Subject: REPOST: * Anti-Blue Book Study *
Date: 3 Jun 94 07:16:54 GMT
Organization: Groom Lake Testing Facility
From: Don Allen
To: All Msg #85, Jan-31-93 12:54:12
Subject: McDonald - 1/33
* Forwarded from "UFO"
* Originally by Don Allen
* Originally to All
* Originally dated 31 Jan 1993, 12:28
From: CUFON BBS - (206) 776-0382
Filename: McDon2.zip - 66K
Summary - UFO Investigations with regard to Condon and Blue Book, etc.
NOTE: Re-formatted for Fido editors - Avg line length 90 lines per post
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AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE, 134th MEETING
Subject Science in Default: 22 Years of Inadequate UFO Investigations
Author James E. McDonald, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences
Address The University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, 85721
Time 9:00 a.m., December 27, 1969
Place Sheraton Plaza Ballroom
Program General Symposium, Unidentified Flying Objects
Convention Address Sheraton Plaza Hotel
RELEASE TIME A.M,'s December 28
No scientifically adequate investigation of the UFO problem has been carried
out during the entire 22 years that have now passed since the first
extensive wave of sightings of unidentified aerial objects in the summer of
1947. Despite continued public interest, and despite frequent expressions
of public concern, only quite superficial examinations of the steadily
growing body of unexplained UFO reports from credible witnesses have been
conducted in this country or abroad. The latter point is highly relevant,
since all evidence now points to the fact that UFO sightings exhibit similar
characteristics throughout the world.
Charging inadequacy of all past UFO investigations, I speak not only from a
background of close study of the past investigations, but also from a
background of three years of rather detailed personal research, involving
interviews with over five hundred witnesses in selected UFO cases, chiefly
in the U.S. In my opinion, the UFO problem, far from being the nonsense
problem that it has often been labeled by many scientists, constitutes a
problem of extraordinary scientific interest.
The grave difficulty with essentially all past UFO studies has been that
they were either devoid of any substantial scientific content, or else have
lost their way amidst the relatively large noise-content that tends to
obscure the real signal in the UFO reports. The presence of a percentually
large number of reports of misidentified natural or technological phenomena
(planets, meteors, and aircraft, above all) is not surprising, given all the
circumstances surrounding the UFO problem. Yet such understandable and
usually easily recognized instances of misidentification have all too often
been seized upon as a sufficient explanation for all UFO reports, while the
residue of far more significant reports (numbering now of order one
thousand) are ignored. I believe science is in default for having failed to
mount any truly adequate studies of this problem, a problem that has aroused
such strong and widespread public concern during the past two decades.
Unfortunately, the present climate of thinking, above all since release of
the latest of a long series of inadequate studies, namely, that conducted
under the direction of Dr. E. U. Condon at the University of Colorado,
will make it very difficult to secure any new and more thorough
investigations, yet my own examination of the problem forces me to call for
just such new studies. I am enough of a realist to sense that, unless the
present AAAS UFO Symposium succeeds in making the scientific community aware
of the seriousness of the UFO problem, little immediate response to any call
for new investigation is likely to appear.
In fact, the over-all public and scientific response to the UFO phenomena is
itself a matter of substantial scientific interest, above all in its
social-psychological aspects. Prior to my own investigations, I would never
have imagined the wide spread reluctance to report an unusual and seemingly
inexplicable event, yet that reluctance, and the attendant reluctance of
scientists to exhibit serious interest in the phenomena in question, are
quite general. One regrettable result is the fact that the most credible of
UFO witnesses are often those most reluctant to come forward with a report
of the event they have witnessed. A second regrettable result is that only
a very small number of scientists have taken the time and trouble to search
out the nearly puzzling reports that tend to be diluted out by the much
larger number of trivial and non-significant UFO reports. The net result is
that there still exists no general scientific recognition of the scope and
nature of the UFO problem.
