1945 · Padilla ranch area near San Antonio, Socorro County, New Mexico, about 20 miles from the Trinity test site

"Trinity" Crash Story, San Antonio, New Mexico

Lead

Strength D · 4/10 · 2 independent

Evidence 1/4 · Witnesses 1/3 · Backing 2/3

Rests on recollections made 58 years later, with a documented problem in the account (Apodaca was in Europe) and no record from the time.

Plausibility Very low

Score -1 · 3 factors for, 3 against

Recollections 58 years later, with a key companion shown by service records to have been in Europe, and later versions that shift.

See the factors ↓

Disputed hoax

Part ofOne corner of New Mexico, The nuclear connection

AARO, *Historical Record Report Volume 1* (8 Mar 2024), copy via mirror (searched; no mention of this case) · page 1 of 64 · war.gov file, via the ufotransparency.com mirror

Whenclaimed mid-August 1945 (16 Aug in later tellings)

WherePadilla ranch area near San Antonio, Socorro County, New Mexico, about 20 miles from the Trinity test site

Backing2 independent

Witnesses1 named

Evidencephysical traces

Two men, Remigio "Reme" Baca (1938–2013) and José Padilla (born about 1936), say that as boys in August 1945 they saw an object crash near the Padilla family ranch. They say they found an avocado- or teardrop-shaped craft with small, insect-like occupants. Days later they watched soldiers recover it under cover of a "weather balloon" story, and Padilla says he kept a metal fragment. The story first appeared in print in 2003, 58 years after the claimed event. Its authors were then in their 60s. It was expanded in Baca's self-published book (2011) and popularised by Jacques Vallée and Paola Harris in Trinity: The Best-Kept Secret (2021; 2nd ed. 2022). Coverage in the New York Times (13 Jan 2023) linked it to the FY2023 NDAA provision that extended AARO's historical review back to 1945. No contemporaneous document, press report, military record or police record has been produced. Citizen journalist Douglas Dean Johnson has documented that the state policeman the story places at the scene, Eddie Apodaca, was serving with the Army in Europe in August 1945 and joined the New Mexico State Police in 1951. Vallée later conceded that point. The case rests entirely on late, contested testimony.

Evidence, in date order (2)

2010William J. Brophy (via his son Billy)witness
Army pilot said to have flown over the crash and seen the craft Jacques Vallée & Paola Leopizzi Harris, Trinity: The Best-Kept Secret (2021)
José Padilla's metal fragmentphysical
aluminium bracket kept from the site, with preliminary analyses by Vallée Jacques Vallée & Paola Leopizzi Harris, Trinity: The Best-Kept Secret (2021)

How plausible · Very low

Recollections 58 years later, with a key companion shown by service records to have been in Europe, and later versions that shift.

●●
Access The two boys lived on the ranch.
●○
Cost of speaking Named.
●○
Physical traces or official reaction Padilla kept a metal bracket, with preliminary analyses.

Against

−−
Details proved false Records show Officer Apodaca was in Europe; Baca's claimed role on Gov. Ray's staff is documented as overstated.
−−
Story grew The Brophy strand changes from a flyover to cadavers to a live alien.
−
Commercial motive Books (2011, 2021).

Plausibility weighs how well an account fits where secrecy hides the documents by design, so missing records never count against it. Strength measures what is documented. Assessed 2026-10-23.

On the record

Firsthand recorded testimony exists only from decades later: Baca and Padilla, in their 2011 book and in interviews from 2003 onwards. William P. "Billy" Brophy, in interviews with Paola Harris (about 2010) and later. He was not a witness himself; see Claimed.
AARO HRR Vol. 1 (2024): no finding on this case. The report is silent on it.
Vallée's concession: in a declaration dated 23 Sep 2023 and posted on Paola Harris's website ("A Tale of Two Urchins: Truth and Consequences in New Mexico Ufology"), Vallée accepted that Eddie Apodaca could not have been present. He also accepted that a separate boyhood crash story Baca had pitched earlier to a UFO writer was best described as "fiction". He maintained that the core 1945 account should still be believed. I know this through Douglas Dean Johnson's quotation of it and have not read the declaration directly.

Claims

An object crashed, and the boys (aged about 7 and 9) found a craft with three small "praying-mantis"-like beings (chain: Baca/Padilla (recollection 58+ years later) → Ben Moffett, Mountain Mail (2003) → Baca/Padilla book (2011) → Paola Harris interviews → Vallée & Harris (2021/2022) → NYT (2023) and other media)firsthandLeadReme Baca and José Padilla

Padilla's father Faustino and State Police officer Eddie Apodaca, "a family friend", went to the site with the boys two days later, and Apodaca entered the craft (firsthand claim by Baca and Padilla)firsthandLeadchain: as above. Contradicted by documents: Johnson obtained records showing Apodaca was with his Army unit in Europe in August 1945, did not return to New Mexi

A soldier ("Sergeant Avila") told the family the debris was a crashed weather balloon, a road was built, and the recovery took days (chain: soldier → Faustino Padilla / family → boys → book/interviews (2011, 2021))secondhandLeadPadilla and Baca

Padilla kept a piece of the craft (an aluminium "bracket") (chain: Padilla → Harris/Vallée. Vallée reported preliminary analyses. Johnson reports that the item has metric dimensions consistent with ordinary manufactured aluminium. No peer-reviewed analysis exists)firsthandLeadPadilla

An Army pilot, William J. Brophy, flew over the crash and saw the craft and the two boys, or (in an earlier version) was sent to clean up and flew out alien cadavers, or a live alien was captured (chain: William J. Brophy (deceased, no recorded statement) → son Billy Brophy → Flying Saucer Review letters (2003, which placed his father at a *1947* crash, not 1945) → Paola Harris (about 2009–10, which is when Brophy introduced her to the Baca–Padilla story) → Vallée & Harris. Johnson also reports that the pilot's other son, Sean Brophy, said in a recorded 2023 interview that their father mentioned only a 1950 UFO sighting over Georgia and never a crash or retrieval)unratedLeadBilly Brophy (the pilot's son), relaying what he says his late father told him

Washington Governor Dixy Lee Ray (a former AEC chair) showed Baca a secret file on the 1945 crash (chain: Baca → Harris → Vallée & Harris. Johnson documents that Baca's claimed senior role on Ray's staff is not supported, and that passages in Baca's book were copied from other sources)secondhandLeadReme Baca

Where

Padilla ranch area near San Antonio, Socorro County, New Mexico, about 20 miles from the Trinity test site

34.0°N 106.9°W

In The picture

They came when we split the atomWeeks after the first atomic test, two boys say they saw a craft come down near the Trinity site, with small insect-like occupants. In July 1947, by a single account, someone photographed a saucer over Oak Ridge, home of the uranium plants.

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