Ground personnel at Winslow, Arizona; a mail pilot south and west of Albuquerque, NM and a pilot near Amarillo, Texas along with people in Tucumcari, NM and Pueblo, CO all observed something extraordinary and bizarre on March 23, 1933 at approximately 6:00-6:30 p.m. CST.A huge but oddly slow moving meteor was blazing through the sky. There was a tremendous explosion, then a brilliant blue glare of light with a yellowed rim around it and the after glow would remain in place, verified as to time, by multiple photographs, drawings and eyewitness testimony from at least three states.
A pilot, Frank Williams, flying south and west of Albuquerque got on his radio and reported seeing the object. He said it looked like a "football." Ground control back in Winslow to the west chimed in with reports of also seeing the object and explosion. A pilot William Coyle reported 300 miles east of Amarillo seeing the same object and theorized the object must have entered the atmosphere somewhere in the Oklahoma panhandle or just east of there.
The object was moving, according to all reports, east to west. Reports also stated the object "changed course" and "zig-zagged" shifting from a southern trajectory to a westward one.
A week later, Ed Hart, a farmer south of Stratford, Texas, in the panhandle, found in a scorched patch of wheat a molten mass, that had been so hot it nearly cooked the wheat on the stalks. It weighed about four pounds.
H.H. Nininger, early meteor research, produced a report the next year in the journal Popular Astronomy (Vol. 42), "The Great Meteor of March 24,1933" and in the journal Meteorites and Planetary Science , "The Pasamonte, New Mexico, Meteorite" in a June-July 1936 issue of the journal.
The event was unique in so many people having utilized portable cameras to capture the event. His research was fascinating, as much for what it had to say about meteor research of the day and how unique the object was that traversed the skies that night. His research would lead to verifying the largest center of debris in its final resting place near Wagon Mound, NM.
Research verified that people heard the explosion some 100 miles away and the fireball of the explosion was reported by witnesses 300 miles away in various directions.
Nininger noted that the most "puzzling feature was the "after-glow" because it was uniformly described as "bright as the sun" and visible for 30 minutes from diverse locations.
The scientist admitted going into the research with the idea that this after glow was merely the impact of a setting sun and could not be a self-luminous object. After calculations by astronomer Prof. A.W. Recht of Denver University who plotted the location of the sun in the locations at the time of the sighting proved it could NOT have been sun reflection.
Indeed, evidence was that the lingering, glowing cloud was 200 miles long, 2 miles in diameter and remained visible for 30 minutes. Additionally, witnesses claimed it changed course! The object was moving east to west, south to west and the zig-zagged across the sky. In addition, that cloud dispersed a fine volcanic ash like dust that had some reporting throat problems for days afterward.
Further, and most impressive, was the calculations based on the photographs and witness sightings indicated the object that exploded was some six miles in diameter. Indeed, the large incandescent spheroid in the photo was difficult to interpret. There was a fuzziness toward the front end and theories of super heated air being pushed ahead of the leading edge were offered.
Most of the scientists settled for the idea the object, huge and high in the atmosphere when first sighted, was an asymmetrical form that calved, like an iceberg would break apart, and the diverse directions of travel might be explained by these pieces, still large and glowing, traveling onward after the breaking.
Of course, with the theme of this page, the description of the massive bright object -six miles in diameter - and shaped like a football lead down a more alternative path.
See also, Boys Life, August 1934 for Frank C. Cross' article, Stones from the Sky.
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