Bolivia.Santa Cruz · two people see a light fall, shedding sparks

On the night of Monday, August 6, 1962, at 20:25 local time (00:25 GMT on the 7th), a man in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, in the eastern lowlands of Bolivia, looked up when another person pointed something out to him in the sky. In his own account, he saw a brilliant object "falling or flying through the sky", which first appeared to his unobstructed view about 45 degrees above the horizon, due west of the city. Its brilliance was slightly less than that of the Sun at midday, though the object was much smaller, and, as far as he could tell, it lit up nothing around him. Since he had not seen it appear, he could not describe how it began. When he saw it, it was coming down in a nearly vertical path toward the western horizon. Small particles of its substance trailed behind it at regular intervals: each went out as a new one separated from the main body. He estimated seven or eight particles or lights in the trail, spaced two to three times the object's diameter apart and lined up in a straight line behind it.

He had it in view for about three seconds, and his companion for about two seconds before that. It disappeared with an almost instantaneous increase in brilliance and went out suddenly; then the lights in the trail went out one after another. The sky was clear, with some smoke and haze, and the wind was from the northwest at five to ten knots.

The witness put all this in writing, in answer to a request, in a letter on the letterhead of Petroleum Helicopters de Bolivia (post box 678, Santa Cruz) addressed to someone at the Bolivian Gulf Oil Company in La Paz, under the subject "Unidentified Flying Object Sighted". The names of the writer and the addressee are blacked out in the file copy. Lieutenant Colonel Edward J. Fox, the US air attaché in Bolivia, reproduced it in full in his intelligence report IR 1,521,039 of August 31, 1962, classified "Official Use Only" and summarized as an "unidentified falling, fiery object due west of Santa Cruz", with the source described as "US Civilian Oil Co employee" and the evaluation "B-3". Fox noted that the letter was written or dated on August 2, four days before the events it describes, a discrepancy he does not explain; that a stamp showed the oil company received it on August 23; and that copies went to the service attachés' offices on the 27th. He did not know the writer personally, but the Army attaché knew him well, considered him a sharp, reliable person and stated that he had previously reported similar sightings in the same area.

On the Blue Book record card, the sighting was entered as a ground-visual observation by a civilian source, lasting 5 seconds, of an object described as "one breaking" on a westward course. The conclusion marked is "Was Astronomical", with the word "Meteor", and the comment reads: "Probably a bolide. Case evaluated as Meteor sighting since all info in accord with this analysis". The card's summary speaks of an arc descending toward the western horizon, whereas the letter described an almost vertical fall.

What the letter describes, an object far brighter than any star that falls in a few seconds, leaves a row of fragments that go out one after another and ends in a flash, is the textbook picture of a fragmenting bolide, and Blue Book read it that way with nothing in the file to contradict it. Five weeks earlier, the same attaché's office had sent in, from Ayoayo on the altiplano (↗), the case of a silvery object that fell at midday; that file's card notes there were no re-entries that day and also called it a meteor. The Santa Cruz card does not say whether anyone checked for re-entries.

Our own calculation with Jonathan McDowell's GCAT catalog checks it. The re-entry closest in time is that of the US satellite FTV 2404 (Samos E-6), launched from Vandenberg on August 5 into a near-polar 203-kilometer orbit: its capsule and its Agena B stage came back into the atmosphere on August 6 at around 18:30 to 18:40 GMT, according to the catalog with an uncertain time, some six hours before the sighting; the SRV 595 capsule of a CORONA had come back that same day at around 02:40 to 03:10 GMT, some 21 hours earlier. Moreover, at 00:25 GMT on the 7th the plane of that orbit crossed the latitude of Santa Cruz about 25 degrees of longitude farther east, more than 2,500 kilometers away (an estimate from the time and place of launch, without orbital elements), more than twice the distance at which a re-entry 80 kilometers up can be seen, and on the opposite side from where the witness was looking. The Soviet stage Kosmos 63S1 No. 4LK had come down on August 5; another Kosmos 63S1 stage and a CORONA fragment are listed as decaying on the 8th, without a time, and cannot be placed over Bolivia at that hour. No cataloged re-entry matches, which leaves the bolide as the simplest reading. Another calculation of our own: at that hour the Sun was 34 degrees below the horizon and a crescent moon, a third illuminated, stood about 37 degrees up toward the west, in the same part of the sky where the object fell; the Moon does not move in seconds or shed fragments, so it cannot have been what fell, and the letter does not mention it. Venus, at magnitude −4, was about 9.5 degrees up toward the west, and does not explain a fall lasting seconds either.

As evidence, the case rests on a single witness with a statement of his own; his companion saw it from the same place, a couple of seconds earlier, and has no account of his own. His name is blacked out, though the attachés knew him. The letter reaches the attaché three weeks later, with a date that cannot be the date it was written, and the official report passes on what the witness wrote, without an interview. No newspaper of the time reporting the light has been found.