* * *
Within the federal government official responsibility for UFO investigations
has rested with the Air Force since early 1948. Unidentified aerial objects
quite naturally fall within the area of Air Force concern, so this
assignment of responsibility was basically reasonable, However, once it
became clear (early 1949) that UFO reports did not seem to involve advanced
aircraft of some hostile foreign power, Air Force interest subsided to
relatively low levels, marked, however, by occasional temporary resurgence
of interest following large waves of UFO reports, such as that of 1952, or
1957, or 1965.
A most unfortunate pattern of press reporting developed by about 1953, in
which the Air Force would assert that they had found no evidence of anything
"defying explanation in terms of present-day science and technology" in
their growing files of UFO reports. These statements to the public would
have done little harm had they not been coupled systematically to press
statements asserting that "the best scientific facilities available to the
U. S. Air Force" had been and were being brought to bear on the UFO
question. The assurances that substantial scientific competence was
involved in Air Force UFO investigations have, I submit, had seriously
deleterious scientific effects. Scientists who might otherwise have done
enough checking to see that a substantial scientific puzzle lay in the UFO
area were misled by these assurances into thinking that capable scientists
had already done adequate study and found nothing. My own extensive checks
have revealed so slight a total amount of scientific competence in two
decades of Air Force-supported investigations that I can only regard the
repeated asseverations of solid scientific study of the UFO problem as the
single most serious obstacle that the Air Force has put in the way of
progress towards elucidation of the matter
I do not believe, let me stress, that this has been part of some top-secret
coverup of extensive investigations by Air Force or security agencies; I
have found no substantial basis for accepting that theory of why the Air
Force has so long failed to respond appropriately to the many significant
and scientifically intriguing UFO reports coming from within its own ranks.
Briefly, I see grand foulup but not grand coverup. Although numerous
instances could be cited wherein Air Force spokesmen failed to release
anything like complete details of UFO reports, and although this has had the
regrettable consequence of denying scientists at large even a dim notion of
the almost incredible nature of some of the more impressive Air
Force-related UFO reports, I still feel that the most grievous fault of 22
years of Air Force handling of the UFO problem has consisted of their
repeated public assertions that they had substantial scientific competence
on the job.
Close examination of the level of investigation and the level of scientific
analysis involved in Project Sign (1948-9), Project Grudge (1949- 52), and
Project Bluebook (1953 to date), reveals that these were, viewed
scientifically, almost meaning less investigations. Even during occasional
periods (e.g., 1952) characterized by fairly active investigation of UFO
cases, there was still such slight scientific expertise involved that there
was never any real chance that the puzzling phenomena encountered in the
most significant UFO cases would be elucidated. Furthermore, the panels,
consultants, contractual studies, etc., that the Air Force has had working
on the UFO problem over the past 22 years have, with essentially no
exception, brought almost negligible scientific scrutiny into the picture.
Illustrative examples will be given.
