I haven't listened to the show yet but something that has always bothered me about this case is the fact any such thing was being airlifted over a residential area? Any kind of secret testing surely would take place elsewhere? And whoever was transporting this object must have known what state it was in (the dripping melted metal effect if my memory is correct) - anyway, whatever it was, judging from the drawings that one of the two women did all I can think is that whatever was happening, there was no other option but to travel the direction and route they did, which makes me think whatever was happening was totally unplanned - so could that mean it was a kind of clean-up of a crash?
I'll be listening tomorrow and perhaps these points are covered...looking forward to this one cos this is a classic case, whatever the truth of it is.
As unbelievable as it seems, military tests, exercises and dangerous material transports occur near populated areas fairly often. Most remain secret unless there's a problem. Here's a few examples:
On May 24, 1963, Kenneth S. "Dutch" Collins was making a subsonic engine test flight (of the A-12), flying very slowly just above a solid layer of clouds. He was accompanied by Jack W. Weeks in an F-101 Voodoo chase airplane. When Collins saw that Weeks's F-101 could not stay up with his A-12, he told Weeks to continue on to the base alone. Shortly afterward, when Collins flew into the clouds, his A-12 suddenly stalled, pitched up, and went completely out of control-the result of an erroneous airspeed reading. Collins was able to eject safely from the airplane, which went into an inverted flat spin and then crashed 14 miles south of Wendover, Utah.
July 11, 1986 Maj. Ross E. Mulhare flying F-117A
Bakersfield, CA. At about 1:45 a.m., Mulhare's airplane went into a steep dive and smashed into a hillside about 17 miles northeast of that city, just inside the Sequoia National Forest. Mulhare was killed.
May 22, 1957, Kirtland Air Force Base, NM- Nuclear Accident near Albuquerque NM
(Conventional plane carrying nuclear material) The nuclear weapon was completely destroyed in the detonation which occurred approximately 4.5 miles south of the Kirtland control tower and 0.3 miles west of the Sandia Base reservation, creating a blast crater approximately 25 feet in diameter and 12 feet deep. Fragments of the bomb and debris were scattered over a one mile area. A radiological survey of the area was conducted, but revealed no radioactive contamination beyond the lip of the crater.
As these accounts demonstrate, operations of this nature probably happen more frequently than reported. For instance, a Department of Energy trailer carrying plutonium from Richland, Washington, to New Mexico overturned on icy roads on Interstate 25 near Fort Collins, Colorado, in December 1980.
The Cash-Landrum incident occurred about 20 miles outside of Houston, and it is plausible that this was a military operation gone wrong. But, just because it sounds good, we can't rule out other scenarios.