Project Blue Book Case #1637. On July 26, 1952, a bright, unusual object was observed over Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Kirtland was the home of the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project (later the Defense Nuclear Agency) — the military organization responsible for nuclear weapons assembly, storage, and logistics. It was one of the most sensitive installations in the entire U.S. military.
The Manzano Base weapons storage area, carved into the Manzano Mountains on Kirtland's eastern boundary, housed assembled nuclear weapons in underground bunkers. Sandia National Laboratories, responsible for nuclear weapons engineering, was also located on the Kirtland complex. Any unidentified aerial object over Kirtland was treated with maximum urgency — the possibility of enemy reconnaissance of the nuclear stockpile was an existential concern.
July 26, 1952, was also the date of the second wave of the famous Washington, D.C., radar-visual sightings. While the nation's attention was focused on the radar contacts over the capital, Kirtland was experiencing its own unknown — a coincidence that Blue Book investigators noted with concern.
The Albuquerque area, surrounded by Kirtland, Sandia, Los Alamos, and White Sands, was arguably the most sensitive military-scientific corridor in the world. Reports of unidentified objects from this region received top-priority investigation. The object over Kirtland could not be identified as any known aircraft, and all base operations were checked with negative results.
The case was classified "Unknown" — a deeply troubling designation for a sighting directly over the nation's primary nuclear weapons facility.