UFOs over DC in 1952, Jets Scrambled

Just adding some new entries.




Wikipedia Washington Merry-Go-Round


And in case someone hasn't watch this video.
UFOArea Washington Merry-Go-Round

Originally posted by Gazrok
Ed Ruppelt himself (head of Project Bluebook at the time, now a UFOlogist and author whose gone on record that Bluebook was a coverup) was actually likely involved somewhat in this case, as the paper points out.

I find this part extremely interesting (recently having read the thread about people dying that have "died" before). Wikipedia says that Edward J. Ruppelt died on Sep. 15, 1960. What do you mean that he is now an UFOlogist? Also, I just did some quick researching and couldn't find anything about him going on record to say that Blue Book was a cover up.

[edit on 3/28/2008 by InterestedObserver]

I meant he became one after he resigned from BlueBbook... When he resigned, he cited only confusion and inadequete investigations in Blue Book...but in later years, (and especially in regards to the Robertson Panel), he felt it was more related to deliberate coverup efforts. (which can be evidenced by looking at his claims while involved with the government, versus later claims about the same cases).

Nonetheless this is an intriguing and amazing article. I wonder why we never hear about this, and the Battle of Los Angeles in UFO shows on TV. I wonder if their is some sort of unspoken agreement between the govt. and TV stations not to report such hard evidence about UFO's.

I don't get it either.
I personally feel that this is one of the best UFO case ever. Better than Roswell in my opinion.

I have to say it's one of the best 3 that I know. The other two being the Rendlesham Forest Incident and the Belgian UFO wave.

Of course an outstanding thread by gazrok..

But I wanted to update it with the link to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) document detailing how the USAF came to their "anomalous weather phenomenon" conclusion.

FOIA: Washington D.C. Radar Sighted UFO's July 26-27, 1952

reply to post by Jazzyguy


I see that video has been removed. Here's another posting of it:




I always thought that this video was actual footage, but while going over some threads and youtube comments, some have suggested that it is actually a reenactment. Does anybody know for sure?
Some have said that color film did not exist back then. Those people should take a gander at this:
en.wikipedia.org...(1939_film)
Also, it could have been black and white footage that was colorized.
So, does anybody know? Real or reenactment?

edit - I don't care if this thread is old, I'm flagging it anyway. Good post.

[edit on 10/12/2008 by Curious_Agnostic]

Interesting! I havent read about this before. I love how they always seem to have an "explanation" of what happened. I would hate to be one of the ones who saw this and then they tell me what I saw wasnt real. That would really irritate me! I wonder what they wanted or were doing there.

Originally posted by mblahnikluver
I wonder what they wanted or were doing there.

Didn't this incident occur right after a significant nuclear bomb test?

That's probably your connection right there.

From some of the more credible UFO reports I've heard, "they" don't seem to care much for us having nukes.

Now, the question is, is it because they feel nuclear weapons a threat to them or a threat to ourselves?

[edit on 25-2-2009 by Junkheap]

Very high level meetings and conversations involving President Truman took place as a result of this incident.

This from Capt. Edward Ruppelt in 1955: "About 10:00 A.M. the President's air aide, Brigadier General Landry, called intelligence at President Truman's request to find out what was going on. Somehow I got the call. I told General Landry that the radar target could have been caused by weather but that we had no proof."

www.nicap.org...

Landry was, in fact, Truman's personal red tape cutter with the Air Force and briefed Truman on UFOs on a regular basis starting in 1948. From Landry in 1974. "I was directed to report quarterly to the President after consulting with Central Intelligence people, as to whether or not any UFO incidents received by them could be considered as having any strategic threatening implications at all.

The report was to be made orally by me unless it was considered by intelligence to be so serious or alarming as to warrant a more detailed report in writing. During the four and one-half years in office there, all reports were made orally. Nothing of substance considered credible or threatening to the country was ever received from intelligence."

www.trumanlibrary.org...

Finally, on September 3 1952, a meeting was held and documented on the President's Calender:

12:30 pm (The President met in Cabinet Room, with group from Air Force,
the Rand Corporation and National Security Resources Board,
for briefing on defense of Capital. LOWER WEST DOOR, HALF
HOUR OFF THE RECORD

DEPARTMENT OF THE AIR FORCE
FOWLER, Colonel John G.
GARLAND, General William
GRAHAM, Colonel Gordon
HUNNER, Major Paul
McCLELLAND, John C.

RAND CORPORATION
HENDERSON, Lawrence J.
NILES, Walter W.

