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FIRST - THE PRESENT: 26 JULY 2002
Bright
Blue UFO Scrambles
113th
Squadron Near D.C.
"Routine" Exercise Chasing High Speed UFOs?
http://www.rense.com/general27/bblue.htm
7-26-2
Update:
F-16s
Pursue Unknown Craft Over Region
By
Steve Vogel
Washington
Post Staff Writer
7-27-2
For
Renny Rogers, it was strange enough that military jets were flying
low
over his home in Waldorf in the middle of the night. It was what he
thinks
he saw when he headed outside to look early yesterday that
floored
him.
"It
was this object, this light-blue object, traveling at a phenomenal rate
of
speed," Rogers said. "This Air Force jet was right behind it, chasing it,
but
the object was just leaving him in the dust. I told my neighbor,
'I
think those jets are chasing a UFO.' "
Military
officials confirm that two F-16 jets from Andrews Air Force Base
were
scrambled early yesterday after radar detected an unknown aircraft
in
area airspace. But they scoff at the idea that the jets were chasing a
strange
and speedy, blue unidentified flying object.
"We
had a track of interest, so we sent up some aircraft," said Maj.
Douglas
Martin, a spokesman for the North American Aerospace Defense
Command
in Colorado, which has responsibility for defending U.S.
airspace.
"Everything was fine in the sky, so they returned home."
At
the same time, military officials say they do not know just what the
jets
were chasing, because whatever it was disappeared. "There are
any
number of scenarios, but we don't know what it was," said Maj.
Barry
Venable, another spokesman for NORAD.
Radar
detected a low, slow-flying aircraft about 1 a.m. yesterday,
according
to a military official. Controllers were unable to establish
radio
communication with the unidentified aircraft, and NORAD was
notified.
When the F-16s carrying air-to-air missiles were launched
from
Andrews, the unidentified aircraft's track faded from the radar,
the
military official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Pilots
with the D.C. Air National Guard's 113th Air Wing, which
flew
the F-16s from Andrews, reported nothing out of the ordinary,
NORAD
officials said.
"It
was a routine launch," said Lt. Col. Steve Chase, a senior officer
with
the wing, which keeps pilots and armed jets on 24-hour alert at
Andrews
to respond to incidents as part of an air defense system
protecting
Washington after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Rogers
remains convinced that what he saw was not routine.
"It
looked like a shooting star with no trailing mist," he said.
"I've
never seen anything like it."
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
---------------------
What
was that bright light
in
Maryland's sky???
WTOP
has learned that residents near Andrews Air Force base
were
shaken from their beds early Friday morning by some
strange
activity in the air.
"Incredible.
Absolutely incredible" is what Renny Rogers of Waldorf
calls
it. Just before two in the morning, Rogers says he saw a large blue
ball
of light streaking across the sky. But it was the military jets that
really
startled him.
"(The
jets) were right on its tail. As the thing would move, a jet was
right
behind it," Rogers recalls.
He
is not the only one who saw it. Several people called WTOP Radio
reporting
seeing a bright blue or orange ball moving very fast, being
chased
by jets.
Rogers
says there was no smoke coming from the object, no flashing
lights,
and says it was smooth, and eerily silent.
The Air National Guard confirms they scrambled the 113th squadron.
Spokesman
Sheldon Smith says they are investigating and in contact
with
NORAD.
WTOP
Radio, 2002
http://devtoolkit.wtop.com/news/newsdetail.cfm?newsID=584517
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
JULY 13, 2002 :
'NEW JERSEY UFO MANEUVERS'
PARAMUS
--Three unknown objects maneuver, pulse, then fade
out
on a clear on July 13, 2002, night over northern New Jersey.
At
11:10 PM, two bright lights, which appeared to be stars, were
seen
moving slowly in formation on a northeast heading.
The atmospheric conditions were clear with visibility unlimited.
The
two objects appeared high up, and were very bright. Within
moments
of the sighting, a third, less brilliant object, appeared
from
the northwest sky behind the first two objects, and flew
between
them. It also appeared to be a star. This third object then
changed
direction to the north and faded completely. The objects
flying
in formation then faded completely, and could not be seen.
Several
moments later one of these a brilliant white light objects
pulsed
brightly, then faded. Moments later the third object pulsed
brightly,
then faded as it continued toward the north. None of the
objects
was seen again, though the first two must have been
directly
overhead. Observers include a police officer and two
security
officers. One observer holds a private pilot license
all
concur that the sighting was not that of a conventional
aircraft.
Thanks to Peter Davenport NUFORC
----------------------------------------
NOW
JUMP BACK 50 YEARS TO:
JULY 1952
'ET ARMADA OVER WASHINGTON DC'
-
JULY 1952 -
Washington
Post staff writer Peter Carlson reports on Sunday that,
In
the control tower at Washington National Airport, Ed Nugent saw
seven
pale violet blips on his radar screen. What were they?
Not
planes -- at least not any planes that were supposed to be there.