The Condon Report, released in January, 1968, after about two years of Air
Force-supported study is, in my opinion, quite inadequate. The sheer bulk
of the Report, and the inclusion of much that can only be viewed as
"scientific padding", cannot conceal from anyone who studies it closely the
salient point that it represents an examination of only a tiny fraction of
the most puzzling UFO reports of the past two decades, and that its level of
scientific argumentation is wholly unsatisfactory. Furthermore, of the
roughly 90 cases that it specifically confronts, over 30 are conceded to be
unexplained. With so large a fraction of unexplained cases (out of a sample
that is by no means limited only to the truly puzzling cases, but includes
an objectionably large number of obviously trivial cases), it is far from
clear how Dr. Condon felt justified in concluding that the study indicated
"that further extensive study of UFOs probably cannot be justified in the
expectation that science will be advanced thereby. "
I shall cite a number of specific examples of cases from the Condon Report
which I regard as entirely inadequately investigated and reported. One at
Kirtland AFB, November 4, 1957, involved observations of a wingless egg-
shaped object that was observed hovering about a minute over the field prior
to departure at a climb rate which was described to me as faster than that
of any known jets, then or now. The principal witnesses in this case were
precisely the type of witnesses whose accounts warrant closest attention,
since they were CAA tower observers who watched the UFO from the CAA tower
with binoculars. Yet, when I located these two men in the course of my own
check of cases from the Condon Report, I found that neither of them had even
been contacted by members of the University of Colorado project! Both men
were fully satisfied that they had been viewing a device with performance
characteristics well beyond any thing in present or foreseeable aeronautical
technology. The two men gave me descriptions that were mutually consistent
and that fit closely the testimony given on Nov. 6, 1957, when they were
interrogated by an Air Force investigator. The Condon Report attempts to
explain this case as a light-aircraft that lost its way, came into the field
area, and then left. This kind of explanation runs through the whole Condon
Report, yet is wholly incapable of explaining the details of sightings such
as that of the Kirtland AFB incident. Other illustrative instances in which
the investigations summarized in the Condon Report exhibit glaring
deficiencies will be cited. I suggest that there are enough significant
unexplainable UFO reports just within the Condon Report itself to document
the need for a greatly increased level of scientific study of UFOs.
That a panel of the National Academy of Sciences could endorse this study is
to me disturbing. I find no evidence that the Academy panel did any
independent checking of its own; and none of that 11-man panel had any
significant prior investigative experience in this area, to my knowledge. I
believe that this sort of Academy endorsement must be criticized; it hurts
science in the long run, and I fear that this particular instance will
ultimately prove an embarrassment to the National Academy of Sciences.
The Condon Report and its Academy endorsement have exerted a highly negative
influence on clarification of the long-standing UFO problem; so much, in
fact, that it seems almost pointless to now call for new and more extensive
UFO investigations. Yet the latter are precisely what are needed to bring
out into full light of scientific inquiry a phenomenon that could well
constitute one of the greatest scientific problems of our times.
* * *
Some examples of UFO cases conceded to be unexplainable in the Condon Report
and containing features of particularly strong scientific interest: Utica,
N.Y., 6/23/55; Lakenheath, England, 8/13/56; Jackson, Ala., 11/14/56;
Norfolk, Va., 8/30/57; RB-47 case, 9/19/57; Beverly Mass., 4/22/66;
Donnybrook, N.D., 8/19/66; Haynesville, La., 12/30/66; Joplin, Mo., 1/13/67;
Colorado Springs, Colo., 5/13/67.
Some examples of UFO cases considered explained in the Condon Report for
which I would take strong exception to the argumentation presented and would
regard as both unexplained and of strong scientific interest: Flagstaff,
Ariz., 5/20/50; Washington, D. C., 7/19/52; Bellefontaine, O., 8/1/52;
Haneda AFB, Japan, 8/5/52; Gulf of Mexico, 12/6/52; Odessa, Wash., 12/10/52;
Continental Divide, N.M., 1/26/53; Seven Isles, Quebec, 6/29/54; Niagara
Falls, N.Y., 7/25/57; Kirtland AFB, N.M., 11/4/57; Gulf of Mexico, 11/5/57;
Peru, 12/30/66; Holloman AFB, 3/2/67; Kincheloe AFB, 9/11/67; Vandenberg
AFB, 10/6/67; Milledgeville, Ga., 10/20/67.
