the ranch to chasing locomotives out across the raw desert land at 90 miles per hour:
WORLD WAR II SURPLUS JEEPS
NEW, STILL IN A BOX FOR $50.00 JEEP IN A BOX
"The ad offered surplus jeeps for $278.00. There were literally hundreds of scams around right after the war saying you could buy surplus jeeps from $50.00 and up and that's what most of them were, scams. After looking into it my dad discovered he could actually purchase a brand new, or at least never used, World War II Jeep for $225.00 cash right off the docks in San Francisco, which in reality turned out to be not docks in San Francisco, but across the bay in the naval ship yards at Vallejo or Alameda."
THE YOUNG BOY AND HIS JEEP: ADVENTURES IN THE DESERT
(please click image)