He
summoned his boss, Harry G. Barnes, the head of National's air
traffic
controllers. "Here's a fleet of flying saucers for you," Nugent
said,
half-joking. Upstairs, in the tower's glass-enclosed top floor,
controller
Joe Zacko saw a strange blip streaking across his radar
screen.
It wasn't a bird. It wasn't a plane. What was it? He looked
out
the window and spotted a bright light hovering in the sky.
He
turned to his partner, Howard Cocklin, who was sitting three feet
away.
"Look at that bright light," Zacko said. "If you believe in flying
saucers,
that could sure be one." And then the light took off, zooming
away
at an incredible speed. "Did you see that?" Cocklin remembers
saying.
"What the hell was that?"
It
was Saturday night, July 19, 1952, fifty years ago -- one of the most
famous
dates in the bizarre history of UFOs. Before the night was over,
a
pilot reported seeing unexplained objects, radar at two local Air Force
bases
-- Andrews and Bolling -- picked up the UFOs, and two Air Force
F-94
jets streaked over Washington, searching for flying saucers.
Then,
a week later, it happened all over again -- more UFOs on the
radar
screen, more jets scrambled over Washington.
Across
America, the story of jets chasing UFOs over the White House
knocked
the Korean War and the presidential campaign off the front
pages
of newspapers. " 'Saucer' Outran Jet, Pilot Reveals," read the
banner
headline in The Washington Post. "JETS CHASE D.C. SKY
GHOSTS,"
screamed the New York Daily News. "AERIAL WHATZITS
BUZZ
D.C. AGAIN!" shouted the Washington Daily News. As rumors
spread,
President Truman demanded to know what was flying over
his
house. Soon the federal government was fighting the UFOs with
the
most powerful weapons in the Washington arsenal -- bureaucracy,
obfuscation
and gobbledygook. That seemed to work. The UFOs
never
returned. Snip.
Dr.
Bruce Maccabee isn't laughing. "One thing you have to understand:
This
is serious business," he says. "The skeptics like to make fun of us."
Maccabee,
60, is a civilian physicist for the Navy and a prominent UFO
believer.
Maccabee buttresses his argument with an official government
report.
It's called "Quantitative Aspects of Mirages" and it was issued
by
the Air Force in 1969.
"They
proved in their own study that there wasn't enough temperature
inversion
to cause this effect," he says. "The Washington sightings
cannot
be explained as a radar mirage."
In
the '70s, he filed the Freedom of Information Act request that led
to
the release of the FBI's file on UFOs. The file was called "Security
Matter
X" -- "the real X-Files," he says.
Maccabee
believes there were "solid objects" in the air over
Washington
50 years ago. "And I think those solid objects were
not
made by us," he says. "And by us, I mean human beings."
After
50 years, the debate over the Washington UFOs goes on and on.
"You
have dueling experts and dueling reports," says Kevin D. Randle,
author
of "Invasion Washington: UFOs Over the Capitol," a new book
on
the 1952 sightings. "One expert says it was temperature inversion.
Another
says it wasn't. In that situation, you have to refer back to the
air
traffic controllers and the pilots who actually saw the objects."
Former
controller Howard Cocklin is still convinced that he saw an
object
over National that night. "I saw it on the screen and out the
window,"
he says. "It was a whitish-blue object. Not a light -- a solid
form.
An object. A saucer-shaped object."
Now
83 and retired, Cocklin says he never saw anything like that
saucer
-- not before, not since. "It just went away," he says, sitting
in
an armchair in his Fairfax living room. "Where did it go? Why
don't
people see these things today? Why 50 years ago?"
Thanks
to Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31625-2002Jul19.html
-------------------------------
FULL
WASHINGTON POST ARTICLE:
Alien Armada!
50
Years Ago, Unidentified Flying Objects From Way
Beyond
the Beltway Seized the Capital's Imagination
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31625-2002Jul19.html
By
Peter Carlson
Washington
Post Staff Writer
Sunday,
July 21, 2002; Page F01
In
the control tower at Washington National Airport, Ed Nugent saw
seven
pale violet blips on his radar screen. What were they? Not planes
--
at least not any planes that were supposed to be there.
He
summoned his boss, Harry G. Barnes, the head of National's air
traffic
controllers. "Here's a fleet of flying saucers for you," Nugent
said,
half-joking.
Upstairs,
in the tower's glass-enclosed top floor, controller Joe Zacko
saw
a strange blip streaking across his radar screen. It wasn't a bird.
It
wasn't a plane. What was it? He looked out the window and spotted
a
bright light hovering in the sky. He turned to his partner, Howard
Cocklin,
who was sitting three feet away.
"Look
at that bright light," Zacko said. "If you
believe
in flying saucers, that could sure be one."
And then the light took off, zooming away at an incredible speed.
"Did
you see that?" Cocklin remembers saying.
"What
the hell was that?"
It
was Saturday night, July 19, 1952 -- 50 years ago this weekend
--
one of the most famous dates in the bizarre history of UFOs. Before
the
night was over, a pilot reported seeing unexplained objects, radar
at
two local Air Force bases -- Andrews and Bolling -- picked up the
UFOs,
and two Air Force F-94 jets streaked over Washington, searching
for
flying saucers.