SCIENCE IN DEFAULT: 22 YEARS OF INADEQUATE UFO INVESTIGATIONS
James E. McDonald, Institute of Atmospheric Physics University of Arizona,
Tucson
(Material presented at the Symposium on UFOs, 134th Meeting, AAAS, Boston,
Dec, 27, 1969)
***
ILLUSTRATIVE CASES
The following treats in detail the four principal UFO cases referred to in
my Symposium talk. They are presented as specific illustrations of what I
regard as serious shortcomings of case-investigations in the Condon Report
and in the 1947-69 Air Force UFO program. The four cases used as
illustrations are the following :
1. RB-47 case, Gulf Coast area, Sept. 19, 1957
2. Lakenheath RAF Station, England, August 13-14, 1956
3. Haneda AFB, Japan, August 5-6, 1952
4. Kirtland AFB, New Mexico, Nov. 4, 1957
My principal conclusions are that scientific inadequacies in past years of
UFO investigations by Air Force Project Bluebook have _not_ been remedied
through publication of the Condon Report, and that there remain
scientifically very important unsolved problems with respect to UFOs. The
investigative and evaluative deficiencies illustrated in the four cases
examined in detail are paralleled by equally serious shortcomings in many
other cases in the sample of about 90 UFO cases treated in the Condon
Report. Endorsement of the conclusions of the Condon Report by the National
Academy of Sciences appears to have been based on entirely superficial
examination of the Report and the cases treated therein. Further study,
conducted on a much more sound scientific level are needed.
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SOME ILLUSTRATIVE UFO CASES - J. E. McDonald
(AAAS UFO Symposium, Boston, Dec 27, 1969.)
Case 1. USAF RB-47, Gulf Coast area, September 19-20, 1957.
Brief summary: An Air Force RB-47, equipped with ECM (Electronic
Countermeasures) gear, manned by six officers, was followed over a total
distance in excess of 600 miles and for a time period of more than an hour,
as it flew from near Gulfport, Miss., through Louisiana and Texas, and into
southern Oklahoma. The unidentified object was, at various times, seen
visually by the cockpit crew (as an intense white or red light), followed by
ground-radar, and detected on ECM monitoring gear aboard the RB-47.
Simultaneous appearances and disappearances on all three of those physically
distinct "channels" mark this UFO case as especially intriguing from a
scientific viewpoint. The incident is described as Case 5 in the Condon
Report and is conceded to be unexplained. The full details, however, are
not presented in that Report.
1. Summary of the Case:
The case is long and involved and filled with well-attested phenomena that
defy easy explanation in terms of present-day science and technology. The
RB-47 was flying out of Forbes AFB, Topeka, on a composite mission including
gunnery exercises over the Texas-Gulf area, navigation exercises over the
open Gulf, and ECM exercises in the return trip across the south-central
U.S. This was an RB-47 carrying a six-man crew, of whom three were
electronic warfare officers manning ECM (Electronic counter-measures) gear
in the aft portion of the aircraft. One of the extremely interesting
aspects of this case is that electromagnetic signals of distinctly
radar-like character appeared definitely to be emitted by the UFO, yet it
exhibited performance characteristics that seem to rule out categorically
its having been any conventional or secret aircraft.
I have discussed the incident with all six officers of the crew:
Lewis D. Chase, pilot, Spokane, Wash.
James H. McCoid, copilot, Offutt AFB
Thomas H. Hanley, navigator, Vandenberg AFB
John J. Provenzano, No. 1 monitor, Wichita
Frank B. McClure, No. 2 monitor, Offutt AFB
Walter A. Tuchscherer, No. 3 monitor, Topeka
Chase was a Major at the time; I failed to ask for information on 1957 ranks
of the others. McClure and Hanley are currently Majors, so might have been
Captains or Lieutenants in 1957. All were experienced men at the time.
Condon Project investigators only talked with Chase, McCoid, and McClure, I
ascertained. In my checking it proved necessary to telephone several of
them more than once to pin down key points; nevertheless the total case is
so complex that I would assume that there are still salient points not
clarified either by the Colorado investigators or by myself. Unfortunately,
there appears to be no way, at present to locate the personnel involved in
ground- radar observations that are a very important part of the whole case.
I shall discuss that point below.
