The article below was published in the daily newspaper Clovis News-Journal, Clovis, New Mexico, USA, June 29, 1947.
See the case file.
WHITE SANDS, N.M. -- The trail of New Mexico's flying discs Saturday led to meteorites.
Lt. Col. Harold R. Turner, White Sands commandant, came to that conclusion after investigation of two new reports of objects seen in the sky -- one near Tularosa and another near Engel.
Turner revised a guess that the shining objects might be an illusion created by hot circular exhausts of jet planes upon a check of the two new observations. The officer gave this report: Captain Dvyan of the Alamogordo Air Base, in a private plane near Engel at about 8,000 feet altitude looked down and saw "a ball of fire with a blue fiery tail" about 2,000 feet below him. It disintegrated as he watched. Dvyan said he was sure it was a meteorite.
W.C. Dodds, track inspector, saw a flame "high in the sky" at [illegible] about half a mile south of Hope. Capt. E.B. Deichmendy of the Ordnance Department at White Sands saw it too from St. Augustine Pass.
Reflection of the sun's rays, Col. Turner said, could give a meteorite the appearance of a shiny flying disc which might appear to be quite near and traveling slowly whereas it actually is many miles away and traveling at more than the speed of sound.
Another report of the shiny discs came Saturday from El Paso where Dr. G. Oliver Dickson, optometrist, said he saw the object Sunday near the outskirts of El Paso.
Dickson said the object looked like a blimp, was traveling over a mountain top, and although it appeared bright and shiny, it did not reflect the sun's rays.
From his 15 second observance, he estimated its speed at 150 miles and hour and its size as about [Illegible] feet across and five feet thick.
