Crash at Corona
Crash at Corona: The U.S. Military Retrieval and Cover-Up of a UFO is a 1992 non-fiction book by nuclear physicist Stanton T. Friedman and aviation writer Don Berliner, published by Marlowe & Company (ISBN 1-56924-863-X). The book advances the theory that not one but two extraterrestrial craft crashed in New Mexico in July 1947 — one near Corona and a second on the Plains of San Agustin — and presents the first sustained analysis of the Majestic-12 documents in the context of the Roswell crash. A second edition incorporating new material was published in 1994.
Content
The book is organized in fifteen chapters plus appendices. The opening chapters survey the history of UFO sightings and the gradual intensification of Friedman's investigation into the Corona crash, which began with his 1978 interview of Major Jesse Marcel Sr. and expanded after the September 1989 Unsolved Mysteries broadcast generated scores of new witnesses.
The core of the book presents the two-crash theory. The first crash site, near Corona on the Foster Ranch, produced the metallic debris field recovered by Mac Brazel and subsequently by Major Marcel. The second crash, on the Plains of San Agustin in western New Mexico, was reportedly witnessed by civil engineer Barney Barnett and corroborated by Gerald Anderson, who claimed to have been present as a child when the craft and its occupants were found. The authors acknowledge that Anderson's credibility was later compromised but maintain that Barnett's independent account stands.
Chapters on the government response detail the recovery operation, the transfer of debris and bodies to Wright Field, and the cover story orchestrated by Brig. Gen. Roger Ramey at Fort Worth. The book notes confirmation by Dr. Robert Sarbacher that wreckage and "probably bodies" were at Wright Field in the early 1950s.
Three chapters are devoted to the Majestic 12 documents. The book presents the results of a $16,000 investigation financed by the Fund for UFO Research to determine whether the MJ-12 briefing paper was authentic or a hoax. Friedman argues that a group with the functions of MJ-12 must have existed, reasoning that "the recovery of unknown materials and the bodies of small humanoids would not be seen in Washington as" anything less than "the scientific/intelligence watershed of the millennium."
Significance
Crash at Corona introduced the two-crash theory into mainstream Roswell literature, proposing that the Corona debris field and the Plains of San Agustin impact site represented separate events — a model that, while later challenged by researchers including Kevin Randle, expanded the geographic scope of Roswell investigation. The book was also the first to integrate the MJ-12 document analysis directly into the crash narrative rather than treating it as a separate topic.
Friedman's methodological approach — which he described as following "a strict scientific method" through "painstaking search through voluminous records, and files, and old newspapers" rather than building on "vague rumors" — influenced the evidentiary approach that later Roswell researchers, including Carey and Schmitt, would adopt.