This flight occurred in September, 1957, just prior to the crew's
reassignment to a European base. On questioning by Colorado investigators,
flight logs were consulted, and based on the recollection that this flight
was within a short time of departure from Forces to Germany, (plus the
requirement that the date match a flight of the known type and geography)
the 9/19/57 date seems to have emerged. The uncertainty as to whether it
was early on the 19th or early on the 20th, cited above is a point of
confusion I had not noted until preparing the present notes. Hence I am
unable to add any clarification, at the moment; in this matter of the date
confusion found in Thayer's discussion of the case (1, pp. 136-138). I
shall try to check that in the near future. For the present, it does not
vitiate case-discussion in any significant way.
The incident is most inadequately described in the Condon Report. The
reader is left with the general notion that the important parts occurred
near Ft. Worth, an impression strengthened by the fact that both Crow and
Thayer discuss meteorological data only for that area. One is also left
with no clear impression of the duration, which was actually over an hour.
The incident involved an unknown airborne object that stayed with the RB-47
for over 600 miles. In case after case in the Condon Report, close checking
reveals that quite significant features of the cases have been glossed over,
or omitted, or in some instances seriously misrepresented. I submit that to
fail to inform the reader that this particular case spans a total
distance-range of some 600 miles and lasted well over an hour is an omission
difficult to justify.
>From my nine separate interviews with the six crew members, I assembled a
picture of the events that makes it even more puzzling than it seems on
reading the Condon Report -- and even the latter account is puzzling enough.
Just as the aircraft crossed the Mississippi coast near Gulfport, McClure,
manning the #2 monitor, detected a signal near their 5 o'clock position (aft
of the starboard beam). It looked to him like a legitimate ground-radar
signal, but corresponded to a position out in the Gulf. This is the actual
beginning of the complete incident; but before proceeding with details it is
necessary to make quite clear what kind of equipment we shall be talking
about as we follow McClure's successive observations.
Under conditions of war, bombing aircraft entering hostile territory can be
assisted in their penetrations if any of a variety of electronic
countermeasures (ECM techniques as they are collectively termed) are brought
into action against ground-based enemy radar units. The initial step in all
ECM operations is, necessarily, that of detecting the enemy radar and
quantitatively identifying a number of relevant features of the radar system
(carrier frequency, pulse repetition frequency, scan rate, pulse width) and,
above all, its bearing relative to the aircraft heading. The latter task is
particularly ample in principle, calling only for direction-finding antennas
which pick up the enemy signal and display on a monitor scope inside the
reconnaissance aircraft a blip or lobe that paints in the relative bearing
from which the signal is coming.
The ECM gear used in RB-47's in 1957 is not now classified; the #2 monitor
that McClure was on, he and the others pointed out, involved an ALA-6
direction-finder with back-to-back antennas in a housing on the undersurface
of the RB-47 near the rear, spun at either 150 or 300 rpm as it scanned in
azimuth. Inside the aircraft, its signals were processed in an APR-9 radar
receiver and an ALA-5 pulse analyser. All later references to the #2
monitor imply that system. The #1 monitor employed an APD-4 direction
finding system, with a pair of antennas permanently mounted on either wing
tip. Provenzano was on the #1 monitor. Tuchscherer was on the #3 monitor,
whose specifications I did not ascertain because I could find no indication
that it was involved in the observations.
Returning now to the initial features of the UFO episode, McClure at first
thought he had 180-degree ambiguity in his scope, i.e., that the signal
whose lobe painted at his 5 o'clock position was actually coming in from the
11 o'clock position perhaps from some ground radar in Louisiana. This
suspicion, he told me, was temporarily strengthened as he became aware that
the lobe was moving upscope. (It is important here and in features of the
case cited below to understand how a fixed ground-radar paints on the ECM
monitor scope as the reconnaissance aircraft flies toward its general
direction: Suppose the ground radar is, at some instant, located at the 1
o'clock position relative to the moving aircraft, i.e., slightly off the
starboard bow. As the aircraft flies along, the relative bearing steadily
changes, so that the fixed ground unit is "seen" successively at the 2
o'clock, the 3 o'clock, and the 4 o'clock positions, etc. The lobe paints
on the monitor scope at these successive relative azimuths, the 12 o'clock
position being at the top of the scope, 3 o'clock at the right, etc. Thus
any legitimate signal from a fixed ground radar must move downscope,
excluding the special cases in which the radar is dead ahead or dead astern.
