Thirteen Gunners and a Rocking Silver Disc over Fort Bliss

The men were standing outside Building 4709, the headquarters supply room of the 39th Antiaircraft Artillery Battalion at Fort Bliss, between 08:30 and 09:00 on 19 May 1949. The sky was cloudless. Something flashed in it. The object was silver and "round and thin like a quarter dollar", about the size of a thumbnail held at arm's length and some 30 degrees above the horizon. At irregular intervals it rocked, so that it showed first edge-on and then flat. The soldiers watched it for about five minutes, partly through tinted binoculars. It moved away on a bearing of about 100 degrees towards the Hueco Mountains and covered perhaps 15 to 20 miles in that time. There was no sound and no trail.

What is on the record

The Antiaircraft Artillery and Guided Missile Center at Fort Bliss reported the sighting in a letter of 23 May 1949. Fourth Army forwarded it, and so did the 97th Bomb Wing at Biggs Air Force Base. Sketches and signed statements were taken from the men. Local installations reported no balloon or test releases. Military aircraft were flying in the area at the time.

The Project 10073 record card concludes "Aircraft". Its stated reason is "Military aircraft reported in the area at that time", and the file names no particular aircraft. The file also disagrees with itself on the flight path. The card prints the course as "100 deg descending", while the letter describes the object "slowly rising as it travelled away". The NICAP database records that "numerous military witnesses observed a round silver thin object". This is a separate event from the Fort Bliss Blue Book Unknown of 5 May 1949.

Why it sits where it does

L4 · OFFICIAL RECORD: a released government record names who saw it. The file names all thirteen witnesses: a corporal, two privates first class and ten privates of the 39th AAA Battalion. It gives no ages, so this page refers to them by unit rather than by name. Their signed statements are known only through that file, and the grade speaks to that paper trail. The card's "Aircraft" rests on traffic in the area rather than a named flight, and this page offers no alternative.