Four Kirtland Officers and a Blue Fireball

It was half-time at a football game in Albuquerque's municipal stadium on the evening of 17 October 1952. Three officers from Kirtland Air Force Base were in the crowd: 1st Lt. Richard D. Volk and 2nd Lt. Warren J. Sljenholm of the 34th Air Division and 2nd Lt. William J. Arrowood of the 4910th Air Base Group. At about 21:10 to 21:15 Mountain time a bright blue or blue-green object streaked across the northern sky. It lasted one to three seconds and seemed to burn itself out. One of them noticed a sudden flash at the end.

At the same time Maj. Charles R. Coble of the 4910th was driving into Taos from the south, about ten miles out. He saw a bright blue object about the size of a volleyball moving north to north-east at about 45 degrees above the horizon. It was in view for two or three seconds.

What is on the record

The reports are in Project Blue Book's file for Taos, New Mexico, which is Unknown no. 2171. The lieutenants did not claim anything strange. Two of them called it a very large meteor and the third a meteorite. One estimated its speed at over 2,000 miles an hour. Kirtland's intelligence staff noted that many other people had seen it and that the local papers carried reports. The preparing and approving officers concluded it "could be accounted for by being a meteor".

The Blue Book record card for the Taos file still carries it as unknown. That is the record's own tension: the field evaluation and the witnesses agree on a meteor, and the card does not follow them. Berliner's list of Blue Book unknowns includes the case as four Air Force officers near Taos at 9:15 p.m. NICAP and Johnson's calendar list it too.

The archive's machine record covered only the stadium. Coble's sighting near Taos belongs to the same event. The scan renders the third lieutenant's surname as both Sljenholm and Sljenhola, and the spelling is not verified.

Why it sits where it does

L4 · OFFICIAL RECORD: a released government record names who saw it. Volk, Arrowood and Sljenholm in the stadium and Coble on the Taos road are the four Kirtland officers it names. The archive holds no account of the night beyond theirs. The tier measures sourcing, not truth. The base's own answer was a meteor, and nothing in the file argues against it.