Then,
a week later, it happened all over again -- more UFOs on the radar
screen,
more jets scrambled over Washington. Across America, the story
of
jets chasing UFOs over the White House knocked the Korean War and
the
presidential campaign off the front pages of newspapers.
"
'Saucer' Outran Jet, Pilot Reveals," read the
banner
headline in The Washington Post.
"JETS
CHASE D.C. SKY GHOSTS,"
screamed
the New York Daily News.
"AERIAL
WHATZITS BUZZ D.C. AGAIN!"
shouted
the Washington Daily News.
As
rumors spread, President Truman demanded to know what was
flying
over his house. Soon the federal government was fighting the
UFOs
with the most powerful weapons in the Washington arsenal --
bureaucracy,
obfuscation and gobbledygook.
That
seemed to work. The UFOs never returned.
At
least, not that we know of.
As Big as Life
In a way, this whole strange episode began with Marilyn Monroe.
The
actress appeared on the cover of Life magazine's April 7, 1952,
issue,
looking sultry in a diaphanous, low-cut dress, her eyelids drooping
seductively.
It was the kind of cover that attracts attention. And just
above
Monroe's left shoulder was a cover line touting a different story:
"There
Is a Case for Interplanetary Saucers."
The
article was titled "Have We Visitors From Outer Space?" It reviewed
10
recent UFO sightings and concluded that they could not be written off
as
hallucinations, hoaxes or earthly aircraft. An unnamed Air Force intelligence
officer
was quoted saying, "The higher you go in the Air Force, the more
seriously
they take the flying saucers."
The
story ended with a series of questions that sound like something
Rod
Serling might intone at the end of a "Twilight Zone" episode:
"Who,
or what, is aboard? Where do they come from? Why are
they
here? What are the intentions of the beings who control them?"
It
wasn't the first media account of UFOs -- there had been lots of
publicity
since several well-known sightings in 1947, including one in
Roswell,
N.M. -- but the Life article marked the first time that a trusted,
mainstream
magazine had given credence to the theory that UFOs
might
be alien spacecraft.
The
Life story was big news, covered in more than 350 newspapers
across
America. Soon, the number of UFO sightings reported to the Air
Force
skyrocketed -- from 23 in March, before Life's article appeared,
to
82 in April, 79 in May, 148 in June.
Were
these increases due to saucers swarming over America?
Or
did Life's story make Americans more likely to report strange
things
they saw in the sky?
By
mid-July, Capt. Edward J. Ruppelt -- the head of Project Blue
Book,
the Air Force's official UFO study team -- was getting 40 reports
of
UFO sightings a day. Many were bogus but some came from pilots
and
other respectable citizens, and Ruppelt took them seriously.
Captain Edward J. Ruppelt (standing), director of Project Blue Book, and Major General Samford, Chief of Air Intelligence. Photograph source United Press International.
Then
-- a few days before the first sightings at National Airport --
Ruppelt
interviewed a government scientist who made a startling
prediction
that Ruppelt recorded in his 1956 memoir, "The Report
on
Unidentified Flying Objects."
"Within
the next few days," the unidentified scientist said,
banging
his hand on his desk for emphasis, "you're going to
have
the granddaddy of all UFO sightings. The sighting will
occur
in Washington or New York -- probably Washington."
'Falling Stars Without Tails'
The
blips first appeared on radar screens at National at 11:40
that
Saturday night -- seven unidentified targets about 15 miles
southeast
of the city.
It
was a clear, hot, humid night with very little air traffic, and the
controllers
at National watched the strange blips amble across their
screens.
They'd cruise at a leisurely rate of about 100 to 130 miles
per
hour, then abruptly zoom off in an extraordinary burst of speed.
"They
acted like a bunch of small kids out playing," Barnes, the head
controller,
wrote a few days later in a piece for a New York newspaper.
"It
was helter-skelter, as if directed by some innate curiosity. At times,
they
moved as a group or cluster, at other times as individuals."
Barnes
called his counterparts at Andrews and Bolling to ask
if
they saw anything unusual on their radar screens. They did.
They
were getting blips in the same places.
At
Andrews, controller William Brady looked out the control tower
window
and saw what looked like "an orange ball of fire, trailing a tail."
It
was, he later told Air Force investigators, "unlike anything I had
ever
seen before."
At
National, Cocklin looked out his window and saw what he recalls
as
a "whitish blue light" that emanated from a solid object that was
"round
with no distinguishing marks such as wings or a nose or a tail."
It
looked, he says, "like a saucer."
Sometime
after 1 a.m, National's control tower radioed Capital Air
Flight
807, from Washington to Detroit, and asked the pilot if he saw
any
unusual objects. Captain S.C. "Casey" Pierman, a pilot with 17
years
of experience, radioed back: "There's one -- and there it goes."
For
the next 14 minutes, as he flew between Herndon and Martinsburg,
W.Va.,
Pierman saw six bright lights that streaked across the sky at
tremendous
speed. "They were," he said, "like falling stars without tails."
