Retired
Colonel Robert B. Willingham, 84, says he visited the site
of a crashed unidentified flying object near Del Rio, Texas,
in 1955 and saw three non-human entities through a hole
in the ruptured hull of the ship. The strange beings, two
of which were badly mangled, appeared to have died in the
crash. "It didn't look like humans to me,"
Willingham said during a recent interview on the Jeff Rense
radio program. The retired aviator said the beings he saw
fit the common description of UFO occupants with large heads,
slit-like mouths, and arms "like broomsticks."
Asked
how the dead entities were clothed, Willingham replied,
"They weren't dressed at all." He said
that despite the mangled condition of the bodies, he does
not recall seeing traces of blood around the creatures.
"But man, I just got to glance in there, because
he [a Mexican Army lieutenant] wouldn't let me go look
in it." Even though he got only a momentary glance
inside the wrecked UFO, what he saw has haunted him for
the past 55 years.
Colonel
Robert B. Willingham, Circa 1960
The
story of Willingham's 1955 encounter with the crashed
UFO began earlier in the day while flying an F-86 fighter
jet during a Cold War simulated bombing run out of Carswell
Air Force Base in Fort Worth, Texas. Willingham and other
aviators in his squadron observed an orb of light "as
bright as a star" moving across the skies of
West Texas at about 2,000 miles per hour. The large, intensely
bright object, moved generally west to east before suddenly
executing a 90-degree turn and heading south toward Del
Rio, Texas, located on the border with Mexico.
Willingham
requested and received permission to pursue the object
"to find out what the hell it was and give a full
report to the commander back at base."
Turning
his F-86, he followed the object's contrail down toward
the Rio Grande River and observed that the UFO had begun
wobbling uncontrollably and descending rapidly. He watched
as the streak of light nearly took the roof off a house
on the Texas side of the border before impacting on the
south bank of the Rio Grande, where it skidded for 300
yards prior to coming to rest against a small hill.
Determined
to return to the crash site in a smaller plane that he
could land along the riverbank, Willingham returned to
his squadron and asked permission to go back to base.
After returning to Carswell AFB, Willingham turned in
his jet and picked up a small, two-seater training plane,
which he and a man named Jack Perkins, now deceased, piloted
back down to where the UFO had crashed.
Upon
arriving at the crash site, Willingham and Perkins found
a damaged silver orb, roughly disc-shaped, "sticking
in the side of a hill." They also noticed a 300-yard
gouge in the earth, where the UFO had skidded before stopping.
The object, which was still intensely hot, was being guarded
by a large detachment of Mexican Army personnel, including
several officers - all of them armed. The Mexicans would
not allow Willingham to get very close to the smoldering
wreckage, and a lieutenant told him that they were waiting
for the U.S. Air Force to arrive in order to turn the
object over to them.
It
was while talking to the lieutenant, whose name he remembers
only as "Martinez," that Willingham caught
a glance of the three dead creatures inside the wrecked.
Artist's Conception of What Willingham Saw
Told
by the Mexicans that they needed to leave, Willingham
and Perkins reluctantly got back in their small plane,
but not before Willingham picked up a chunk of metallic
debris about the size of a man's hand and stuck it in
a pocket of his flight suit. Upon later examination back
in Fort Worth, Willingham found that the metallic debris
had properties unlike any metal known to earth science.
Attempts to burn it, cut it with a torch, and deform it
in any manner were totally unsuccessful. The curved piece
of silvery-gray metal was highlighted by a honeycombed
pattern of holes on each end and metallic ridges along
the edges.
Willingham
possessed the unearthly metal for several days before
he was ordered to surrender it to a Marine metallurgic
laboratory in Maryland, from where it mysteriously "disappeared"
days later in an obvious military intelligence cover-up.
Subsequently, Willingham received threatening phone calls
from intelligence operatives warning him to never disclose
any of what he had seen "down on the border."
Willingham
is a highly credible witness who served in World War II
and was at one time a personal assistant to General George
S. Patton. He was a pilot in the Korean War and sustained
a battlefield injury in December 1950. Willingham later
joined the Reserve and became fascinated by the widespread
UFO sightings occurring throughout North America in the
1950s and 1960s.
Willingham's
Sketch of the Strange Metal Debris
Why
This Case is Unique:
We
have a living witness, Robert B. Willingham, who is now
84 years old but is still in relatively good health and
retains a good recollection of the events of his UFO encounter.
Willingham's story of a UFO crash near Del Rio, Texas,
was known to UFO investigators before the Roswell, New
Mexico UFO crash story broke widely in 1980, and as such
is known as "the other Roswell."
Willingham
has signed a written agreement with Noe Torres and Ruben
Uriarte, giving the authors exclusive rights to tell his
full story for the first time ever. He has also provided
them with hundreds of photographs and other memorabilia
from his personal collection. In addition, he has already
given them hours of testimony about this case and its
after-effects.
Willingham's
amazing story was the basis for a 200-page book written
in 2008 by Noe Torres and Ruben Uriarte, titled The
Other Roswell: UFO Crash on the Texas-Mexico Border.
Published
by RoswellBooks.com, the book may be purchased at the
authors' Web site:
http://www.roswellbooks.com
And
from most online book stores, including Amazon.com and
BarnesAndNoble.com.
An
electronic version of the book became available for the
Amazon Kindle in February 2010.
The
2008 edition of the book is currently under revision to
incorporate more details of the case that Willingham has
remembered since the authors first interviewed him for
the book in 2007.
Noe
Torres
Edinburg, Texas
&
Ruben Uriarte
Union City, California
March 21, 2010
Now,
watch and listen to portions of the historic Jeff Rense
Interviews with Col. Robert V. Willingham (USAF)
(Courtesy of Jeff Rense and Sightings.com)
Youtubes:
Part
I
Part
II
You
can hear the entire 2-hour Jeff Rense radio interview
with Col. Willingham in 56kb digital audio HERE
Part
1
Part
2
Sources:
http://www.ufodigest.com/news/0310/del-rio-print.php
http://www.sightings.com/1.reports2010/colwill.html
