1957.11.04
13.00
Early November 1957 saw another flap reach its climax… Key sightings were at… Orogrande, New Mexico…
Apart from the sequence of car stoppages during the night of 2 and 3 November [in Levelland], there were other similar cases, including several in the vicinity of the Sacramento Mountains themselves.
(UFOs and How to See Them, Randles)
Even as Blue Book prevaricated, the Texas/New Mexico triangle was alive with more car-stop incidents. In daylight on 4 November there was a repeat run of the Levelland events, which seems to rule out any chance of their being a freak of nature. Ten different cars and pick-ups were stopped on a remote desert road between Orogrande and Alamogordo, New Mexico by a very similar-looking oval object.
Alamogordo is where the atom bomb was first exploded in 1945. White Sands, adjacent to it, is where rockets and missiles were being secretly developed. Indeed, one of the victims of this latest episode was James Stokes, an engineer working on the science of the upper atmosphere with the US Government at the nearby missile development centre.
(Source A – temporarily lost)
At Orogrande, on the same road and about 30 miles south of where the “cloud” photograph was taken less than three weeks earlier [1957.10.16 or 10], an electronics engineer lost radio, lights and then engine on his car at one pm on 4 November.
(UFOs and How to See Them, Randles)
He was driving along when his radio faded and then his engine cut out after spotting a “light-colored egg-shaped object making a shallow dive across the sky”.
(Source A – temporarily lost)
Several other cars on the road also stopped as an oval object approached from the vicinity of the mountains to the north and flew over the road.
(UFOs and How to See Them, Randles)
As the thing passed at its closest Stokes could feel a kind of heat wave that made his skin tingle and hair stand on end, but, he added, “there was no sound… When I got back in my car and checked the engine I found it intact but the battery was steaming.” The UFO flew into clouds, causing them to disperse… Presumably the electrostatic force associated with this object was causing the particles of cloud vapour to become charged and repel one another like tiny magnets. When he got home Stokes found that his skin was badly sunburnt.
(Source A – temporarily lost)
His skin became red and itchy on all the exposed parts of his body.