Watching
the radar blips flying over the Capitol and the White House,
Barnes
called the Air Force to report unidentified aircraft in restricted
air
space. But it was very late on a Saturday night and the Air Force
bureaucracy
responded sluggishly. By the time F-94 interceptor jets
left
New Castle Air Force Base in Delaware -- the runways at Andrews
were
closed for repairs -- it was after 3 a.m.
When
the F-94s soared over Washington, the strange blips
disappeared
from the radar screens at National. The F-94 pilots
cruised
around the area for a while but saw nothing. When they
headed
back to New Castle, the blips reappeared.
The
controllers watched the UFOs flit across
their
screens until dawn, then disappear.
Trying to Clear the Air
Nobody
bothered to call Ruppelt about the sightings. When he flew
to
Washington a couple of days later on unrelated Project Blue Book
business,
he learned about them by reading newspapers at the airport.
"Radar
Spots Air Mystery Objects Here," read the headline
on
the front page of The Washington Post.
"Air
Force 'Saucer' Expert Will Probe Sightings Here," said
the
Washington Daily News.
Ruppelt
asked his colleagues who the expert was.
You
are, they told him.
At
the Pentagon, Ruppelt found the Air Force brass deeply
concerned
about one particular aspect of the sightings:
What
should they tell the press?
Nobody
had any idea what -- if anything -- had been in the air over
Washington
on July 19, but the newspapers were demanding answers.
Reporters,
Ruppelt wrote, "were now beginning to put on a squeeze
by
threatening to call congressmen -- and nothing chills blood faster
in
the military."
Ruppelt
volunteered to stay overnight to interview the controllers
at
National and Andrews, then report what he learned to the press.
But
Ruppelt got entangled in the thicket of military bureaucracy.
He
called the Pentagon's transportation section to get a car so he
could
travel to the various airports. Only colonels and generals can
get
cars, he was told. He called two generals, but it was after 4 p.m.
and
they were gone for the day.
He
went to the finance office to get permission to rent a car.
Take
a bus, the woman there told him. It takes a lot of buses to
go
from the Pentagon to National to Andrews, he replied. Take
a
cab, she said, and pay for it out of your per diem. But his per
diem
was $9, he said, and he had to pay for food and lodging.
The
woman then informed Ruppelt that his orders were to fly back
to
Ohio that night, and unless he got those orders amended, he'd
technically
be AWOL. He asked to talk to her boss. He'd left at 4:30
to
avoid traffic, she said, and now it was 5 and she was leaving, too.
Ruppelt
gave up. "I decided that if flying saucers were
buzzing
Pennsylvania Avenue, I couldn't care less,"
he
wrote. "I caught the next airliner to Dayton."
A Return Engagement
About
10 o'clock Saturday night, July 26, Ruppelt was at home
in
Dayton when a reporter called to say that UFOs were back
in
the sky over Washington.
What, the reporter asked, did the Air Force plan to do about it?
"I
have no idea what the Air Force is doing," Ruppelt replied.
"In
all probability, it's doing nothing."
He
hung up, then called the Pentagon and learned that he was right:
The
Air Force was doing nothing. He made more calls, dispatching two
officers
-- Maj. Dewey Fournet and Lt. John Holcomb, a radar expert
--
to National's control tower to see what was happening.
Fournet
and Holcomb arrived to find National's controllers tracking
a
dozen unexplained blips. An Air Force B-25 happened to be passing
through
the area, so the controllers asked it to check out some of the
radar
targets. The B-25 went to one site and spotted nothing except
a
tourist boat cruising the Potomac.
Perhaps,
the controllers surmised, a temperature inversion -- a layer
of
hot air between two layers of colder air in the sky -- had bent the
radar
beam, causing it to mistake objects on the ground for things in
the
air. Temperature inversions were common in Washington on hot
days,
and the controllers were familiar with the phenomenon.
But
Fournet and Holcomb were convinced that some of the radar
blips
were solid metal objects, not inversion-induced mirages.
Radar
operators at Andrews saw them, too. And civilian planes
flying
into Washington reported seeing strange glowing objects
in
places where the radar was getting blips.
The
controllers called for interceptors, and about 11 p.m. the Air
Force
dispatched F-94s to search the sky over Washington. When
the
first jets arrived, the blips disappeared from National's radar
screens
and the F-94 pilots saw nothing unusual. But when they
returned
to New Castle, the blips returned to the radar screens.
About
1:30 a.m., the jets soared back over Washington.
This
time, pilots saw several strange lights. One pilot gave
chase
but he couldn't catch the streaking light.
"I
tried to make contact with the bogies below 1,000 feet,"
pilot
William Patterson told investigators. "I was at my
maximum
speed but . . . I ceased chasing them because
I
saw no chance of overtaking them."
Trading on Hot Air
On
Monday morning, the story of UFOs outrunning fighter planes
was
splashed across front pages all over America. In Iowa, the
headline
in the Cedar Rapids Gazette read like something out of
a
sci-fi flick: "SAUCERS SWARM OVER CAPITAL."
"We
have no evidence they are flying saucers," an unidentified
Air
Force source told reporters. "Conversely we have no evidence
they
are not flying saucers. We don't know what they are."
