The Washington National Sightings proved one thing, something that
many of us already knew: in order to forestall any more trouble
similar to what we'd just been through we always had to get all of
the facts and not try to hide them. A great deal of the press's
interest was caused by the Air Force's reluctance to give out any
information, and the reluctance on the part of the Air Force was
caused by simply not having gone out to find the answers.
But had someone gone out and made a more thorough investigation a
few big questions would have popped up and taken some of the intrigue
out of the two reports. It took me a year to put the question marks
together because I just picked up the information as I happened to
run across it, but it could have been collected in a day of
concentrated effort.
There was some doubt about the visual sighting of the "large fiery-
orange-colored sphere" that the tower operators at Andrews AFB saw
when the radar operators at National Airport told them they had a
target over the Andrews Radio range station. When the tower operators
were later interrogated they completely changed their story and said
that what they saw was merely a star. They said that on the night of
the sighting they "had been excited." (According to astronomical
charts, there were no exceptionally bright stars where the UFO was
seen over the range station, however. And I heard from a good source
that the tower men had been "persuaded" a bit.)
Then the pilot of the F-94C changed his mind even after he'd given
the press and later told me his story about vainly trying to
intercept unidentified lights. In an official report he says that all
he saw was a ground light reflecting off a layer of haze.
Another question mark arose about the lights that the airline pilots
saw. Months after the sighting I heard from one of the pilots whom
the ARTC controllers called to learn if he could see a UFO. This
man's background was also impressive, he had been flying in and out
of Washington since 1936. This is what he had to say:
The most outstanding incident happened just after a take-off one
night from Washington National. The tower man advised us that there
was a UFO ahead of us on the take-off path and asked if we would aid
in tracking it down. We were given headings to follow and shortly we
were advised that we had passed the UFO and would be given a new
heading. None of us in the cockpit had seen anything unusual. Several
runs were made; each time the tower man advised us we were passing
the UFO we noticed that we were over one certain section of the
Potomac River, just east of Alexandria. Finally we were asked to
visually check the terrain below for anything which might cause such
an illusion. We looked and the only object we could see where the
radar had a target turned out to be the Wilson Lines moonlight
steamboat trip to Mount Vernon. Whether there was an altitude gimmick
on the radar unit at the time I do not know but the radar was sure as
hell picking up the steamboat.
The pilot went on to say that there is such a conglomeration of
lights around the Washington area that no matter where you look you
see a "mysterious light."
Then there was another point: although the radars at Washington
National and Andrews overlap, and many of the targets appeared in the
overlap area, only once did the three radars simultaneously pick up a
target.
The investigation brought out a few more points on the pro side too.
We found out that the UFO's frequently visited Washington. On May 23
fifty targets had been tracked from 8:00 p.m. till midnight. They
were back on the Wednesday night between the two famous Saturday-
night sightings, the following Sunday night, and again the night of
the press conference; then during August they were seen eight more
times. On several occasions military and civilian pilots saw lights
exactly where the radar showed the UFO's to be.
On each night that there was a sighting there was a temperature
inversion but it was never strong enough to affect the radar the way
inversions normally do. On each occasion I checked the strength of
the inversion according to the methods used by the Air Defense
Command Weather Forecast Center.
Then there was another interesting fact: hardly a night passed in
June, July, and August in 1952 that there wasn't an inversion in
Washington, yet the slow-moving, "solid" radar targets appeared on
only a few nights.
But the one big factor on the pro side of the question is the people
involved--good radar men--men who deal in human lives. Each day they
use their radar to bring thousands of people into Washington National
Airport and with a responsibility like this they should know a real
target from a weather target.
So the Washington National Airport Sightings are still unknowns.
Had the press been aware of some of the other UFO activity in the
United States during this period, the Washington sightings might not
have been the center of interest. True, they could be classed as good
reports but they were not the best that we were getting. In fact,
less than six hours after the ladies and gentlemen of the press said
"Thank you" to General Samford for his press conference, and before
the UFO's could read the newspapers and find out that they were
natural phenomena, one of them came down across the Canadian border
into Michigan. The incident that occurred that night was one of those
that even the most ardent skeptic would have difficulty explaining.
