UFO Crash Retrieval Coyame, Mexico : Fact or Fiction?

Background
Late summer 1974, a UFO crashes in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico after colliding with a light aircraft. The following morning Mexican authorities send an investigation team to the area where the plane and unidentified craft were last tracked on radar. The team reaches the crash site and then there is total radio silence.

The United States military is monitoring progress. But offers of ‘expert’ assistance are declined across the border. Soon after, US intelligence sources tell them the Mexican convoy has completely stopped. A recovery team is dispatched from Fort Worth to investigate. On arrival they find a saucer shaped craft about 16 feet in diameter on the back of a flatbed truck and all of the Mexican team are dead.....

The Coyame UFO Crash Retrieval
The Coyame UFO crash retrieval story incident first surfaced back in 1992. Details of the case were sent in an anonymous email to various UFO researches around the world entitled Research Findings on the Chihuahua Disk Crash

It was addressed "To All Deneb Team Members,"



The content of the email revealed that on 25th August 1974, at 22:07, radar in the United States tracked an unknown object approaching US territory. The speed of the object was 2530 mph (2200 knots) on a bearing of 325 degrees at an altitude of 75000 ft. The projected course showed the object would enter US airspace at approximately 40 miles southwest of Corpus Cristi, Texas.

Sixty seconds later and 155 miles southeast of Corpus Christie the object slowed to around 1955 mph (1700 knots) turned on a heading of 290 degrees and penetrated Mexican airspace. It was tracked by two separate military radar installations in the US for another 500 miles. The object suddenly vanished from radar screens near the town of Coyame in the State of Chihuahua. A rather barren and sparsely populated area. Some fifty two minutes later reports of a civilian aircraft going down in the same area, at the same time began to filter through.





Daylight arrived and the Mexican authorities initiated a search for the missing aircraft. At 10:35 local time an aerial search radioed in a report the wreckage from the missing plane had been spotted on the ground. Minutes later a “circular” shaped object was reported also on the ground. Although damaged it was still in one piece. Next followed a long radio silence by the Mexican military.

The United States requested permission to operate in Mexican territory offering their ‘expertise’ in such matters. Meanwhile the CIA began to pull together a rapid response recovery team. The Mexican authorities however, feigned ignorance and refused to co-operate.

Satellite and aerial reconnaissance picked up a Mexican convoy headed south with the disk and aircraft loaded on flatbed trucks. However when the convoy appeared to have stopped with no signs of activity and two bodies apparently lying on the ground the decision to intervene was made.

The recovery team gathered at Fort Bliss, Texas are then ordered to cross the border in helicopters.

Arriving at the convoy stop site they discover all the Mexican personnel are dead. Protected in their biohazard suits the recovery team make sure the object is strapped to a chopper. The Mexican vehicles, bodies and wreckage of the civilian plane are all destroyed with explosives and then they depart and head back into US airspace.

The recovered disk is released from the helicopter and placed in a sealed truck, headed for Atlanta, Georgia. It travels on back roads and minor highways before eventually being transferred to an undetermined (possibly Wright Patterson) air force base. All military hardware, personnel and equipment involved was decontaminated on arrival back in the United States.

The captured disk had no visible doors or windows, its surface was like polished silver steel with no visible means of propulsion or external lights. There were no markings but two areas of the rim showed damage. A hole approximately 12” in diameter and a "dent" about 2’ wide. It was suspected that the light aircraft had collided with the disc and was totally destroyed.

There was no information regarding any bodies recovered from either the civilian aircraft or the strange disk. The cause of the deaths of the Mexican recover y team was also unknown. Although it was speculated that a microbial virus or chemical was released.

Hoax or Real?
The evidence for this event is fairly sparse and remains highly circumstantial at best. Neither the US or Mexican governments have admitted anything happened. There appears to be no FAA documents concerning the civilian aircraft crashing. **The incident did not involve a US aircraft nor did it occur over US airspace.

Some of the older residents of Coyame interviewed at the turn of century remembered troops moving through the town and others remember the wreckage of a small plane still in flames.

A newspaper “El Heraldo de Chihuahua” dated Oct. 27, 1974 featured a story of a group of Mexican soldiers perishing in military transport. Len Stringfield in his UFO Crash/Retrievals: Search for Proof in a Hall of Mirrors, Status Report VII said the Coyame incident was

"authoritatively written, using correct military terminology and, of note and unlike a hoax, draws a line between so-called hard evidence and that which is speculative."