In
the absence of hard information, the Washington Daily News
printed
a roundup of rumors. The "most persistent rumor" was that
the
saucers were American aircraft secretly produced by Boeing
"at
some remote site." An "absolutely weird" rumor was that the
saucers
were alien aircraft that had crashed and then been
repaired
and flown by the Air Force.
That
Monday, the Air Force tried to reassure the nation by promising
to
keep jet fighters poised to chase the saucers at a moment's notice.
But
that statement didn't reassure Robert L. Farnsworth, president
of
the United States Rocket Society, who warned President Truman
not
to attack the UFOs.
"Should
they be extra-terrestrial, such actions might result in the
gravest
consequences, as well as possibly alienating us from beings
of
far superior powers," Farnsworth telegraphed Truman. "Friendly
contact
should be sought as long as possible."
Truman
was as baffled as everyone else. He asked his Air Force
aide,
Brig. Gen. Robert B. Landry, to find out what the UFOs were.
On
Tuesday morning, Landry called Ruppelt, who'd flown back to
the
Pentagon. Ruppelt said the sightings might be weather-related
mirages
but he didn't really know.
Nobody
knew, not even Maj. Gen. John Samford, the Air Force's
director
of intelligence. But Samford called a press conference at the
Pentagon
at 4 o'clock Tuesday afternoon. It was the largest Pentagon
press
conference since World War II, Ruppelt wrote, and Samford's
performance
proved to be a brilliant demonstration of the art of
bureaucratic
balderdash.
He
arrived in Room 3E-869 precisely at 4, accompanied by Ruppelt
and
several other officials. He opened with a rambling monologue
on
the history of UFOs, which, he noted, dated "to biblical times."
He
mentioned UFO sightings in 1846 but never got around to the
UFO
sightings of 1952.
When
reporters asked about the Washington sightings, Samford
told
a story about radar picking up a flock of ducks in Japan in 1950.
When
they asked if radar at National and Andrews had seen the same
blips
simultaneously, he speculated about the definition of the word
"simultaneously."
When they asked if the UFOs could be material
objects,
he mused about the definition of the word "material." When
they
asked if the F-94 pilot who chased the strange light was a qualified
observer,
he wondered about the meaning of the word "qualified."
Speaking
about what that pilot saw, Samford uttered a sentence
that
ought to have a place in the Bureaucratic Gibberish Hall of Fame:
"That
very likely is one that sits apart and says insufficient measurement,
insufficient
association with other things, insufficient association with
other
probabilities for it to do any more than to join that group of
sightings
that we still hold in front of us as saying no."
Along
the way, Samford mentioned the "temperature inversion"
theory
-- that a layer of hot air in the sky might have caused radar
to
mistake things on the ground for flying objects. First, he said it
was
a "possibility." Later, he said it was "about a 50-50 proposition."
Then
he said it was a "probable" explanation.
He
talked until 5:20, then the reporters dashed back to their offices
to
meet their deadlines. Sifting through notebooks full of gobbledygook,
they
seized on temperature inversion. It was an irresistible concept for
newspapermen.
The UFOs, they wrote, were caused by Washington's
famous
"hot air."
Ruppelt
was amazed. Samford hadn't really explained
anything,
but whatever he had done, it worked.
"Somehow,"
Ruppelt wrote, "out of this chaotic situation came
exactly
the result that was intended -- the press got off our backs."
When
newspapers stopped writing about the UFOs, people
stopped
reporting UFOs. "Reports dropped from 50 per day
to
10 a day within a week," Ruppelt noted.
And
the UFOs never returned to the sky over Washington.
Perhaps
they'd seen enough.
The Arguments Still Fly
Sitting
at his desk, wearing blue pajamas and a gray bathrobe,
Philip
J. Klass holds up a government report and smiles
mischievously.
"I will let you borrow it," he says, "provided
that
you provide one testicle as security."
The
report is called "A Preliminary Study of Unidentified Targets
Observed
on Air Traffic Control Radars." Not many people would
trade
a testicle for it.
The
report was issued by the Civil Aeronautics Administration
in
1953, shortly after Klass began writing for Aviation Week.
He's
still writing for that magazine, but not often these days
because
he is 82 and ailing.
"The
gist of the report," he says, "is that the Washington
sightings
were temperature inversions."
He
wrote about the report in Aviation Week in 1953. That began
his
career as America's most prominent UFO debunker. Over the
past
49 years, he's written five books on UFOs and engaged in
countless
debates with UFO believers. He can cite evidence and quote
reports
all day long, but he seems to prefer rattling off one-liners.
He
says: "If there are UFOs and they want to make themselves
known,
land! And if they don't want to make their visits known,
turn
off the lights!"
He
says: "If UFOs are abducting people, why do they choose only
ugly
people? If they abducted Olympic athletes, I could understand."
Bruce
Maccabee isn't laughing. "One thing you have to understand:
This
is serious business," he says. "The skeptics like to make fun of us."
