The 1945 San Antonio Crash: The Reme Baca and Jose Padilla witness Case
by Paola Leopizzi Harris
http://www.paolaharris.com/remebaca.html
excerpt:
Born on the edge of Ground Zero, living in the shadow of Area 51, two little Hispanic children experienced an extraordinary event occurred? Jose Padilla, age 9 and Reme Baca, age 7 witnessed a saucer crash on Padilla land in the town San Antonio, New Mexico. They were witness to one of the most spectacular events in UFO history.
This new book entitled, Born the Edge of Ground Zero, Living in the Shadow of Area 51, will be released February 2011 and is Jose Padilla’s and Reme Baca’s detailed account of what happened in their childhood. They explain what they saw; the actual crash, the creature’s appearances, the pieces they took, the military clean up and an in-depth analysis of the significance of this case.
First printed in The Mountain Mail, Soccorro, New Mexico on November 2, 2003 by journalist Ben Moffet, the case was passed to me, journalist/researcher, Paola Harris in May 4, 2009. The desire to finally disclose the details and the kind invitation of Reme Baca, led me to fly to Gig Harbor in Washington State in the Northern part of the United States to interview witness Reme Baca and his wife, Virginia in July 2010. Consequently because he now lives in California, I interviewed Jose Padilla by telephone from the Baca house. During my two-day stay, I was able to see and photograph the piece that Jose extracted from the craft and study the detailed analysis of its composition done in Europe.
It is one of the most astounding cases I have ever covered in my career and it helps complete the puzzle of why there has been so many crash retrievals in New Mexico. As journalist Ben Moffet, who so beautifully describes the cover-up - we can begin to see where it fits in UFO history.
“It was in this crucible of suspicion and disinterest bred by familiarity that a small contingent of the U.S. Army passed almost unnoticed through San Antonio in mid-to-late August, 1945 on a secret assignment.
Little or nothing has been printed about the mission, shrouded in the "hush-hush" atmosphere of the time. But the military detail apparently came from White Sands Proving Grounds to the east where the bomb was exploded. It was a recovery operation destined for the mesquite and greasewood desert west of Old US-85, at what is now Milepost 139, the San Antonio exit of Interstate 25.
Over the course of several days, soldiers in Army fatigues loaded the shattered remains of a flying apparatus onto a huge flatbed truck and hauled it away. That such an operation took place between about Aug. 20 and Aug. 25, 1945, there is no doubt, insist two former San Antonioans, Remigio Baca and Jose Padilla, eyewitnesses to the event. Padilla, then age 9, and Baca, 7, secretly watched much of the soldiers' recovery work from a nearby ridge.”
Thanks to the work of Ben Moffet, and now thanks to the witnesses themselves, currently in their 70’s, the world will know see that there was certain extraterrestrial interest in our discovery of the atomic bomb. It opened up a Pandora’s box in human history that cannot easily be closed. It put humanity and possibly other dimensional visitors in danger of total destruction. San Antonio was more than a crash, a sighting - an event. It was a warning that the military today is not heeding, whether it is in the US, or abroad. If we add the courageous testimony Air Force panel led by Robert Hastings and seven retired USAF officers at the Washington Press club on September 27th of 2010, then we realize the time has come to speak. If these visitors have the capacity of UFOs to either disable or shoot down our nuclear missiles, then we can see that 70 years later, they are taking action.
Ultimately, the 1945 San Antonio case presents a peaceful message, a powerful warning to the planet.
Reme Baca,7 years old
Interview With Reme Baca, Washington State
Jose Padilla in California (On the Telephone)
July 5th, 2010
P: After you saw the crash you brought people back there. And who did you bring back? You brought back who?
R: Well, not me.
P: Who brought them back?
R: What happened is that after the crash, we went home, back to the ranch.
P: Can you tell me the date of this? The approximate date of this? We know it’s 1945.
R: 1945, August.
P: It’s in the month of August.
R: And it was like the 15th.
P: Around the 15th. That 15th of August, you know, is the Feast of the Madonna. It’s the greatest feast in Italy. Okay, never mind. It’s a major date. Okay, so it’s around the 15th, so whose dad was it that sent you, and you were how old?
R: I was age 7 and Jose was 9. Jose’s dad Faustino had asked us a couple of days earlier, to find a cow that was ready to have a calf.
P: And you were on two separate horses.
R: Yes, we were on two separate horses.
P: So it was during the day you went?
R: Yes. Here’s what he told us. You know, Faustino said, when you get a chance, I want you to go out and check that cow because it’s getting ready to calve, and we want to make sure that we get it before somebody else gets it, and puts their brand on it. And so you need to, as you get a chance, to go do that. What we were doing periodically, is that we’d get on horseback and go up and check all the fences, “riding fence” is what we called it. Check the fences - make sure they weren’t broken. If they are, you repair them, you have a small tool kit, If a post is down you prop it up and later on you come back and replace it. So we’d ride the fences, and when we were done with that, we’d go up to the top of the hills and take inventory. Jose would look through his binoculars and count the stock. I’d write the numbers down. Count the cows. While twenty-five head of Cattle may not sound like much, Faustino had purchased some white face cattle from Spain, and was in the process of starting a white face herd. They seemed to do well in that type of terrain.
