Fuzzy photo taken in 1952 without digital cameras and photoshop. The squadron buzzed the Capitol two consecutive weekends.
Of the three top early cases I rank the Battle Over LA number 1. Then this case The Buzz Over Washintion, 1952, number 2. Last but not least I would insert Roswell. The first two cases are so well documented by so manay civilization and military personnel they are beyond the weak minds of the self-appointed truth-squad, the Skeptiks and Debunkies.
It probably came as a very unwanted shock to a number of high governmental officials. A crashed UFO, found in the distant, isolated desert sands of New Mexico was one thing; having them buzz the White House quite another.
The events as reported on record:
At 11:40 p.m. on Saturday, July 19, 1952, Edward Nugent, an air-traffic controller at Washington National Airport, spotted seven objects on his radar scope. He quickly calculated that the objects were located 15 miles (24 km) south-southwest of the city; no known aircraft were in the area and the objects were not following any established flight paths.
Nugent's superior, Harry Barnes, a senior air-traffic controller, watched the objects on his radarscope. He later described what he saw:
"We knew immediately that a very strange situation existed . . . their movements were completely radical compared to those of ordinary aircraft" (Clark, p. 653).
Barnes ordered two controllers to check Nugent's radar equipment; they found that it was working normally. Barnes then called National Airport's second radar center and talked to controller Howard Cocklin, who told Barnes that he too was tracking the objects on his radarscope as well. Moreover, Cocklin said that he could see one of the objects through the window of the control tower:
"A bright orange light. I can't tell what's behind it"
At this point, more objects appeared on the radar screens of both centers. They quickly headed in the direction of the White House and the Capitol Building; Barnes placed an urgent call to Andrews Air Force Base, located 10 miles from National Airport. Although the control tower at Andrews (AB) first reported that they had no unusual objects on their radar, an airman soon reported sighting an unidentified object.
From the control tower, Airman William Brady, saw an "object which appeared to be like an orange ball of fire, trailing a tail . . . [it was] unlike anything I had ever seen before." As Brady was trying to get the attention of other personnel in the tower, the object "took off at an unbelievable speed."
At the same time, S.C. Peirman, a Capital Airlines pilot was in the cockpit of his DC-4, after spotting, what he believed to be a meteor, he was told that the control tower's radar had picked up unidentified objects (UFOs) closing in on his position. Pierman observed six objects — "white, tailless, fast-moving lights" — over a 14-minute period (Clark, 655).
Pierman was in radio contact with Barnes during his sighting, and Barnes later related that "each sighting coincided with a pip we could see near his plane. When he reported that the light streaked off at a high speed, it disappeared on our scope."
The control tower at Andrews (AFB) continued to keep radar contact on the objects. Staff Sgt. Charles Davenport reported an orange-red light to the south; the light "would appear to stand still, then make an abrupt change in direction and altitude . . . this happened several times"
The radar centers at the civilian National Airport and the military Andrews (AFB) were tracking an object hovering over a radio beacon. The radar operators at both centers reported that the (UFO) object vanished at the same time (Ruppelt, p. 160).
By this point the Air Force had launched an intercept operation. all of the objects vanished. However, when the inceptor jets ran low on fuel and had At 3 a.m., just as two jet fighters from Newcastle AFB dispatched from Delaware arrived over Washington to return to base, the (UFOs) returned. This fact convinced Barnes that "the UFOs were monitoring radio traffic and behaving accordingly" (Clark, 656).
The objects were last detected by radar at 5:30 a.m. around sunrise, E.W. Chambers, a civilian radio engineer in Washington's suburbs, observed "five huge disks circling in a loose formation. They tilted upward and left on a steep ascent."
It just so happened that Capt Edwin Ruppelt, the head of Project Blue Book, was in Washington D.C. that day. Nonetheless, Ruppelt did not learn about the sightings until Tuesday, July 22, when he read the headlines in a Washington-area newspaper. Of course having a swarm of UFOs buzzing the nation's capitol created quite a stir.
