|
2008:
Freedom Statue In U.S.A., Buzzed
By Three Spacecraft
JULY 2002 SIGHTINGS IN THE SKY
AROUND WASHINGTON D.C.
Note: It all started 50 years ago, in 1952
& 1953:
JULY 13 - JULY 29, 1952 -
WASHINGTON DC, USA
WASHINGTON POST:
WASHINGTON DC JULY 1952
REPORT
1952, TOP SECRET MEMO:
FLYING SAUCERS EXIST"
-------------------------------------
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
(2008 note: Above website has gone)
--------------------------------------------------------
Comment
From Rex
7-27-2
I see that 113th will
scramble Jets for UFOs but not for the Pentagon on 911. Maybe
they thought bin Laden was in that UFO? Well, it is good too
see our boys up and ready anyway. :)
Rex
--------------------------------------------------------
Comment
Alton Raines
7-27-02
Once again we see the
classic obfuscation required of AF and Gov't officials
on the UFO issue.
--------------------------------------------------------
Comment
From Walumu
7-27-2
It's about damn time... It
was a UFO. I tend not to jump to
conclusions but based on the evidence
it was, without a doubt, a UFO. The
government cannot deny this one and
say it's some sort of secret military
aircraft because they wouldn't
chase their own. And if it was a test
chase they would not do it over such
a heavily populated area as DC.
They cannot hide this one
at all. I'm sure as you well know this is
just the tip of the iceburg
when it comes to the UFO Phenomena and the subsequent 50+ year
govenment coverup. We must not let these
stories go unheard. It's our job,
the people of this country, the people of
this planet, to bring attention
to these events. There's no better time
than now to start. I ask you to
tell everyone you know and do your best to get this article out
there. For the sake of freedom.
--------------------------------------------------------
All above reports at
Rense.com:
http://www.rense.com/general27/bblue.htm
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
JULY 13, 2002 :
'NEW JERSEY UFO
MANOEUVRES'
PARAMUS -- Three unknown objects manoeuvre,
pulse, then fade out on a clear night on July 13,
2002, 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 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:
|
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
2008: This article has been archived
/ moved to purchase only
availability:
http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost/search.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
intelligenceofficer 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.
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
2008: This article has been archived /
moved to purchase only availability:
http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost/search.html
---------------------------------------------
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 realise 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
UFO ROUNDUP: Copyright
2000 by Masinaigan Productions,
all rights reserved.
Readers may post news items from UFO
Roundup on their websites
or in newsgroups provided that
they credit the newsletter
and its editor by name and list the
date of issue in which the
item first appeared.
----------------------------------------
GEORGE ADAMSKI - 1 MAY 1952:
This craft is estimated to
be approximately 1,300 feet in length.
The small 'V' notch in the
base is the portal for 7m or 8m 'scout'
craft.
--------------------------
BOLIVIA - 1952:
--------------------------
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.
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.
----------------------
OTHER 1952 SIGHTINGS
[World-Action: I'm not sure where I
copied this information
from, probably from
http://www.nationalufocenter.com ]
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.
...... ......
......
Sightings in
Scotland 2006 to 2008 |