Maccabee,
60, is a civilian physicist for the Navy and a prominent
UFO
believer. In the '70s, he filed the Freedom of Information Act
request
that led to the release of the FBI's file on UFOs. The file was
called
"Security Matter X" -- "the real X-Files," he says.
Maccabee
believes there were "solid objects" in the air over
Washington
50 years ago. "And I think those solid objects were
not
made by us," he says. "And by us, I mean human beings."
Like
Klass, Maccabee buttresses his argument with an official
government
report. It's called "Quantitative Aspects of Mirages"
and
it was issued by the Air Force in 1969.
"They
proved in their own study that there wasn't enough temperature
inversion
to cause this effect," he says. "The Washington sightings
cannot
be explained as a radar mirage."
After 50 years, the debate over the Washington UFOs goes on and on.
"You
have dueling experts and dueling reports," says Kevin D. Randle,
author
of "Invasion Washington: UFOs Over the Capitol," a new book
on
the 1952 sightings. "One expert says it was temperature inversion.
Another
says it wasn't. In that situation, you have to refer back to the
air
traffic controllers and the pilots who actually saw the objects."
Former
controller Howard Cocklin is still convinced that he saw an
object
over National that night. "I saw it on the screen and out the
window,"
he says. "It was a whitish-blue object. Not a light -- a solid
form.
An object. A saucer-shaped object."
Now
83 and retired, Cocklin says he never saw anything like that
saucer
-- not before, not since.
"It
just went away," he says, sitting in an armchair in his
Fairfax
living room. "Where did it go? Why don't people
see
these things today? Why 50 years ago?"
©
2002 The Washington Post Company
Thanks
to Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31625-2002Jul19.html
--------------------------
1952,
United States,
Washington,
D.C.
Perhaps
the best documented
UFO
incident in history:
July
13. National Airlines plane en route to National Airport, about
60
mi. SW of the city observed a blue- white ball of light hovering to
the
west. Object then "came up to 11,000 ft. and then maintained a
parallel
course, on the same level, at the same speed, until the aircraft
pilot
turned on all lights. Object then departed from the vicinity at an
estimated
1000 mph. Weather was excellent for observation."
The
crew said the object "took off up and away." No other air traffic
was
reported in the area at the time.
July
14. Newport News, Virginia: Southbound Pan American
Airways
plane at 8,000 ft. nearing the Norfolk, Virginia., area
observed
six glowing red, circular objects approaching below
the
airliner; objects flipped up on edge in unison and then sped
from
behind and under the airliner and joined the in-line formation,
which
"climbed in a graceful arc above the altitude of the airliner."
"Then
the lights blinked out one by one, though not in sequence."
Next
day the crew was thoroughly interrogated and advised that
they
already had seven other reports of red discs moving at
high
speed and making sharp turns.
July
16. Hampton Roads, Virginia: A Government aeronautical
research
engineer observed two amber-colored lights approaching
from
the south at about 500 m.p.h. These slowed and made a U-turn,
revolved
around each other at a high rate of speed, then joined by
two
other objects from different directions, the four sped off to the
south
at about 500 m.p.h. "They moved jerkily when moving slowly.
Their
ability to make tight circling turns was amazing."
July
18. Washington, D. C. Radio station chief engineer observed
6-7
bright orange discs moving in single file. Each in turn veered
sharply
upward and disappeared.
July
19. National Airport began picking up unidentified targets
on
radar.
July
20. Herndon, Va. Capital Airlines flight from National Airport
called
by control tower to check on unidentified radar targets saw
three
objects, and three more between there and Martinsburg, W. Va.
"like
falling stars without tails [which] moved rapidly up, down, and
horizontally.
Also hovered." Chief CAA air traffic controller Harry Barnes
later
said in a newspaper interview: "His [the pilot's] subsequent
description
of the movement of the objects coincided with the
position
of our pips [radar targets] at all times while in our range.
July
20. Andrews AFB, Maryland, (Nr. Washington, D.C.).
Five
witnesses visually observed three reddish-orange
objects
moving erratically.
July
20. Capital Airlines flight incoming to National Airport
reported
that an unidentified light followed his airliner from the
vicinity
of Herndon, Virginia, to within about 4 miles west of
the
airport, confirmed on radar.
July
20. Additional unidentified targets appear on radar
at
National Airport.
July
20. Air Force radar operators at Andrews AFB weather
tower
tracked 10 UFOs for 15-20 minutes. Objects approached
runway,
scattered, made sharp turns and reversals of direction.
Diagram of the UFOs tracked by Washington's National Airport radar scope on July 20, 1952. At A, 7 objects approach the Nation's capital from the south. At B, some are seen over the White House and Capitol. At C, they appear over Andrews Air Force Base. At D, one UFO tracks an airliner. At E, one is seen to make a sharp right-angular turn. Source: UFOs - A Pictorial History From Antiquity to the Present, by David C. Knight. (McGraw Hill Book Co., 1979.)
July
26. Sharp UFO targets on radar at National Airport.
Civilian
pilots saw glowing white objects on four occasions,
including
a United Airlines pilot near Herndon, Va., and two
CAA
pilots over Maryland. National Airlines pilot near Andrews
AFB
at 1700 ft. saw a UFO "flying directly over the airliner."