However, that sequence was only act one; act two would follow quickly on its heels.
At 8:15 p.m. on Saturday, July 26, 1952, a National Airlines pilot and stewardess, on a Washington bound flight, observed several objects (UFOs) above their plane. Within minutes -- radar centers at National Airport and Andrews (AFB) --reported tracking more unidentified objects.
A master sergeant at Andrews reported seeing the objects; he later described them as follows, "these lights did not have the characteristics of shooting stars. There was [sic] no trails . . . they traveled faster than any shooting star I have ever seen" (Clark, 658).
Meanwhile, Albert M. Chop, the press spokesman for Project Blue Book, arrived at National Airport and refused several reporters' requests to photograph the radar screens. He then joined the radar center personnel (Ruppelt, 164). At 9:30 p.m. the radar center was picking up (UFOs) in every sector.
Reports reveal that the objects alternately traveled slowly; then reversed direction and moved across the radarscope at speeds calculated at 7,000 mph.
At 11:30 p.m., two jet fighters from Newcastle (AFB) flew over Washington. Capt. John McHugo, the flight leader, was vectored towards the radar pips but made no visual contact, in spite of repeated attempts (Peebles, p. 76). However, his wingman, Lt. William Patterson, did see four white "glows" which he pursued. As he was in hot pursuit, the "glows" turned on a dime and surrounded his fighter.
Patterson radioed the control tower at National Airport asking what he should do; according to Chop, the tower answered with a "stunned silence". The four objects then sped away from Patterson's jet and disappeared (Clark, 659).
July 27, after midnight, Major Dewey Fournet, Project Blue Book's liaison at the Pentagon, and a Lt. Holcomb, an Air Force radar specialist, arrived at the radar center at National Airport. During the night Lt. Holcomb received a call from the Washington National Weather Station.
They told him that a slight temperature inversion was present over the city, but Holcomb felt that the inversion was not "nearly strong enough to explain the 'good and solid' returns" on the radarscopes (Peebles, 76).
Fournet relayed that all those present in the radar room were convinced that the targets were most likely caused by solid metallic objects. There had been weather targets on the scope too, he said, but this was a common occurrence and the controllers "were paying no attention to them." (Ruppelt, 166)
Two more jets from Newcastle AFB were scrambled during the night. One pilot saw nothing unusual; the other pilot moved towards a white light which "vanished" when he closed in. A Capital Airlines flight leaving Washington spotted "odd lights" which remained visible for about twelve minutes (Clark, 660). As they had on July 20, the sightings, and unidentified radar returns, ended at sunrise.
The foregoing has been derived from completely confirmed military documents and the testimonies of military, and a few civilian, eyewitnesses. The fact that this UFO sighting occurred over the nation's capitol created a massive public relations headache for the White House and the Pentagon.
President Truman called Capt. Ruppelt and asked for an explanation of the sightings. Ruppelt, remembering a conversation he had with Capt. James, told the President that the sightings might have been caused by temperature inversion, in which a layer of warm, moist air covers a layer of cool, dry air closer to the ground.
This condition can cause radar signals to bend and give false returns. However, at this point Ruppelt had not conducted any interviews of the witnesses nor had he even begun a formal investigation. He admitted his comments were made on the fly so to speak. (Michael’s pg. 22).
Nonetheless, the White House needed to allay the mounting anxieties and concerns of both the press and the public. Of course all were worried about the security of the nation's capitol. However, there was equal concern about an alleged 'shoot them down' order that had been made public and confirmed by an Air Force public information officer, Lt. Col. Moncel Monte,
Neither as nervous nor as irrational as officials assumed, the public sent telegrams and letters to the White House stating that the policy was dangerous. If the UFOs were controlled by extraterrestrial beings, they would obviously be much more technologically advanced than humans, people remarked.
