Coast to Coast - The Levelland UFO Landings

 

I have talked about the Levelland UFO landings and their importance here and on radio shows. Not only were there witnesses at least at thirteen separate locations, but the UFO interacted with the environment by stalling car engines and dimming headlights. In most of the cases, the witnesses had minutes to study the UFO. Many of those witnesses mentioned attempting to restart their cars or trucks. That failed until the UFO left the area. Then the vehicles began working properly again.

You can read about this case, which I have explored on this blog, here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2016/03/one-of-best-cases-levelland-texas.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2020/06/levelland-and-four-witnesses.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2020/07/frank-williams-and-levelland.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2020/06/levelland-and-four-witnesses-part-two.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2010/08/levelland-ufo-sightings.html

 

The Air Force investigation of the Levelland sightings is badly flawed. Staff Sergeant Norman Barth spent about seven hours in Levelland and interviewed only six witnesses. One of the most interesting of those interviews was with Hockley County

Sheriff Weir Clem

Sheriff, Weir Clem. His office received many of the phone calls that came in over a two-hour period about the strange events. According to the Air Force report, Clem, along with a couple of other law enforcement officers, left the office to search for the UFO. Clem was quoted in the Air Force report as saying that he had only a streak of light in the distance for about two seconds.

However, according to newspaper reports published the day before Barth arrived in Levelland, Clem said he was much closer to the UFO and that it was oval shaped. Don Burleson, of Roswell, investigating the case two decades ago, said that Clem’s car was checked by a mechanic the next day.

Burleson also interviewed the wife and daughter of the Sheriff and was told that he had gotten closer, much closer, to the UFO, which I verified through newspaper reports from the era. The daughter also talked about a burned area that the Sheriff had seen. It means that there was other evidence of something landing that night in November, 1957.

To be fair, according to the newspapers of the time, there was a mention that the Sheriff and the Provost Marshal from Reese AFB did go out in search of the landing traces. They reported negative results, but you have to wonder what they might have seen and what the Provost Marshal might have said. You have to wonder why the Air Force Provost Marshal was involved. You have to wonder about the influence that Barth brought with him so that the truth could be buried and mention of Air Force involvement disappeared from the narrative.

Additional questions are: Why the changes in the Air Force report about how close the Sheriff got and only the mention of a steak of light, and, why have a mechanic check the car if he hadn’t gotten close enough for the UFO to affect its operation?

There is another interesting aspect to this that no one seems to have noticed. When the Sheriff headed out to search for the UFO, he was accompanied by other law enforcement officers, some of whom were not interviewed by Barth. But, more importantly, the Sheriff, according to newspaper reports, was also accompanied by Air Force officers. They would have come from Reese Air Force Base in Lubbock, only fifteen or twenty minutes away from Levelland. There is no mention of those Air Force officers in the Project Blue Book files. I have yet to identify who they were, but I can document that they were involved.

It is clear from all this that the Air Force investigation was inadequate and that it was designed to answer questions but to avoid the truth. The reality of the case is that it was much more important than many realized at the time. Too many UFO researchers missed the significance and the Air Force got away with the misdirection. It only proves that we can learn something by prowling the archives. There are gems hidden there.