The Ralph Horton flying saucer crash refers to a "flying saucer"

Identified flying object

Identifying Unidentified Flying Objects is a difficult task due to the normally poor quality of the evidence provided by those who report sighting the objects. Nevertheless, most officially investigated UFO sightings, such as from the U.S...

 that crashed on the farm of Ralph Horton in Fulton County, Georgia

Fulton County, Georgia

Fulton County is a county located in the U.S. state of Georgia. Its county seat is Atlanta, the state capital since 1868 and the principal county of the Atlanta metropolitan area...

, United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, in July 1952.

Some of Horton's neighbors saw the object fly over their property before it crashed in Horton's yard. Horton recovered the object and called both the U.S. Air Force

United States Air Force

The United States Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the American uniformed services. Initially part of the United States Army, the USAF was formed as a separate branch of the military on September 18, 1947 under the National Security Act of...

 and the Atlanta airport to see if they had any interest in it. After describing the object over the telephone, neither organization had any interest in it and they said that Horton could do what ever he liked with it, so he tossed it in the woods behind his house. The object "was a box-like contraption made of wood sticks and tin or aluminum foil with a weather balloon attached" (see photo). This fits closely with the description and photographs of the material recovered five years earlier in the Roswell UFO incident

Roswell UFO incident

The Roswell UFO Incident was the recovery of an object that crashed in the general vicinity of Roswell, New Mexico, in June or July 1947, allegedly an extra-terrestrial spacecraft and its alien occupants. Since the late 1970s the incident has been the subject of intense controversy and of...

.

Ufologist James Moseley

James W. Moseley

James W. Moseley is an American ufologist.He has exposed UFO hoaxers and perpetrated fraud in his career and, according to Jerome Clark, has "entertained just about every view it is possible to hold about UFOs, without ever managing to say anything especially interesting or memorable about any of...

 learned of the crash from the flying saucer file of the Atlanta Constitution

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is the only major daily newspaper in Atlanta, Georgia, United States, and its suburbs. The AJC, as it is called, is the flagship publication of Cox Enterprises. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is the result of the merger between The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta...

and investigated the incident. Moseley called the airport and confirmed that the object was a device used by the Air Force to determine wind velocity and direction. It was sent up attached to a balloon and tracked by radar, since radar beams were reflected by the object. Horton retrieved the object from where he had discarded it, and gave it to Moseley. Over the years, Moseley lost the object .

External links

• Saucer Smear, October 2006 (scroll down)