Following these events the government stated that no pilot had been able to get close enough to take a shot at a “flying saucer”, as the objects would disappear or instantly accelerate as soon as an interceptor approached, sometimes out maneuvering their pilots by “as much as a thousand miles an hour.”
However, in seeming contradiction to the admitted “shoot-down” order, Air Force headquarters also put out statements claiming that the unidentified flying objects (UFOs) were no threat to the United States and not controlled by “a reasoning body.”
A press conference was called to combat contradictory stories and to assuage public anxiety and, hopefully, to slow down the numbers of UFO reports being sent to Blue Book, which were clogging normal intelligence channels. Air Force Major Generals John Samford, USAF Director of Intelligence, and Roger Ramey, USAF Director of Operations, held the press conference at the Pentagon on July 29, 1952.
[Yes, the same Gen. Roger Ramey who debunked the Roswell case. That apparently, was his job from]
It was the largest post WWII Pentagon press conference to that point in time. The Press reports characterized Samford and Ramey as the Air Force's two top UFO experts. Samford declared that the visual sightings over Washington could be explained as misidentified aerial phenomena (such as stars or meteors).
He also stated that the unidentified radar targets could be explained by temperature inversion, which was present in the air over Washington on both nights the radar returns were reported. (Uh hmm and Roswell was nothing but a weather balloon.}
That these remarks were concocted to explain the events away with a plausible cover story is obvious. We have to consider the gravity of the situation as well as the underlying inferences.
For a general to dismiss the radarscope data, which included the expert opinions of a number of trained operators, by claiming that they could not tell the difference between stars, meteors and a squadron of unidentified flying objects is to suggest that the [our] military personnel are highly incompetent.
In addition to radar operators, the above events were witnessed by numerous highly qualified pilots and other personnel. To simply wipe away their credibility with one fell blow seems incredible. If we cannot trust our military personnel to distinguish between a star and a potential enemy aircraft flying over our air space, what are we to do?
The author contends that this whole gambit, which began with Roswell, has had a very big backlash. The public does not really pay attention to what the Air Force has to say about UFO's for one; and the reputation of the services has suffered in general.
Do jet pilots know the difference between a star, light years away, and a squadron of UFOs suddenly encircling them? Of course that is a purely rhetorical question that apparently escaped the mass media that are often dazzled by the ribbons that general's wear. They like to nuzzle their little brown noses up against them like dogs.
Of course the reason that the press conference was convened at all was simply to deflect the press away from the story and defuse public interest, a la Roswell. Same General Ramey; same strategy and it worked both times.
In response to a reporter's question asking whether the Air Force had recorded similar UFO radar contacts prior to the Washington incident, Samford replied that there had been "hundreds" of such contacts where Air Force interceptors had been dispatched, but he added that they were all "fruitless."
Rupelt later wrote that the conference proved to be successful "in getting the press off our backs" (Ruppelt, 169). Not everyone, especially some Air Force officers, bought Samford's explanation. Ruppelt noted that Major Fournet and Lt. Holcomb, who disagreed with the Air Force's explanation, were not in attendance at Samford's press conference.
Ruppelt also observed that "hardly a night passed in June, July, and August in 1952 that there wasn't a [temperature] inversion in Washington, yet the slow-moving, solid radar targets appeared on only a few nights"
The U.S. Weather Bureau, an entirely objective source, outside the military loop, also disagreed with the temperature inversion hypothesis, one official stating that "such an inversion ordinarily would appear on a radar screen as a steady line, rather than as single objects as were sighted on the airport radarscope."
When Ruppelt, as the head of Project Blue Book, was able to interview the radar and control tower personnel at Washington National Airport, he found that not a single individual agreed with the Air Force explanation. The eyewitnesses stood their ground in spite of the pentagon press conference.
However, the same was the not the case when Ruppelt went to interview the eyewitness at Andrews (AFB). To a man they agreed with Samford's interpretation. They told the military investigator they had mistaken a "bright star" for a "huge fiery-orange sphere", which is what they originally reported. Skeptical, Major Ruppelt checked an astronomical chart and found that there were no bright stars visible over the base that night.
