Man claims there were 2 NM UFO crashes

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - Is it urban legend or a huge government conspiracy?

In 1947 something bizarre fell from the sky over Roswell that the U.S. Air Force issued a press release saying a 'flying disk' had crashed. That was quickly recanted and alien or not, more than six decades later the story lives on.

This week, the Huffington Post posted an interview with retired Air Force Lt Col. Richard French, who says there was not one but two crashes in New Mexico.

French says he had nearly three decades of military service and worked on military intelligence and part of that included debunking UFO sightings. But now he says it is time to come forward.

He claims one went down after being disabled by an electronic pulse-type weapon from experimental U.S. airplane out of White Sands.

"The second, the pod came down...boom...instead of the rockets going down and knocking down the UFO. The airplane blew up,” French said.

French says the second went down days later.

He has written a book about it, but the now very elderly French has plenty of critics.

David Thomas is the president of New Mexicans for Science and Reason says he doubts French's story.

"It’s not his observation that he was there when they allegedly used an electromagnetic pulse to shoot down this UFO…it's a second hand story,” Thomas said.

Thomas says the ‘experimental U.S. airplane’ that disabled the UFO did not exist back then.

"We certainly didn't have that kind of technology in 1947,” Thomas said. “I worked on some of the star wars projects back in the 80's and I don’t' think we had that technology in the 80s to tell you the truth."

According to the Air Force, the 1947 crash, which has become known as the Roswell incident, involved a balloon carrying scientific instruments.

The Air Force maintains the flight was part of a secret government project to listen for soviet nuclear tests.