P: Count the cows? Okay. No, I believe you.
R: So that’s what we’d do. And then of course in the winter when it snowed, we’d sometimes have to break up the ice in the water trough, so that the animals could eat, and transport bales of hay or alfalfa to windmill area, so the animals could eat.
P: This was during the day that you guys went?
R: Yes, this was during the day. Jose would come over on his horse and we saddled mine and we took off. My mom was aware that we’re going to go do some work on the Padilla Ranch.
Jose Pailla
P: He was 9 and you were 7.
R: Yes. We went over looking for that cow. And so while we were there, it was not abnormal in late summer, to have thunderstorms and lightning and this time was no different so we took refuge under a ledge. Then we continued on. We had dismounted because the terrain was steep and rocky and horses don’t do well on rocks, they hurt their hooves. We replaced the bridles with rope and tied them so they could graze and we continued on foot. We walked and came up to where there was a clump of mesquite bushes, creosote, or greasewood as they called in the day, pine, sage, and cactus. As we walked towards the clump of mesquite we heard a moan and we discovered it was the cow we were looking for, and it had given birth to a calf. This was part of the beginning of the start of a new herd called a “whiteface” herd. A red cow with a white face and white feet. Faustino had purchased a cow and a bull from Spain and was breeding them. Whiteface was one of the cattle breeds they used in the United States for meat at that time. So we found it and then we went down into a little area where there was a ledge. Jose had packed a lunch, a couple of tortillas and I think a couple of apples. We sat down to eat that and the storm and rains came. We got under there so we wouldn’t get too wet. Then it just kind of sprinkled a little bit and was all over. We were getting ready to go up and take another look at the cow and see if it was eating and take a closer look at the calf. While we were doing that, we heard this loud bang.
P: You heard the actual crash.
R: We didn’t know it was a crash at that time. We heard this sound, like when the bomb went off.
P: The same sound as like when the bomb went off?
R: Similar to same sound as when the bomb went off and it was still fresh in our minds. When the bomb went off Jose and his mother were up early in the morning. The bomb went off after his dad left for work. Jose’s mother looked at the flash through the crack in the door jab and as a result of the exposure, she lost sight in that eye. According to Jose, they felt the heat wave, and the rumbling of the ground.
P: So the sound was familiar?
R: Very familiar. They were closer to the bomb explosion than I was, my bed crashed against the wall and it bounced me out of it, my mother got up and tried to explain that it was probably that storm that that was causing all this.
P: Going back to the actual story, you heard this sound?
R: We heard this sound and the ground shook, and so memories came back of the atomic bomb explosion. Are they testing again or what? So we looked around, saw smoke coming from maybe a couple of canyons down, up that way. So Jose says, “let’s go over and take a look, see what’s going on.” We started walking, and we saw a little smoke coming from that direction. As we reached the ridge, the smoke became intense. Then we worked our way down the ridge so we could see what appeared to be a big gouge in the ground. It looked like a road grader had been in there. We were not aware that anyone had a 100-foot wide grader, but it sure looked like a 100-foot wide blade had been here, grading about a foot deep. We started walking up this graded road, it was pretty rough on our feet and it was warm. The bottoms of our feet felt hot.
P: And do you remember around what time it was?
R: I didn’t have a watch. Probably four or five in the afternoon, maybe later.
P: I’m asking because you can see what you’re looking at, it’s not dark.
R: No, it’s not dark. But as we look up this graded road, there’s a lot of smoke. So we retreated to where we could get some air and take a drink from the canteen and kind of recollect our thoughts and try to understand what this is all about. I asked Jose, “is that a plane that went down?” I’ve only seen planes in the air. We live in a small town. Don’t see many planes. Jose says, “Don’t know, maybe somebody might be hurt and maybe we need to help them. “I said ok, okay, and so we continued trying to get closer. We could see something over on the edge of that graded gash.
P: The path that the grader left?
R: The path that the craft left. It doesn’t go just straight. It goes and then it makes a right turn, like an “L”. We could see something but you know, there’s so much dust in the air, and it’s humid from the rain and then some of that brush, that oily brush is burning so the smoke’s coming into your eyes, it’s really hard to see and make any sense of it at all. We went back up and rested, returned, and Jose has his binoculars out and starts looking to see what it are. He says, “You know there’s something over there. Let’s see if we can get any closer.” Again, we try to get closer and finally it starts clearing up a little. The time seems to be going by very fast. We’re looking through the binoculars and I could see the hole on the side of this object. The object is avocado shaped.
P: So it’s a round object like an avocado and you could see there’s a hole. How far would you say you guys were from the object?
R: I would estimate about a couple of hundred feet.
P: Oh, you did get a couple hundred feet close?
R: Yes, about a hundred feet.
P: And then you saw the inside of the hole from the couple hundred feet?
R: No, not the inside of the hole. Jose says, “look at this.” So I was looking through thee binoculars at these little creatures moving back and forth.