American UFO investigators Noe Torres and Ruben Uriarte talked to hundreds of people in Coyame and surrounding area. They found few witnesses. They also discovered a 1967 US Pershing missile had veered of course and crashed in the same area of the Chihuahua desert near to where the 1974 ‘object’ had supposedly crashed. They also noted that in 1980 Mexican military authorities were involved north of Coyame recovering narcotics and ‘drug money’ scattered across the landscape from a plane on a failed drugs run.

Mexican air regulations in 1974 meant any non-jet aircraft would have to land in the city of Chihuahua to clear customs and immigration. Their air traffic regulations have designated routes and so the light aircraft that supposedly crashed in the Coyame was some 80 miles outside accepted air lanes. There is no tangible record of this small plane either.

Conclusions
Could the lack of verifiable facts for the Coyame case point to a cover-up? Or is it more likely this was an early 1990s hoax?

Some believe the “Deneb Team” memo to be an official document, or at least copied from one because much of the terminology appears to be genuine and the details of the UFO/light aircraft being tracked seem plausible.

Would the United States military acting with impunity, cross the Mexican border, capture an unidentified disk and then blow the remains of Mexican soldiers and their equipment to dust? We saw the US invade the Commonwealth member state of Grenada in 1983. So why not a much smaller, clandestine mission into Mexico that could be kept under wraps?

Nick Redfern has recently theorized that the whole thing was a hoax based on the Micheal Crichton Story “The Andromeda Strain” and its accompanying movie:

In the story a satellite of the U.S. military crashes to Earth in a small, isolated town in Arizona. Unknown to anyone, the satellite has brought back on its shell a deadly virus of unearthly origins. That only becomes clear when people start to die, their blood turned to powder. Suddenly, the race is on to find a cure to prevent the virus from wiping out not just the people of the little town, or even of just Arizona – but the entire world. Crichton’s story is indeed a cautionary one and which shows just how quickly the human race might come to a crashing end when faced with something so unpredictable and poorly understood as an alien virus.

Read the novel, or watch the movie, and you’ll see undeniable parallels between both of them and the alleged 1974 events described above....
Source : mysteriousuniverse.org...

Maybe Nick Redfern is right?

Or maybe we need to consider that the UFO was an experimental Soviet device? Hence the reactions of the American military and the cover-up that followed in collusion with the Mexican authorities.

Alas there is a lack of real data to substantiate this story and so it remains on the shelf with many other speculative stories.

Interesting if true of course.


References:


Flying Saucer Crash Coyame

Mysterious Universe

Research Findings on the Chihuahua Disk Crash

The Coyame UFO crash retrieval story incident first surfaced back in 1992. Details of the case were sent in an anonymous email to various UFO researches

this is an big red flag right here
really the way it entered the ufology scene suggests an hoax

a reply to: humanoidlord

There isn't a lot of evidence to back up this story at all.

But I've added this case as it doesn't seem to have been covered in any detail or quality here on ATS.

Interesting, leading towards fiction.
I admire your formatting skills too.

a reply to: Taggart

The formatting is quite easy to learn

Look here

Sadly most people don't even use capital letters or even form coherent sentences much of the time on social media. But that's a whole other post for the Rant Forum.

So....................Back on topic.

I wonder where this story first came to light if it occurred in 1974, but was almost 20 years before it came to light? I know Roswell lay dormant for 30 years but at least there are news reports from the original time period.

This story is basically just a story.

a reply to: mirageman

you are right

a reply to: mirageman

We’ve seen this pattern somewhere before:

“Our destination is planet Deneb IV beyond which lies the great, unexplored mass of the galaxy. ”

CIA say let us have it!
they say no!
So they kill them all and take it.
blow up the bodies!
LOL!!!

a reply to: mirageman

Very nicely put together OP.

I couldn't tell ya if it's fake or fact but one thing I do know for certain is...
Even in the very distant future we are going to be stuck paying stupid high insurance premiums.
If such an advanced alien species can still crash their vehicle, us idiot humans will be trashing our flying cars for a very long time.

originally posted by: mirageman
a reply to: Taggart

The formatting is quite easy to learn

Look here

Sadly most people don't even use capital letters or even form coherent sentences much of the time on social media. But that's a whole other post for the Rant Forum.