Anything but naive Ruppelt learned through a trusted source that the radar operators and other eyewitnesses had been "persuaded", by a superior officer, that it was in their best interest to adopt Samford's position.
[Anyone that has been in the service will understand exactly how this kind of political maneuvering works.]
The above account is taken from military documents and/or came from verified military eyewitnesses, radar operators and pilots involved in the UFO sightings over Washington DC.
Now we turn to examine how the press handled the story. On July 28, 1952, the following headline appeared in the Washington Post:
'SAUCER' OUTRAN JET, PILOT REVEALS
The first paragraph of the article reads as follows:
Military secrecy veils an investigation of the mysterious, glowing aerial objects that showed up on radar screens in the Washington area Saturday night for the second consecutive week. A jet pilot sent up by the Air Defense Command to investigate the objects reported he was unable to overtake the glowing lights moving near Andrews Air Force Base. The CAA reported the objects traveled at "predominantly lower levels"-about 1700 feet.
In other words the Pentagon began stonewalling the press right away. The reporter goes in to some detail about his efforts to pry key facts out of military spokesman but it is clear that he had little success. The next cogent section reads:
"A traffic control center spokesman said the nature of the signals on the radar screen ruled out any possibility they were from clouds or any other ‘weather’ disturbance.’The returns we received from the unidentified objects were similar and analogous to targets representing aircraft in flight,’ he said. The objects,’flying saucer or what have you, appeared on the radar scope at the airport center at 9:08 PM. Varying from 4 to 12 in number, the objects appeared on the screen until 3:00 AM., when they disappeared’."
From this report we know that the top-down debriefing had not yet been established. It is entirely consistent with the original reports contained in the eyewitness accounts.
"At 11:25 PM., two F-94 jet fighters from Air Defense Command squadron, at New Castle Delaware, capable of 600 hundred mph speeds, took off to investigate the objects. Airline, civil and military pilots described the objects as looking like the lit end of a cigarette or a cluster of orange and red lights."
Here the reporter establishes that ground radar and military aviation agreed on the nature of the objects, they were neither balloons nor 'weather effects.' The corroborating testimony gives a picture of a bright, reddish-orange squadron of UFOs moving in formation.
Next, the reporter makes a very good point:
"Although 'unidentified objects' have been picked up on radar before, the incidents of the last two Saturdays are believed to be the first time the objects have been picked up on radar-while visible to the human eye. Besides the pilots, who last Saturday saw the lights, a woman living on Mississippi Ave., told the Post she saw a very 'bright light streaking across the sky towards Andrews Air Force Base about 11:45 PM.' "
The eyewitness testimony of the controller in the tower who said he could see the objects through the window at the same time they were on the radarscope. The article closes with a human interest angle that leaves the reader with a wry smile.
"One person who saw the lights when they first appeared in this area did not see them last night. He is E.W. Chambers, an engineer at Radio Station WRC, who spotted the lights while working early the morning of July 20 at station's Hyattsville tower. Chamber's said he was sorry he had seen the lights because he had been skeptical about 'flying saucers' before. Now he said, he sort of 'wonders' and worries’ about the whole thing."
Conclusion: The combination of radar contacts; civilian and military (intercept) pilot observations; and eyewitness accounts from ground observers make this case unimpeachable. The Pentagon cooked up the weather disturbance story based upon Ruppelt's off-the-cuff remarks. However, after investigating the entire case Ruppelt did not agree with the official Pentagon postulation, a fact he published in a later book.
[These three major cases represent the strongest, most well-documented cases of mass sightings by highly credible witnesses, including military and civilian air controllers, radar operators, intelligence officers and so forth. This ought to be of some concern to UFO researchers because they all occurred more than 60 years ago at the dawn of the modern UFO era nothing like them has occurred since.]
Comments