Del Rio, Texas
Del Rio is a city in Val Verde County, Texas, situated on the Rio Grande along the US-Mexico border, approximately 150 miles west of San Antonio. In UAP research, the region is associated with two distinct crash retrieval incidents from the 1950s, frequently conflated in UFO literature but separated by geography, timing, witness accounts, and corroborating context. The two incidents — a December 6, 1950 near-incineration event near El Indio, Texas (75 miles southeast of Del Rio) and a 1955 crash near Langtry, Texas (60 miles northwest of Del Rio) — are collectively referred to as the "Del Rio cases."
The 1950 El Indio Crash
The alleged Majestic 12 Eisenhower Briefing Document references a December 6, 1950 UAP impact between El Indio, Texas and Guerrero, Mexico, in which a craft traveling at high speed was reportedly nearly obliterated upon impact. Recovered materials were described as transported to the Atomic Energy Commission's facility at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico. On the same date, a nationwide US alert was called at 10:30 AM Eastern regarding unidentified aircraft approaching the Northeast at altitude, cancelled by General Ramey at 1:16 PM. A December 8, 1950 FBI memo directed to J. Edgar Hoover placed Army intelligence on high alert for flying disc data. See: El Indio, Texas.
The 1955 Langtry Crash
In spring 1955, USAF Reserve Colonel Robert Willingham claimed to have witnessed a UAP crash just south of the Rio Grande near Langtry, Texas while escorting bombers from Carswell Air Force Base. The craft was observed by multiple pilots and detected by Distant Early Warning radar in Canada. Willingham and companion Jack Perkins privately visited the crash site in a small aircraft, where they found Mexican soldiers standing perimeter while awaiting an American retrieval team. See: Robert Willingham.
Significance in UFO Research
The Del Rio cases are frequently cited by researchers as among the more credible mid-century crash retrieval accounts due to their documented corroborating context: a contemporaneous DEW radar alert, a nationwide military UFO alert on the date of the 1950 crash, congressional-level documentation in alleged MJ-12 briefing materials, and physicist Eric Davis's 2018 endorsement of the Del Rio area as a "really good bet" alongside Roswell in a Coast to Coast AM interview with George Knapp. The video notes connections between the 1950 El Indio debris reportedly sent to Sandia, AT&T's management of Sandia from 1949 to 1993, alleged ET technology transfers to AT&T documented in Steven Greer's Disclosure Project archives, and Sandia's subsequent transition to management by Lockheed Martin in 1993.