The Aztec crashed saucer hoax (sometimes known as the "other Roswell") was the allegation that a flying saucer crashed in 1948 in Aztec, New Mexico. The story was first published in 1949 by journalist Frank Scully in his Variety magazine columns, and later in his 1950 book Behind the Flying Saucers. In the mid-1950s, the story was exposed as a hoax fabricated by two con men, Silas M. Newton and Leo A. Gebauer, as part of a fraudulent scheme to sell materials they claimed to be alien technology. Beginning in the 1970s, some ufologists resurrected the story in books claiming the purported crash was real.[1][2][3] In 2013, an FBI memo claimed by some ufologists to substantiate the crash story was dismissed by the bureau as "a second- or third-hand claim that we never investigated".[4]
According to Scully, in March 1948, an unidentified aerial craft containing sixteen humanoid bodies was recovered by the military in New Mexico after making a controlled landing in Hart Canyon 12 miles northeast of the city of Aztec. The craft was said to be 99 feet (30m) in diameter, the largest UFO to date. Scully named as his sources two men identified as Newton and Gebauer, who reportedly told him the incident had been covered up and "the military had taken the craft for secret research".[3][5][6]
Scully wrote that the crashed UFO along with other flying saucers captured by the government had come from Venus and worked on "magnetic principles". According to Scully, the inhabitants stocked concentrated food wafers and "heavy water" for drinking purposes, and every dimension of the craft was "divisible by nine". Science writer Martin Gardner criticized Scully's story as full of "wild imaginings" and "scientific howlers".[7]
Hoax
External audio
Lecture by Silas Newton on March 8, 1950 at the University of Denver: Part 1 and Part 2
During the late 1940s and early 1950s, Silas Newton and Leo A. Gebauer traveled through Aztec, attempting to sell devices known in the oil business as doodlebugs.[8] They claimed that these devices could find oil, gas and gold, and that they could do so because they were based on "alien technology" recovered from the supposed crash of a flying saucer. When J. P. Cahn of the San Francisco Chronicle asked the con men for a piece of metal from the supposed alien devices, they provided him with a sample that turned out to be ordinary aluminum.[8] In 1949, author Frank Scully published a series of columns in Variety magazine retelling the crash story told to him by Newton and Gebauer. He later expanded these columns to create Behind the Flying Saucers in 1950, a best selling book that influenced public perceptions about UFOs. Two years later, in 1952, the hoax was exposed in True magazine,[9] with a follow-up article in 1956 presenting other victims of Newton and Gebauer.[10] One of the victims was the millionaire Herman Flader, who pressed charges. The two were convicted of fraud in 1953.[1][3]
Author Frank Scully (right) and confidence man Silas Newton (center)
Influence on ufology
Through the mid-1950s to the early 1970s, most ufologists considered the subject thoroughly discredited and therefore avoided it. In 1966, the book Incident at Exeter mentioned rumors of dead alien bodies stored at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Those rumors inspired the 1968 novel The Fortec Conspiracy. In 1974, ufologist Robert Spencer Carr publicly claimed alien bodies recovered near Aztec were stored at "Hangar 18" at Wright-Patterson, prompting official denials from the Air Force.[12]
However, in the late 1970s, author Leonard Stringfield purported that not only was the incident real, but that the craft involved was one of many captured and stored by the U.S. military.[13] In later years, many accounts, allegedly first-hand, of the Roswell crash contained the Aztec crash story,[13] with some claiming the craft was made of a material impervious to all heat, and others alleging the craft was damaged by the crash. The supposed humanoid bodies were said to measure between 36 inches (91cm) and 42 inches (110cm) in height, and weigh around 40 pounds (18kg). Ufologists claim that shortly after the craft was downed, the military cleared the area of evidence, including the bodies, and subsequently took it to Hangar 18 at Wright-Patterson.[2][3]
FBI memo
In April 2011, the FBI launched The Vault, an online repository of public records released under the Freedom of Information Act.[4] After the Vault launched, a one-page March 22, 1950 memorandum by Guy Hottel (special agent in charge of the FBI's Washington Field Office) drew renewed attention online, and the FBI later described it as the Vault's most-viewed document.[4][14][15]
"Hottel Memo"
The memo relays a third-party account claiming that an Air Force investigator had reported three circular craft recovered in New Mexico. The memo describes the objects as "approximately 50 feet in diameter" and states that each contained three small humanoid bodies "only three feet tall," wearing "metallic cloth."[15] It attributes the alleged recovery to interference from a "high-powered radar" installation in the area, and ends by noting that "No further evaluation was attempted."[15]
In 2013, the FBI stated that the memo "does not prove the existence of UFOs" and characterized it as an unconfirmed "second- or third-hand claim" the Bureau did not investigate. The FBI also stated that the memo had been released publicly decades earlier and had been posted online prior to the 2011 Vault launch.[4]
Fundraiser
The incident gave birth to the Aztec UFO Symposium, which was run by the Aztec, New Mexico, library as a fundraiser from 1997 until 2011.[6][16]
↑Severson, Thor (October 14, 1952). "Little Men Due Soon: Flying Saucer Landing Forecast". The Denver Post. Photograph by David Mathias. Denver, Colorado.
Radford, Ben (2014). "Chapter 4 The Great Aztec UFO Crash". Mysterious New Mexico. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press. pp.79–98. ISBN978-0-8263-5450-1.
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