The Aztec saucer hoax, sometimes called the "other Roswell," was a claim that a flying saucer crashed in 1948 in Aztec, New Mexico. This story was first written about in 1949 by journalist Frank Scully in his magazine columns and later in his 1950 book, Behind the Flying Saucers. In the mid-1950s, it was discovered that the story was a hoax created by two men, Silas M. Newton and Leo A. Gebauer, as part of a plan to sell items they said were made by aliens.

Starting in the 1970s, some UFO researchers revived the story in books, claiming the crash was real. In 2013, an FBI memo that some researchers said supported the crash story was rejected by the FBI as "a second- or third-hand claim that we never investigated."

Story

In March 1948, according to Scully, the military recovered an unidentified flying object in New Mexico after it landed safely in Hart Canyon, 12 miles northeast of Aztec. The object was reported to be 99 feet (30 meters) in diameter, the largest UFO discovered at that time. Scully cited two individuals, Newton and Gebauer, who claimed the military had hidden the incident and taken the craft for secret research.

Scully stated that the crashed UFO, along with other captured flying saucers, originated from Venus and operated using "magnetic principles." He noted that the craft's inhabitants carried concentrated food wafers and "heavy water" for drinking, and that all measurements of the craft could be divided evenly by nine. Science writer Martin Gardner later criticized Scully's account, calling it filled with "wild imaginings" and "scientific errors."

Hoax

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Silas Newton and Leo A. Gebauer visited Aztec to sell devices called doodlebugs, which are tools used in the oil industry. They claimed these devices could locate oil, gas, and gold because they were based on "alien technology" from a flying saucer crash. When J. P. Cahn of the San Francisco Chronicle asked for a piece of metal from the devices, Newton and Gebauer gave him a sample that was actually regular aluminum. In 1949, author Frank Scully wrote a series of articles in Variety magazine about the story Newton and Gebauer told him. Scully later expanded these articles into a book titled Behind the Flying Saucers, which became popular and shaped public opinions about UFOs. Two years later, in 1952, the story was revealed as a hoax in True magazine. A later article in 1956 described other people who had been cheated by Newton and Gebauer. One of these people was wealthy man Herman Flader, who filed legal charges against them. In 1953, the two men were found guilty of fraud.

Influence on ufology

From the mid-1950s to the early 1970s, most people who study UFOs believed the Aztec crash story was not true and avoided discussing it. In 1966, a book called Incident at Exeter described rumors that alien bodies were stored at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, which led to the creation of the 1968 science fiction novel The Fortec Conspiracy. In 1974, ufologist Robert Spencer Carr claimed that alien bodies recovered near Aztec were kept in a building at Wright-Patterson called Hangar 18. This claim caused the Air Force to deny it, explaining that there is no Hangar 18 at the base and noting that Carr’s story resembled the plot of the novel.

In the late 1970s, author Leonard Stringfield stated that the Aztec incident was real and that the craft involved was one of many captured and stored by the U.S. military. Later, many accounts of the Roswell crash included details from the Aztec story. Some said the craft was made of a material that could not be damaged by heat, while others claimed the craft was broken during the crash. The supposed human-like bodies were described as being between 36 inches (91 cm) and 42 inches (110 cm) tall and weighing about 40 pounds (18 kg). Ufologists say the military removed evidence, including the bodies, from the area shortly after the crash and sent recovered materials to a building at Wright-Patterson called Hangar 18.

FBI memo

In April 2011, the FBI created The Vault, an online collection of public records shared through the Freedom of Information Act. After The Vault opened, a one-page memo from March 22, 1950, written by Guy Hottel (a special agent in charge of the FBI's Washington Field Office), received more online attention. The FBI later said this memo was the most viewed document in The Vault.

The memo includes a report from someone else about an Air Force investigator who claimed to have found three circular objects in New Mexico. The memo describes the objects as "about 50 feet in diameter" and says each had three small human-like figures "only three feet tall" wearing "metallic cloth." It suggests the objects might have been discovered because of interference from a "high-powered radar" system nearby. The memo also states that no further study was done.

In 2013, the FBI said the memo "does not prove the existence of UFOs" and called it an unconfirmed "second- or third-hand claim" that the FBI did not investigate. The FBI also noted that the memo had been publicly available for many years before The Vault was created in 2011.

Fundraiser

The event led to the creation of the Aztec UFO Symposium. The library in Aztec, New Mexico, organized this event every year to raise money from 1997 to 2011.