Metal collected by all those others, when analyzed here, turned out to be nothing strange or unusual. Some of it was later analyzed in a Canadian lab and their results mirrored those of American labs. So much for the idea that the government, in the guise of the CIA, the Air Force, or the mythical MJ-12, conspired to suppress evidence of the Aurora UFO crash.
Isn’t it interesting, though, that none of the metal supposedly gathered by the town’s residents has ever surfaced. The metal analyzed was always recovered by researchers with metal detectors. Isn’t interesting that the strange grave marker has since disappeared and there is no real photographic record of it. There should be for all the research that has been done and the single picture that has turned up showed not an airship but a coarse triangle with circles in the center. And isn’t interesting that there were never any follow up reports from Aurora. First the big splash with the crash and then nothing for more than sixty years.
The final, fatal blow for the airship and Aurora crash comes from the original reporter. H.E. Hayden, a stringer for the Dallas Morning News, who claimed to have invented the story in a vain attempt to put his dying community back on the map. He hoped to draw attention, and people, to Aurora, Texas. He was successful. The problem was that he succeeded sixty years too late and those who arrived only wanted to learn about the airship, not settle down to rebuild the community as he had hoped.
The San Diego UFO Crash — 1947
I was reviewing some of the old cases in my files and I came across the notation for a UFO crash near San Diego in 1947. I had published all the information I had in A History of UFO Crashes and was looking for additional data.
In that book I wrote, “Unidentified witnesses reported that a flaming object was seen to fall into the ocean west of San Diego. A check at the local observatory suggested that it wasn’t a meteorite and there were no aircraft reported missing. Recently declassified documents suggest an investigation by the military into the unidentified flaming object, but the case file itself has not been discovered.”
Okay, that’s not much. There were a couple of sources on this material. One of them was Flying Saucers on the Attackwritten by Harold T. Wilkins and published by the Citadel Press (Ace Star Books, page 72) in 1967. The only additional and probably irrelevant information contained there was that someone had checked with the Observatory at Griffin Park which is in Los Angeles and not San Diego, and the person there didn’t think it was a meteor.
The footnote for the case relates it to Sherman Brown who had an unpublished manuscript called UFO Crashes and was dated 1990. I actually reference that book several times, but could find nothing in my files that tells me anything more about it.
The other thing is that I have several letters from people attempting to track down the original sources of this information and trying to find Sherman Brown. One of those writers said that he had looked through the San Diego newspapers of the time. He found nothing there that related to an event in October.
All this led to one important point. In the book I dated the crash on October 20, 1947, but the other sources suggest, instead, September 20. I don’t know the source of the error in my book but would guess that it belongs to me.
None of this matters for those trying to run this down in San Diego. They checked the newspapers starting with the Arnold Sighting of June 24, 1947 and ran through the end of October. One man sent me a list of people who had made sightings in 1947.
I tried some other sources including the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies. They checked through their records and they found nothing to relate to either Sherman Brown or a crash near San Diego. I have believed, since there was nothing in my files on this, I had picked this up, or researched it further at the Center. Unless something strange happened there, they were not the source of Sherman Brown.
I did find that the San Diego Unioncarried an article about John Kuder who said he had seen “a luminous flying disc” circling about a half mile off Mission Beach. It dipped into the ocean and there was a ball of fire visible for a few seconds after the disk disappeared. This could be the source of the original story. The date isn’t close, but the location is and but the description of the event would fit with the idea that there had been a crash of some kind.
Here’s where we are on this one. I have located some of the sources about this event. I can now correct the date to the proper time or, at least, to another date in those sources which suggest September 20. Other sources, including one newspaper suggest July 6 because the story was reported on July 7. Given the story, I would opt for July 6. The thing to do now is leave it as insufficient data. We have found a UFO sighting that goes with the report, we have a suggestion that the object might have dropped into the sea, and we have the report of a fireball moments later. At the moment, this is a single witness case and for that reason, I leave it as insufficient data, though I suspect that a mundane answer would be found with additional information.
Spitzbergen UFO Crash — 1952
For the last ten years or so, there has been a list of UFO whistle blowers circulating. There are many names on the list but few of them have anything spectacular to tell. Most of the stories are of seeing UFOs and reporting them up the chain of command. Some of these witnesses tell of seeing classified documents relating to UFOs and UFO crashes.
One such witness is former Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Dwayne Arneson. Now, don’t get me wrong here. I believe that Lt. Col. Arneson served in the Air Force just as he claimed. I believe that a check of his record will corroborate what he says about his military career. In fact, I was in email communication with Lt. Col. Arneson at one time but haven’t heard from him in months (I suspect it was because I suggested that the Spitzbergen crash was a hoax, but I get ahead of myself here).
According to Dr. Stephen Greer’s Disclosure documents, Lt. Col. Arneson said, “I was a top secret control officer. I happened to see a classified message go through my com [communications] center which said, ‘A UFO has crashed on the Island of Spitzbergen, Norway, and a team of scientists are coming to investigate it.”
I believe this to be true as well. In fact, I shouldn’t say that I believe it. I know it’s true. Classified communications among various Air Force locations about a crash in Spitzbergen did take place. I too have seen the documents. I have copies of them (one of those messages seen above). Lt. Col. Arneson is correct.
But, that isn’t the whole story. In a classified document available in the Project Blue Book files, we read, “Info derived from foreign broadcasts to effect that German newspaper CMA [meaning comma, used rather than punctuation] carried article stating that a flying saucer-like flying object crashed Spitzbergen 9 July and that NAF [Norwegian Air Force] recovered it [usually, when using CMA for comma, they use PD for period but here they didn’t]. Claim diameter of 47 meters CMA constructed of steel of unknown alloy and that operating instructions written in Russian. Info apparently has had big play in German press running continuously since shortly after 9 July. Request validity of this info…”