Part 2

The accounts several fliers gave concerning the widespread cratering and destruction they had seen from the air in the impact area led to the organization of two separate ground-search parties, one at Khabarovsk, the other at Vladivostok. The Khabarovsk group, made up of four members of the Geological Society, flew to the village of Kharkovo, the inhabited point nearest the site of fall. After a rough and dangerous landing on the small, snow-covered airfield at Kharkovo, the geologists began their trek into the taiga on foot. Throughout the entire trip, the men, burdened with supplies and equipment, waded through waist-deep snow and camped in the open despite the arctic cold.

At almost the same time, a geologist from Vladivostok set out from the railway line up the Ussuri valley to track down the fallen meteorite. His progress was even more difficult than that of the Khabarovsk party. In addition to following a much longer route, he did not have the invaluable information that the first party had got from the aviators. He had to make his way slowly from village to village, questioning eyewitnesses as he went and gradually determining the probable end-point of the meteorite fall.

The route followed by the Vladivostok geologist lay through the heart of the trackless snow-covered taiga. Fortunately, he had with him two hunters who were well acquainted with the rigors of travel through the taiga and knew how to live off the land.

They slept in hunters’ huts or under overhanging trees, drank melted snow water, and ate fried quail. But they had not gone far when they found that their footwear was completely useless for a trek through the wet, snowy taiga, because their felt hiking boots quickly soaked up water and became very heavy. So they swathed their feet in warm dry grass over which they tied large pieces of untanned leather. After that, the walking was much easier. They were able to cover the ground so rapidly that they reached Kharkovo only a day after the Khabarovsk geologists had landed there at the small airfield.

At Kharkovo, the three feasted on pork, milk, and honey. Then loading a few provisions on a borrowed horse, they started out to overtake the Khabarovsk party. They made such good time that the two groups were able to join forces and to enter the impact area as one expedition, on February 24, 1947.

A scene of great desolation awaited them in the central region of the meteorite fall. Masses of crushed stone had been hurled hundreds of feet by the violent impact. Denuded, uprooted trees lay about—some cut in two as neatly as if by a saw. Large cedars had been splintered where they stood or had been torn up by the roots and thrown some scores of yards.

Most impressive of all, though, were the numerous meteorite craters ranging in size from small bowl-like features to a basin more than 28 yards across and over 6 yards deep—a depression large enough to hold a two-story house. The investigators recovered many fragments of the iron meteorite that had broken to pieces not far above the earth’s surface and had peppered the area of fall with high-speed meteoritic “shrapnel.”

With their meteorite recoveries and photographs of the cratered area, the members of this first expedition returned to their respective towns and began a campaign by letter and wire to interest the Moscow office of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R. in making a full-scale investigation of the Ussuri fall. The officials of the Academy decided at once to send a special scientific expedition to the site of the meteorite fall.

A member of this later and better-equipped expedition compared the Ussuri crater field to a bombed-out area. In fact, some of the meteorite specimens were fragments that closely resembled pieces of shattered shell-casing. The edges of these fragments were jagged and bent, and their surfaces, which often displayed a rainbow-colored sheen, were grooved and scarred by impact against the hard rock underlying the region in which the crater field had been formed. In rare instances, the investigators noted spiral twisting of the fragments, an indication of the unusually violent disruptive forces to which they had been subjected at impact.

The scientists found several instances in which fist-sized meteorite fragments had actually penetrated into or through standing tree trunks, either becoming imbedded in the wood or driving a hole right through the trunk.

Many whole individual meteorites also were recovered. These were almost always covered by a thin, smooth “glaze” known as fusion crust. This crust forms on the surface of a meteorite as it plunges rapidly through the air. The heat generated during its flight causes the outer “skin” of the meteorite to melt. Later, when the mass has cooled off, the thin coating of melted material hardens, forming a rind or crust.

By the beginning of 1951, the Russians had sent three more expeditions to the site of the Ussuri fall. Their scientists found, in all, 122 craters (the largest more than 80 feet in diameter) as well as numerous funnels resulting from the penetration of smaller meteorites into the earth. By means of both visual and instrumental searches, they also recovered 20,000 meteoritic fragments and individual meteorites. The smallest Ussuri specimens weighed no more than the thousandth part of a gram. (There are 453.59 grams in a pound.) Some of these tiny masses were found lying cupped in leaves. The largest individual meteorite recovered weighed about 3,839 pounds. Altogether, approximately 23 tons of meteoritic material from the Ussuri fall are now in the collection of the Meteorite Committee of the Academy of Sciences, Moscow, while another 47 tons are believed to still be buried in the Ussuri crater field.

The Russian scientists carefully mapped the locations of the individual craters, penetration funnels, and meteorite recoveries. They made geologic and magnetometric surveys of the crater field, took aerial photographs of the entire area of fall, and prepared a documentary motion-picture covering the activities of the various expeditions. The area of the crater field has been set aside by the Russian government as a sort of scientific preserve, and is being made into the equivalent of what is termed a National Monument in the U.S.A. Several of the typical craters are protected by overroofed shelters to preserve these features for generations yet to come.

