Comment: Florida Today newspaper columnist Billy Cox conducted the initial interviews with Jerry Nelson and Gene Lamb. His article, “UFOs Haunt Missile Crew”, was published in June 2001.
Nelson states that on several occasions, while on alert in the underground launch capsule at Atlas Site 9, missile guards at ground-level had frantically reported a silent, very bright UFO hovering over the site. As he told Florida Today columnist Billy Cox, "The guards were scared. These objects would hover over the silo and shine lights down on them without making any noise.” Nelson told me that he had personally been involved in “probably more than three but fewer than ten” such incidents, over a period of a month or so. He also remembered that the sightings had occurred “at least six months, maybe more like a year” after the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, when the squadron had been placed on high-alert.
Oddly enough, when Nelson notified the missile squadron’s Command Post about the incidents, his reports met with apparent indifference. Only much later did he learn that agents from the Office of Special Investigation had interviewed another individual regarding his knowledge of a similar incident.
Moore, who retired as a Lieutenant Colonel, states that one night in the fall of 1964, while on alert in the launch capsule at Atlas Site 7, his missile commander, Major Dan Gilbert, received an extraordinary call from one of their “sister sites”, either Site 6 or Site 8. The commander at the other site reported that an extremely bright light was repeatedly hovering directly over the site, racing away, returning, and hovering again. Apparently, one of the enlisted men at the site, perhaps the security guard, had observed this activity and reported it to the missile commander.
Moore states that some of Site 7’s own enlisted men, including Tech. Sgt. Jack Nevins, were ordered up to the “silo cap” to monitor the situation. Moore states, “They reported the UFO zooming from the direction of Site 6 to the direction of Site 8 and hovering for awhile at the end of the movement…They all described it as a silent light that moved extremely rapidly—instant go and instant stop, no getting up to speed or slowing down. The common comment I remember was that everyone thought it was a UFO, and that it was hovering directly over Sites 6 and 8 and nowhere else. Thus, it was specifically interested in those sites.”
Moore states that the Site 7 crew were never debriefed and never warned not to discuss the incident. “In other words,” he said, “there was no official discussion or acknowledgment.” Moore concluded, “I personally believe that there is something to the UFO/ICBM connection. I know the Air Force covers-up when it feels the official need. UFOs over ICBM sites could be one of those official needs.”
Kaminski states that he had been at one of the Atlas ICBM launch sites northeast of Walker AFB one evening in 1964, possibly 1965, when the missile commander, Captain D------, directed him topside to view unexplained lights which had been reported to the site. Kaminski states he observed two star-like objects at a great distance, moving in unison.
When he reported his observations to the missile commander, Kaminski was told that the base was tracking the objects on radar and had scrambled two jet fighters to intercept them. Shortly thereafter, he observed the jets attempting to approach the unidentified lights, which then put on a burst of speed and outran the interceptors. The lights disappeared into a Cumulous cloud, followed by the fighters. Moments later, the jets emerged from the cloud but the lights were no longer visible. The fighters changed course and returned to base.
The next morning, upon returning to Walker AFB, Kaminski’s missile team was routinely debriefed. He states, “During that briefing, my captain asked, ‘Whatever happened to the two UFOs?’ The response was, ‘What UFOs?’ My captain said, ‘The ones you sent the fighters up after!’ They said, ‘We didn’t sent up any fighters.’ We knew that was the end of that conversation!”
Kaminski also states that he had once observed another UFO display, not at one of the remote missile sites but at Walker AFB itself. “At least half of my barracks saw this,” he said, “It was at night and there were two or three lights—possibly four or five—that were moving around in the sky. They looked like stars but, from time to time, they did 90-degree turns. Not all at once though—they moved independently. They obviously knew that they wouldn’t run into each other. I don’t understand why we didn’t hear any sonic booms. That bothers me. They stayed in the same general area [of the sky]. After about 15 minutes, zoom, they were gone.” Then he added, “Actually, [sightings of UFOs] were fairly common on base. I think that a lot of guys saw them. It wasn’t something that you discussed.”
Lamb states that while he had not personally witnessed any of the UFO-related incidents at Walker’s Atlas sites, he had once spoken to a former missile crew commander who had. This individual admitted, decades later, that he had briefly left the launch capsule to go topside to observe strange aerial lights being frantically reported by the missile site’s guard. According to Lamb, the officer told him that the lights were unsettling because they had been moving erratically, and faster than jets. He told Lamb that he was familiar with all types of aircraft but had never seen anything like the extraordinary display in the sky above the Atlas silo. According to Lamb, the former officer had said, “These were not just lights. This was something else.”
Lamb concluded, “People talked about [the sightings] at Happy Hour, after work, or after we got off-site, but it was kept pretty quiet as far as official statements went. To my knowledge, we were never briefed about it as a unit.”
I did not personally interview Krause, who died in 1973. However, on December 20, 1964, he wrote to a civilian UFO research organization, the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), to report an ongoing series of UFO-related incidents at his squadron's Atlas ICBM sites. In the letter, Krause stated that some of the missile security police whom he had queried about the sightings had deflected his questions by saying that the incidents had been classified "top secret." Krause also stated that, at one point, the UFO incidents had become so numerous, and ominous, that some of the missile guards were balking at reporting for duty.
Comment: Krause’s 1964 letter to NICAP, written while the UFO incidents at Walker AFB were ongoing, is extremely important because it provides an unsolicited, contemporary account of some of the sightings at the missile sites. I would like to thank Richard Hall for sharing Krause’s letter with other researchers.