July
26. Radar at National airport tracked a UFO on radar
("big
target"), confirmed by Andrews AFB radar.
July
26. Radar at National Airport tracked "solid returns"
of
"four targets in rough line abreast," and eight others
scattered
over the radarscope.
July
26.
Andrews AFB, Md., surveillance radar tracked
10-12
UFOs in Washington, D.C. area.
July
26. National Airport, 10-12 objects on radar.
July
26. "Good sharp targets" of 4-8 UFOs on ARTC
radar
at National Airport.
July
26. Air Force Command Post notified of unidentified
radar
targets. Two F-94 jet interceptors scrambled from
New
Castle AFB, Delaware, to investigate.
July
27. Major Fournet, (Project Blue Book Officer in Pentagon),
and
Lt. Holcomb, (Navy electronics expert), arrived at National
Airport
Center. Observed "7 good, solid targets." Holcomb checked
on
temperature inversions, but they were minor and could not
explain
what was going on. He so advised AF Command Post,
requesting
interception mission. By the time the F-94 jets arrived
from
Delaware, no strong unidentified targets remained and no
visual
contacts were made.
July
27. F-94 jet interceptors scrambled from New Castle AFB, Del.,
to
investigate Washington, D.C., radar- UFOs. One F-94 pilot made
visual
contact and appeared to be gaining on target; both F-94 and
UFO
were observed on radar and "appeared to be traveling at the
same
approximate speed." When the F-94 pilot tried to overtake the
UFO,
it disappeared visually and on radar. The pilot remarked about
the
"incredible speed of the object."
July
27. Air Force Lieutenant at Andrews AFB saw a dark disc
moving
slowly northeast with "oscillating rolling motion." Clouds
were
moving southeast. UFO entered base of clouds.
July
27. Air Force personnel and others at National Airport saw
a
large round object reflecting sunlight, apparently hovering over
the
Capital Building. After about a minute, the object "wavered then
shot
straight up disappearing from sight."
July
28. Daily papers headlined a United Press story from
Washington,
D.C., that the Air Defence Command had ordered
its
jet pilots to pursue, and if necessary "shoot down, " UFOs
sighted
anywhere in the country.
July
29. Many unidentified targets tracked by CAA radar,
8-12
on the radarscope at a time, moving southeast in a belt
15
miles wide near Washington, D.C.
July
29. Eastern Airlines pilot asked to check on radar
targets,
reported seeing nothing. CAA official said the targets
disappeared
from the radar screen when the plane was in
their
area, "then came back in behind him."
July
29. Air Force pilot sighted three round white UFOs
10
miles southeast of Andrews AFB. Other UFOs tracked by
radar
during the afternoon.
July
29. Air Force press conference at which the sightings
were
attributed to temperature inversions causing "radar mirages,"
typically
ground lights reflected in the sky under freak atmospheric
conditions.
Also announced new scientific program to evaluate
sightings.
----------------------
1952: A UFO OVER MICHIGAN
UFO
ROUNDUP - Volume 5, Number 15
April
13, 2000. Editor: Joseph Trainor
http://ufoinfo.com/roundup/v05/rnd05_15.shtml
Here's
an entry from Project Blue Book, one of the most
detailed
UFO sightings of the 1950s.
"On
Sunday night, April 27 (1952), my wife, two children and
myself
were proceeding home. My wife and I both spotted a brilliant
white
object coming towards us out of the sky from the northeast.
It
descended so fast that by the time my wife could realize and state
that
it was a flying saucer, it had descended to its minimum height
of
a transport plane in flight."
"It
stopped abruptly and rocked slightly, similar to a rowboat
in
choppy water. It then settled at an approximate thirty-degree
angle
and the brilliant whiteness diminished as to what appeared
to
be window lights."
"It
sat in this exact position and spot for what was approximately
three
or four minutes, making it very easy for us to judge its size,
shape,
etc. We estimated it to be about two miles north of us, and
three
thousand feet high. The angle at which it rested made it very
easy
for us to estimate its thickness and diameter. It appeared to
have
two tiers of windows, each about ten feet high, which resembled
looking
into the playing section of a mouth organ (harmonica--J.T.)
The
windows were all around the entire diameter, making visible the
round
flatness. We estimate conservatively that the diameter of
the
ship was at least two hundred feet (60 meters)."
"After
what seemed to me that they were getting their bearings,
they
started drifting northwest towards the city of Pontiac (Michigan),
about
one hundred miles per hour (160 kilometres per hour) but they
stopped
two or three times during the time of observation."
"At no time did it make a noise."
""Immediately,
I realised that I should have witnesses to this
phenomenon,
so I speeded west on Fifteen Mile Road to a drive-in
restaurant
about a mile away. I ran in and asked some young men
if
they would come out and witness my experience. After persuasion,
two
of them went out and were amazed, causing others to follow."
"By
this time it had drifted at least five miles northwest. At this point
I
called the Birmingham (Michigan) police and asked them to alarm all
the
airfields in this direction which they said they would do."