I've heard a lot of them try and I've heard them all fail.
At nine-forty on the evening of the twenty-ninth an Air Defense
Command radar station in central Michigan started to get plots on a
target that was coming straight south across Saginaw Bay on Lake
Huron at 625 miles an hour. A quick check of flight plans on file
showed that it was an unidentified target.
Three F-94's were in the area just northeast of the radar station,
so the ground controller called one of the F-94's and told the pilot
to intercept the unidentified target. The F-94 pilot started climbing
out of the practice area on an intercept heading that the ground
controller gave him. When the F-94 was at 20,000 feet, the ground
controller told the pilot to turn to the right and he would be on the
target. The pilot started to bring the F-94 around and at that
instant both he and the radar operator in the back seat saw that they
were turning toward a large bluish-white light, "many times larger
than a star." In the next second or two the light "took on a reddish
tinge, and slowly began to get smaller, as if it were moving away."
Just then the ground controller called and said that he still had
both the F-94 and the unidentified target on his scope and that the
target had just made a tight 180-degree turn. The turn was too tight
for a jet, and at the speed the target was traveling it would have to
be a jet if it were an airplane. Now the target was heading back
north. The F-94 pilot gave the engine full power and cut in the
afterburner to give chase. The radar operator in the back seat got a
good radar lock-on. Later he said, "It was just as solid a lock-on as
you get from a B-36." The object was at 4 miles range and the F-94
was closing slowly. For thirty seconds they held the lock-on; then,
just as the ground controller was telling the pilot that he was
closing in, the light became brighter and the object pulled away to
break the lock-on. Without breaking his transmission, the ground
controller asked if the radar operator still had the lock-on because
on the scope the distance between two blips had almost doubled in one
sweep of the antenna. This indicated that the unknown target had
almost doubled its speed in a matter of seconds.
For ten minutes the ground radar followed the chase. At times the
unidentified target would slow down and the F-94 would start to close
the gap, but always, just as the F-94 was getting within radar range,
the target would put on a sudden burst of speed and pull away from
the pursuing jet. The speed of the UFO--for by this time all
concerned had decided that was what it was--couldn't be measured too
accurately because its bursts of speed were of such short duration;
but on several occasions the UFO traveled about 4 miles in one ten-
second sweep of the antenna, or about 1,400 miles an hour.
The F-94 was getting low on fuel, and the pilot had to break off the
chase a minute or two before the UFO got out of range of the ground
radar. The last few plots on the UFO weren't too good but it looked
as if the target slowed down to 200 to 300 miles an hour as soon as
the F-94 turned around.
What was it? It obviously wasn't a balloon or a meteor. It might
have been another airplane except that in 1952 there was nothing
flying, except a few experimental airplanes that were far from
Michigan, that could so easily outdistance an F-94. Then there was
the fact that radar clocked it at 1,400 miles an hour. The F-94 was
heading straight for the star Capella, which is low on the horizon
and is very brilliant, but what about the radar contacts? Some people
said "Weather targets," but the chances of a weather target's making
a 180-degree turn just as an airplane turns into it, giving a radar
lock-on, then changing speed to stay just out of range of the
airplane's radar, and then slowing down when the airplane leaves is
as close to nil as you can get.
What was it? A lot of people I knew were absolutely convinced this
report was the key--the final proof. Even if all of the thousands of
other UFO reports could be discarded on a technicality, this one
couldn't be. These people believed that this report in itself was
proof enough to officially accept the fact that UFO's were
interplanetary spaceships. And when some people refused to believe
even this report, the frustration was actually pitiful to see.
As the end of July approached, there was a group of officers in
intelligence fighting hard to get the UFO "recognized." At ATIC,
Project Blue Book was still trying to be impartial--but sometimes it
was difficult.