2. A METEORITE FALLS IN THE WHEATLAND, U.S.A.

February 18, 1948, had been a pleasant day in northwestern Kansas and as the supper hour approached, the sky remained blue and cloudless. Shortly before 5:00 p.m., a few people were still out of doors. An eleven-year old girl was hanging up the last of the family wash on a high clothesline. In the late afternoon sunshine, a woman and her son were enjoying a walk around the back yard of their home on a large Kansas ranch. Outside his house, a ten-year old boy was playing basketball with friends. A veteran of World War II was loading fodder in a silo. In the feedlot of his ranch, a farmer was stacking hay. A filling station attendant was working outside at the pumps, grateful for a spell of milder winter weather.

Without warning, a large and very bright fireball streaked across the clear sky from southwest to northeast. Ominous-looking white smoke-clouds mushroomed up from points in the fireball’s path. Shortly after the fireball disappeared, loud explosions and rumbling sounds drove thousands of people out into the open. The whole astonishing luminous display was over in a few seconds, but the strange clouds and the frightening sounds that followed the fireball’s passage continued much longer.

Although startled by the brilliant fireball and the strange thundering noises, the young girl, whose face had been turned skyward as she hung up the clothes, noted very carefully where she had seen the fireball disappear behind the tallest building in her home town. (Her sighting was later of great value to field parties from the Institute of Meteoritics of the University of New Mexico.)

The woman and her son were amazed to see an angry, boiling white cloud tinged with red developing overhead in the blue sky and to hear strange whizzing noises in the air around them.

The boy playing basketball heard a peculiar whistling or hissing noise just as he was ready to shoot a basket and, on looking up, saw the ball of fire slanting earthward. (This boy’s report was of particular interest, since it related to an unusual type of “sound” that travels at the speed of light rather than at the velocity of ordinary soundwaves.)

As a cannonading louder than any the veteran had heard on the battlefields of Europe echoed over the rolling countryside, he went temporarily into a state of shock.

The farmer stacking hay heard several explosions, felt a violent air blast, and finally heard a solid object strike the ground “with a smack,” as he put it, “like a clod hitting the earth.” (Later, field searchers found that this man lived only about two and a half miles south of the point where the largest fragment of the meteorite fell.)

Shortly after the passage of the fireball, the filling station attendant felt the legs of his trousers flap as if he were standing in a high wind, although he was more than 11 miles distant from the actual path along which the fireball moved on its way to the earth.

As in the case of the Ussuri fall, which had occurred about a year earlier, farm animals, chickens, and dogs were terrified by the strange and noisy event. Cattle tried to run through a fence to escape the deafening racket. A fine pair of horses panicked and ran headlong into a narrow gully, the walls of which collapsed on them during their struggles. Chickens dashed for the henhouse, screeching and cackling all the way. A dog that feared lightning jumped behind a haystack and finally ran to his master in alarm.

Although the majority of the people did not see the fireball itself, they were driven out-of-doors by the violent concussions that followed its passage, and thus got out under the open sky in ample time to see several large, turbulent white clouds mushrooming far overhead. From these clouds, a thick powder or dust filtered down through the air and collected on the surfaces of stock ponds and water tanks.

Some people thought the peculiar clouds were similar to those produced by atom bomb explosions. Many suspected that a V-2 rocket had “run away” from the proving ground at White Sands, New Mexico. One man disagreed with the opinion of his friends that the military had been experimenting and declared that it was “the Lord who was experimenting!”

The February 18 meteorite fall caused great excitement throughout Kansas and Nebraska, and it was the chief topic of conversation for days among the residents of the many small farming communities along the western half of the Kansas-Nebraska state line.

The Ussuri fall was studied by Russian scientists exclusively, and we have of necessity given, in Chapter 1, a secondhand account of the fall and surveys the Russians made; but field parties from the Institute of Meteoritics conducted on-the-spot investigations of the Norton, Kansas fall. As we were members of several of these field parties, the story to follow is a firsthand report.

A little before 6:00 p.m. on February 18, word of the mysterious explosion centering near Norton, Kansas reached the Institute of Meteoritics, in Albuquerque, N. M., through the kind offices of Civil Air Patrol personnel. Since a number of early reports had described the incident as an airplane falling in flames, it was only natural that the Civil Air Patrol and similar groups would take an interest in the occurrence. At once, the staff of the Institute began to interview eyewitnesses of the event through Civil Air Patrol channels and by long distance telephone, telegram, and letter. Soon we had collected enough information to show clearly that a large meteorite fall had been responsible for the unusual light and sound effects that had startled the inhabitants of Kansas, Nebraska, and adjoining states.