NATIONAL SECURITY RESOURCES BOARD
GORRIE, Honorable Jack
LANCASTER, Presley, Jr.
ASH, Russell
LANDRY, Brig. Gen. Robert B., Air Force Aid to the President
Dennison, Rear Adm. Robert L., Naval Aid to the President

www.trumanlibrary.org...

Originally posted by Gazrok
Came across this... This was a report that was created to debunk the sightings and put forward the "temperature inversion" theory as the explanation.

..The funny part of this of course, is that the government later flip-flopped on this, and even admitted that this simply wouldn't explain the sightings by their own pilots (as such inversions would not be seen VISUALLY), and it's status in Bluebook was again changed to "unknown".

Gazrok, great thread and it seems that Dr James Mcdonald also disagreed with the 'temperature inversion' theory being responsible for these incidents..

"I have interviewed five of the CAA personnel involved in this case and four of the commercial airline pilots involved, I have checked the radiosonde data against well-known radar propagation relations, and I have studied the CAA report subsequently published on this event. Only an extremely lengthy discussion would suffice to present the serious objections to the official explanation that this complex sighting was a result of anomalous radar propagation and refractive anomalies of the mirage type. The refractive index gradient, even after making allowance for instrument lag, was far too low for "ducting" or "trapping" to occur; and, still more significant, the angular elevations of the visually observed unknowns lay far too high for radar- ducting under even the most extreme conditions that have ever been observed in the atmosphere. Some of the pilots, directed by ground radar to look for any airborne objects, saw them at altitudes well above their own flight altitudes, and these objects were maneuvering in wholly unconventional manner. One crew saw one of the unknown luminous objects shoot straight up, and simultaneously the object' s return disappeared from the ARTC scope being watched by the CAA radar operators. The official suggestion that the same weak (1.7"C) low-level "inversion" that was blamed for the radar ducting could produce miraging effects was quantitatively absurd, even if one overlooks the airline-pilot sightings and deals only with the reported ground-visual sightings".

Dr. James E. McDonald, Senior Physicist at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at the University of Arizona

James McDonald, Statement on UFOs to U.S. House Committee on Science and Aeronatics, 1968 Symposium on UFOs

..it also appears that as well as airbourne visual, the object(s) were also visual correlated by USAF personnel on the ground.

Washington, DC Area, July 19/20, 1952.


[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/2a5144acba71.jpg[/atsimg]

A few minutes later it got even more interesting. One blip track showed an abrupt 90-degree turn, something WE could not do. Then, when the sweep came around, another object suddenly reversed, its new blip "blossoming" on top of the one it had just made. From over 100 mph, the mystery object had stopped dead and completely reversed its direction, all in about 5-seconds.

On top of that, a startling report came in from the tower. Operator Joe Zacko had been watching the ASR scope, built to track high-speed objects. One of the objects was traveling at a fantastic rate across the screen and was racing over Andrews Field toward Riverdale. Zacko called Cocklin and they both computed the speed, 2-miles per second, 7,200 mph! From the trail it was plain that the object had descended vertically into the ASR beam, leveled off for a few seconds, then climbed at tremendous speed out of the beam again.

Then an ARTC controller called Andrews AFB and told them they had a target south of their tower, directly over the Andrews Radio range station. The operators looked and saw a "huge fiery-orange sphere" hovering in the sky directly over their range station.

By sun-up, the UFOs ended their 5-hours of maneuvering over Washington. But before they left, at 4:30 AM a radio engineer by the name of E. W. Chambers was leaving the WRC transmitter station when he saw five huge discs circling in loose formation. The objects tilted upward and climbed steeply into the sky.

Link

Cheers.

[edit on 02/10/08 by karl 12]

Washington Radarscope - right angle turn, figure E.

Diagram of July 20, 1952 UFOs Over DC


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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.)

Link

Statements and further info:

"There is no other conclusion I can reach but that for six hours on the morning of the 20th of July, 1952 there were at least ten unidentifiable objects moving above Washington....I can safely deduce that they performed gyrations which no known aircraft could perform. By this I mean that our scope showed that they could make right angle turrns and complete reversals of flight".
Senior Air Route Traffic Controller Harry Barnes.




"I saw several bright lights. I was at my maximum speed, but even the I had no closing speed...Later I chased a single bright light which I estimated about ten miles away. I lost visual contact with it at about two miles".
Lt William Patterson, F-94 Pilot who chased UFOs over Washington DC, 1952.

The 1952 UFO Sighting Wave, Part 1 (pdf)

Part 2

Part 3

More on the temperature inversion explanation and how the U.S. Weather Bureau rejected the theory.