So....................Back on topic.

I wonder where this story first came to light if it occurred in 1974, but was almost 20 years before it came to light? I know Roswell lay dormant for 30 years but at least there are news reports from the original time period.

This story is basically just a story.

.
Thanks for that link, bookmarked, I'll use it when I can think of something to add. Most appreciated

a reply to: humanoidlord

There are a huge number of UFO stories with doubtful evidence. But time and again the UFOtainment industry will not let them go. Or maybe they do for a decade or so and then revive them for a new generation.

So if it was all a hoax....Who was behind it? What were their motivations? Why put so much effort into something that ultimately leads nowhere?

We need to expose the charlatans and remove the chaff from the wheat. At present I have no clue who was behind this one. If it is a hoax then they should be exposed along with the story.

To me this has always been one of the more interesting cases in my mind. It does sound a bit like the plot to a movie though. I'm torn because the people of Coyame seem to corroborate the story but there is no hard evidence to back it up.

a reply to: PorteurDeMort

Interesting. Very much so. But why was this story released?

originally posted by: Macenroe82
a reply to: mirageman

Very nicely put together OP.

I couldn't tell ya if it's fake or fact but one thing I do know for certain is...
Even in the very distant future we are going to be stuck paying stupid high insurance premiums.
If such an advanced alien species can still crash their vehicle, us idiot humans will be trashing our flying cars for a very long time.

Sometimes, they were shot down. Other times, their radar systems were jammed by emissions from home microwave cookers and military installations. There's also the hazard of airplane pilots getting in the way. Nothing much you can do while zipping along the atmosphere at Mach 5. It's the extraterrestial equivalent of driving along the interstate trying to avoid hitting moose.

Enjoyed the OP. I wander how close this was to the “zone of silence”? That place where electronics don’t work, compasses spin, etc. I do know that it is near Chihuahua, but it’s only 50kms wide. A IMBM did crash in the zone, but can’t remember which kind.

UFO Hunters had an episode on this, they packed up and went searching the area... No ones better at jumping to conclusions than Bill Birnes, but they did find some plane debris and a pit where they found some metal scrap buried. The area had been crudely fenced off and locals were told by the military to stay away.

Interesting discussion on Wikipedia about this incident, apparently not even worth a wiki page.
en.wikipedia.org...(2nd_nomination)?oldformat=true

Some good search terms for those interested
Noe Torres, Coyame, UFO, Pit

I havent read any of Noe Torres's books, amazon reviews are mixed.


Maybe there is something to it, but in this case, whoever is responsible covered their tracks well enough.

originally posted by: mirageman
a reply to: PorteurDeMort

Interesting. Very much so. But why was this story released?

I don't have that answer. What makes me think it's real is that when asked about the event, the residents recalled it with great detail. What would they gain from making up a story like that? Then in 1992 the case is leaked. I think the whole story is intriguing. Like what exactly killed the Mexican team.
And has anybody tracked down the identity of the pilot that crashed when the UFO collided with the plane?

I remember it when it went down....twas in the news....in Dallas

a reply to: mirageman

It's a great story, isn't it? Len Stringfield simply attracted them and they always had 'military terminology' because his sources (or provocateurs) were generally military or military intelligence. He was regularly given the crack-coc aine of ufology with shoot-outs, crash retrievals and photos of aliens in morgues.

A lot of the 1980s 'dark ufology' themes were, arguably, first trialled on Len and his readers in the 70s. It wasn't a great leap to go from shoot outs at Fort Dix to the legends of human organ vats that epitomised 1980s ufology. Len had some of the first examples of autopsy aliens and he also attracted the best crash retrieval stories. He had decades old links to the Intelligence community and was possibly groomed to be a channel into the pesky world of ufologists and UFO researchers. He seemed like a gullible nut, but he also had great connections and had quite a history. It makes sense that someone would send him this story in the early 1990s because he was Mr Crash Retrievals.

This story has far too many details to be real. Or rather, it has too many on one hand and not enough on the other; that's what makes it read like fiction. It's like there's an omniscient narrator because they provide specific speed and course headings and then get all 'cliffhanger' at the end. Nick could be right about the Andromeda Strain and, even if he isn't, will definitely be right about it being a fictitious story.

Nice, quality write-up as usual MM.