14.02.2025

The 701 club: Case 1516 July 21, 1952 San Marcos AFB, TX

Don Berlinner describes the case as follows:

July 21, 1952; San Marcos AFB, Texas. 10:40 p.m. Witnesses: one Lieutenant, two Staff Sergeants, three airmen. One blue circle with a blue trail was seen to hover and then accelerate to near-sonic speed (700+ m.p.h.) after 1 minute.1

Sparks’ entry is basically a duplicate of Berlinner’s:

July 21, 1952. San Marcos AFB, Texas. 10:40 p.m. Lt., 2 Staff Sgts. and 3 Airmen saw a blue circle with a blue trail hover then accelerate to near-sonic speed (700+ mph) after 1 min. (Sparks; Berliner).

The Blue Book file

If one looks at Berlinner’s and Sparks’ entries, one would conclude that what was seen was something unearthly. However, closer inspection of the file indicates something more mundane. The file contains witness statements from all of the principle witnesses. Only one of the witnesses gave a description that was different than what the others reported.

1. 1st LT Scott - 2240 hours. Driving south from base nursery. White circle of light appeared. Shape and color of full moon. Very bright. 1000 feet above horizon. Rose at angle of 50-75 degrees. Leveled off at 15-20,000 feet. Light went off.

2. SSGT Looke - 2240 hours. Driving from Lockhart to San Marcos. Located at Maxwell, Texas. Looked like something exploded. Descended with blue flame, which was bright like a flare. Descended to about 5000 feet. Object stopped and moved off to south. Fast.

3. SSGT Townsend - 2240 hours. Leaving gun room squadron area. Bluish-green object made arc in sky. Lasted a second or two before disappearing.

4. A/1C MCkenzie - 2240 hours. Going to Air Police HQ. Observed bluish-green light in sky. Ascended and descended very rapidly and disappeared. No noise.

5. A/2C Norred - 2240 hours. Blue-green light falling at great speed. Looked like falling star. Visible 7-10 seconds.

6. A/3C Nelson - 2245 hours. Making rounds as fence guard. Saw reddish-yellow object in sky. Traveling slow. Low roaring noise. As object passed over, no noise was heard. It came over base four times. Estimated speed of 75mph. Simply disappeared in sky. Nelson mentioned he discussed this with other enlisted men and implied they saw it as well. None of them were interviewed but he said they laughed about the sighting. Nelson was offended by them considering it a joke.

For some reason, the preparing officer stated the event last sixty seconds even though five of the six witnesses indicated the object was only visible for a matter of seconds. It seems that the airmen Nelson’s was the only individual, who reported the event lasted longer than a few seconds. His observations are of something different than what the other five reported.

Analysis

There seems to be enough information in the file to examine the case. Five of the six reports indicated something that was visible for a very short period of time that was measured in seconds. They all seemed to indicate an object that arced across the southern sky and was very bright. These are all indications of a meteor fireball.

None of these observations mention the object hovering as described by Berlinner and Sparks. SSGT Looke did say that the object “stopped” before moving off to the south but that seemed to be more of a perception issue, or poor choice of words, since all the other witnesses made no mention of this. Berlinner/Sparks appear to have obtained that description from the record card, which states, “Blue circle with trail of blue light observed over San Marcos AFB by an officer and five E/P. Speed was from hover to sonic.”4 This comes from the investigating officer’s report, where he stated, “The speed was reported as varying from a hover to speeds approaching sonic.”5 This comment was a summary from the six reports.

The sixth observer, Airman Nelson, does not seem to have seen the meteor but five minute after it appeared, he noticed a nocturnal light that appeared to move slowly over the base and then, eventually, disappeared. This is where the hovering part of the description originates. 

This sighting contains no positional information, duration, location of the witness, or time of disappearance. This

makes it insufficient information. If one were to examine the sky that night, the bright stars Antares (SW) and Arcturus(W) were visible. Both are common celestial objects reported as UFOs. Additionally, the planet Mars, which was brighter than these two stars, was also visible in the SW. It is possible that this might have been the object reported by Airman Nelson and any reported motion was simply the witness perceiving motion through the auto kinetic effect.  There is not enough information to draw this conclusion but it would be the first thing I would check if the witness did provide more details in his report.

I find it interesting that Airman Nelson reported this event but missed the bright fireball. The fireball should have been something that startled somebody patrolling the fence if they were performing their job. When I was in the navy and reported to my first submarine, I had just completed two years of nuclear training. I was a pay grade of E-5 but almost all the members of the engineering department were E-5 or higher. As a result, I was given some of the more mundane tasks, which involved me standing a watch monitoring gauges or pipe fittings during plant evolutions looking for leaks or changes in pressure. After several hours staring at these items, one can become easily distracted and lose focus. This is why we often rotated watches after a certain amount of time.

Fence duty probably was a very mundane task and lasted many hours. Nelson was an airman 3rd class which was a pay grade of E-2. That indicates he had not been in the Air Force very long and probably wondered what the point of his job was. Such individuals are usually assigned mundane tasks (like fence patrol) and not given much responsibility. This can lead to boredom by the individual and the only thing that keeps them busy are the senior NCOs, who come by to make sure they are alert and doing the job assigned. It would not be surprising if Nelson was not alert at the time and missed the fireball. He may have then been notified about this UFO event and asked if he saw anything. His response was this nocturnal light observation with few details that were helpful in identifying what he saw.

Conclusion

The observations of five of the six individuals can be classified as a “probable” meteor. The sixth observer, Airman Nelson, saw something different but his observations were inadequate and should be classified as “insufficient information”. None of these observations deserve to be in the Unidentified category and should be removed from the list of 701 Blue Book unknowns.

Quelle: SUNlite 1/2025