As papers, politicians, and public clamored for answers, the Air Force hosted the biggest press conference in history. A transcript shows that the spokesperson engaged in what amounted to double-talk,but the reporters, desperate for something to show their editors, picked up on Capt. Roy James' off-the-cuff suggestion that temperature inversions had caused the radar blips. James, a UFO skeptic, had arrived in Washington only that morning and had not participated in the ongoing investigation.

Nonetheless, headlines across the country echoed the sentiments expressed in the Washington Daily News: "SAUCER" ALARM DISCOUNTED BY PENTAGON; RADAR OBJECTS LAID TO COLD AIR FORMATIONS. This "explanation" got absolutely no support from those who had seen the objects either in the air or on the radar screens, and the U.S. Weather Bureau, in a little-noted statement, rejected the theory. In fact, the official Air Force position, which it had successfully obscured, was that the objects were "unknowns."

Radar screen - Washington National Airport, August 15th.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/064cbbfc5485.jpg[/atsimg]

Though the major Washington sightings occurred over the weekends of July 1920 and July 26-27, 1952, sporadic reports and trackings were recorded into mid-August. Here, the black dots indicate unidentified targets tracked on the radar screen at Washington National Airport on August 15

Link

Chronological civilian reports taken from the free E-book 'The Challenge of Unidentified Flying Objects' by Professor Charles Maney:


Chapter 5 - UFO Fleets Over Washington D. C.

Video from the UFO exhibit at the National Archives in Washington showing information and news archives about the Washington flyovers and the huge spike in UFO sightings during 1952:

Video shows an exhibit about UFO files contained within the National Archives and Record Administration (NARA)

Excellent additions to the subject all, thank you!

For those who are unfamiliar with this incident, some of the old ones are still the best ones.

Originally posted by Gazrok

For those who are unfamiliar with this incident, some of the old ones are still the best ones.

They sure are mate, here's some further additional testimony about the objects from senior air traffic controller Harry G. Barnes:

Reflecting on the incredible events, Harry G. Barnes, a senior air traffic controller for the Civil Aeronautics Administration, wrote in a widely distributed newspaper account that the UFOs seemed to

"..become most active around the planes we saw on the scope. . . . They acted like a bunch of small kids out playing. 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 over widely-scattered areas. . . .

There is no other conclusion I can reach but that for six hours on the morning of the 20th of July there were at least 10 unidentifiable objects moving above Washington. They were not ordinary aircraft. I could tell that by their movement on the scope. I can safely deduce that they performed gyrations which no known aircraft could perform. By this I mean that our scope showed that they could make right angle turns and complete reversals of flight. Nor in my opinion could any natural phenomena account for these spots on our radar. Neither shooting stars, electrical disturbances nor clouds could either. Exactly what they are, I don’t know".

link

Cheers.

Originally posted by Gazrok

The “official” explanation given at the time was “temperature inversions” on radar. The press accepted it and let the story die.

The above is the MAIN difference between this case, and the case of Brazil in May of 1986.

The US government created this fake explanation in 1952.

But the Brazilian government did something different in 1986. Instead of inventing some fake excuse, the Brazilian Minister of Aviation came to the press, came to TV, and explained what happened, in details, and admitted that the military pilots have seen Unidentified Flying Objects, and admitted that the Brazilian Air Force had no logical explanation, and that they have no idea about the real origin of the flying objects.

This is a very big difference between the two cases.

In the Brazilian case of 1986, the government has officially admitted the presence of UFOs in the Brazilian skies.

Originally posted by GLontra

The US government created this fake explanation in 1952..

GLontra, it certainly wouldn't be the last time they did that -here's what Dr James E Mcdonald from the University of Arizona had to say about several 'official' US Government UFO explanations and there are quite a few examples at the link:

"As a result of several trips to project Bluebook,I´ve had an opportunity to examine quite carefully and in detail the types of reports that are made by Bluebook personnel.In most cases, I have found that theres almost no correlation between so-called "evaluations and explanations" that are made by Bluebook and the facts of the case...
There are hundreds of good cases in the Air Force files that should have led to top-level scientific scrutiny of this problem,years ago,yet these cases have been swept under the rug in a most disturbing way by Project Bluebook investigators and their consultants."

Dr James McDonald -Senior physicist at the Institute for Atmospheric Physics and professor in the Department of Meteorology at the University of Arizona

link

Cheers.

Rob Swiatek discusses the Washington radar/visual sightings




Also a pretty thorough analysis in this film around 28:10