""I
returned to my car and continued to follow it, driving west on
Fifteen
Mile Road. During the next five minutes, the lights in the saucer
went
off and on three times. The fourth time, the lights changed from
white
to a brilliant yellow-orange, and by this time we had reached the
Grand
Trunk Railroad station, a half-mile from Birmingham. Thinking this
experience
would make a good newspaper story, I stopped at the railroad
station
and called the Detroit Times, telling them my story thus far."
"After
that, I again called the Birmingham police and asked them
if
they had reported the incident as yet. They said they were thinking
about
it, so I became provoked and said I would call (the U.S. Air Force
base
at) Selfridge Field myself., which I did. If anyone ever got the
'brush,'
I sure did..."
"During
my telephone conversation, my wife had convinced the station
attendant
and Railroad Express (a forerunner of FedEx--J.T.) truck driver
to
observe the spectacle. I secured the truck driver's name and then
proceeded
west on Fifteen Mile Road and out about seven miles due west,
following
the saucer as it vanished from my vision over treetops in the
general
direction of Flint (Michigan) at 11:15 p.m."
"I
contacted the Detroit Times on Tuesday a.m. gave them my complete
story.
Their reporter phoned Selfridge Field and Radar Division and they
both
told him that it was impossible for anything to be in the air at that
time
because nothing was picked up by radar, so naturally, the Times
dropped
the story." (See the book The Hynek UFO Report by Dr. J. Allen Hynek,
Dell Books, New York, N.Y., 1977, pages 70 to 72.)
http://ufoinfo.com/roundup/v05/rnd05_15.shtml
OTHER
1952 SIGHTINGS
1952
W. Gordon Graham, astronomer saw an UFO "like a
smoke
ring, elliptical in shape, and having two bright pinpoints
of
light along its main axis move overhead from west to east.
1952
James Bartlett, astronomer saw during the daylight
observation
of Venus a flight of two disks with a diameter about
30
minutes of arc; passed overhead and turned east, followed
by
two more disks with dome-like protrusions in center.
1952
Texas, Temple: Grey-white discs changed position within
formation
continually, tilted in unison every 15 seconds during
a
4 minute sighting on April 6.
1952
Arizona, Tucson: On May 1, a base intelligence officer at
Davis-Monthan
AFB, Major Rudy Pestalozzi, along with an airman,
looked
up as a B-36 flew overhead and saw two shiny discs overtake
the
bomber, slow to its speed and position themselves alongside.
1952
New Jersey, Passiac: Mr. George J. Stock, in the yard
working
on his lawn-mower, around 4:30pm, took a picture of an
unidentified
flying object with his box reflex camera. It was coming
directly
over his house from the IT&T tower, and was estimated
to
be 20 to 25ft above the ground.
1952
Oklahoma, Enid: Sidney Eubank went to the Enid police station
and
told Sergeant Vern Bennell that an enormous disk had buzzed his
car
as he drove between Bison and Waukonis on Highway 81. The rush
of
air made the car leave the road while the object flew west very fast.
1952
United States, George AFB, California. Three men on the arms
range,
plus one Lt. Colonel 4 miles away witnessed five flat-white discs
about
the diameter of a C-47's wingspan (95') flew fast, made a 90^
turn
in a formation of three in front and two behind, and darted around,
for
15-30 seconds.
1952
United States, Norman, Oklahoma. Oklahoma State Patrolman
Hamilton
in a State Patrol airplane witnessed three dark discs hovered
and
then flew away, silhouetted against a dark cloud. 15 seconds.
1952
United States, Wichita Falls, Texas.: Mr. and Mrs. Adrian Ellis.
witnessed
two disc-shaped objects, illuminated by a phosphorus light,
flew
at an estimated l,000 m.p.h. for 15 seconds.
1952
Peru, Puerto Maldonado: On July 19, the attention of Customs
Inspector
Sr. Domingo Troncoso, on the jungle frontier with Bolivia, was
called
to a very strange cigar-shaped flying object over the river area.
The
big dirigible-shaped craft was flying horizontally and fairly low in the
sky,
passing from right to left from the observers position. It was leaving
a
dense trail of thick smoke, vapor, or substance on its wake. This object
was
a real, structured, physical machine and may be seen from its
reflection
in the waters of the Madre de Dios river underneath it.
The
object was estimated to be over a hundred feet long.
1952
Argentina, Veronica. Hundreds of residents witnessed six
discs
circling above the town, the disappearing into the night sky.
This
sighting was written within hours of a similar report from
Captain
Paul Carpenter near Denver. Carpenter reported the craft
were
traveling at 3,000 miles per hour, making it possible for the
saucer
to have appeared in both locations.
1952
Florida, West Palm Beach: Scoutmaster J. D. Desverges told
of
having his arm singed by the blast of a UFO near West Palm Beach,
Florida.
Desverges, a hardware salesman, scoutmaster, and former
marine,
said that he not only sighted a flying saucer but came so close
to
one that the hair on his forearm was singed. He was 30 years old then.
He
said he was "blasted" by a "ball of fire" from the object when he
investigated
flashes of light near a country road.
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