Chama, New MexicoDecember 1955

On the afternoon of December 8, 1955, a railroad conductor named Box Hinton and his rear brakeman, LeRoy Shell, spotted an unusual object near Sublette Station, one mile east of Chama, New Mexico. The men were riding in the caboose of a Denver and Rio Grande Railroad train when they saw something that caught their attention. The object appeared to be struggling to gain altitude as it moved across the landscape. It barely cleared a row of thirty foot tall aspen trees before disappearing over a hillside.

Hinton and Shell watched the object for several seconds from the cupola (a small observation platform on top of the caboose). Neither man had ever seen a helicopter before, but they wondered if the object might be one in trouble. The object resembled the body of a small panel truck in size and was colored blue gray. What struck them most were what appeared to be one or two black pipes protruding from each side, roughly a foot long. The witnesses noted that the pipes appeared to have square rather than round cross sections. They could not see any rotating blades above the machine, which puzzled them.

Hinton later wrote letters describing the sighting to military contacts. He mentioned that about six to eight weeks before the incident, a blond man had visited the Chama depot asking detailed questions about the territory where the railroad tracks ran between Antonito and Chama. The visitor showed Hinton aerial photographs of the exact area where the object was later sighted and claimed to be working for map makers. Hinton also noted that the sighting occurred roughly 75 air miles from Los Alamos. In a follow up letter written in January 1956, Hinton included a picture he found in Life magazine of what he believed was the same type of aircraft. He described the object as somewhat larger than it appeared in the magazine photo and urged the Air Force to investigate what he suspected was a secret military aircraft being tested near Los Alamos.

The U.S. Air Force received the sighting report and determined that while the witnesses seemed credible, the case failed to meet investigative criteria and showed signs of "overactive imagination." The Air Force decided no further investigation was necessary. The case file notes that the Air Force evaluated the sighting as unidentified. The full case file is reproduced below as held by the National Archives, 17 pages.