Note carefully that we deal here only with direction finding gear. Range is
unknown; we are not here speaking of an airborne radar set, just a
radar-frequency direction-finder. In practice, range is obtained by
triangulation computations based on successive fixes and known aircraft
speed.)
As the lobe continued moving _upscope_, McClure said the strength of the
incoming signal and its pulse characteristics all tended to confirm that
this was some ground unit being painted with 180-degree ambiguity for some
unknown electronic reason. It was at 2800 megacycles, a common frequency
for S-band search radars.
However, after the lobe swung dead ahead, his earlier hypothesis had to be
abandoned for it continued swinging over to the 11 o'clock position and
continued downscope on the port side. Clearly, no 180-degree ambiguity was
capable of accounting for this. Curiously, however, this was so anomalous
that McClure did not take it very seriously and did not at that juncture
mention it to the cockpit crew nor to his colleagues on the other two
monitors. This upscope-downscope "orbit" of the unknown was seen only on
the ALA-6, as far as I could establish. Had nothing else occurred, this
first and very significant portion of the whole episode would almost
certainly have been for gotten by McClure.
The signal faded as the RB-47 headed northward to the scheduled turning
point over Jackson, Miss. The mission called for simulated detection and
ECM operations against Air Force ground radar units all along this part of
the flight plan, but other developments intervened. Shortly after making
their turn westward over Jackson, Miss., Chase noted what he thought at
first were the landing lights of some other jet coming in from near his 11
o'clock position, at roughly the RB-47's altitude. But no running lights
were discernible and it was a single very bright white light, closing fast.
He had just alerted the rest of the crew to be ready for sudden evasive
maneuvers, when he and McCoid saw the light almost instantaneously change
directions and rush across from left to right at an angular velocity that
Chase told me he'd never seen matched in his flight experience. The light
went from their 11 o'clock to the 2 o'clock position with great rapidity,
and then blinked out.
Immediately after that, Chase and McCoid began talking about it on the
interphone and McClure, recalling the unusual 2800 megacycle signal that he
had seen over Gulfport now mentioned that peculiar incident for the first
time to Chase and McCoid. It occurred to him at that point to set his #2
monitor to scan at 2800 mcs. On the first scan, McClure told me, he got a
strong 2800 mcs signal from their 2 o'clock position, the bearing on which
the luminous unknown object had blinked out moments earlier.
Provenzano told me that right after that they had checked out the #2 monitor
on valid ground radar stations to be sure it was not malfunctioning and it
appeared to be in perfect order. He then checked on his #1 monitor and also
got a signal from the same bearing. There remained, of course, the
possibility that just by chance, this signal was from a real radar down on
the ground and off in that direction. But as the minutes went by, and the
aircraft continued westward at about 500 kts. the relative bearing of the
2800 mcs source did not move downscope on the #2 monitor, but kept up with
them.
This quickly led to a situation in which the entire 6-man crew focussed all
attention on the matter; the incident is still vivid in the minds of all the
men, though their recollection for various details varies with the
particular activities they were engaged in. Chase varied speed, to see if
the relative bearing would change but nothing altered. After over a hundred
miles of this, with the 2800 mcs source keeping pace with the aircraft, they
were getting into the radar-coverage area of the Carswell AFB GCI (Ground
Controlled Intercept) unit and Chase radioed that unit to ask if they showed
any other air traffic near the RB-47.
Carswell GCI immediately came back with the information that there was
apparently another aircraft about 10 miles from them at their 2 o'clock
position. (The RB-47 was unambiguously identifiable by its IFF signal; the
"other aircraft" was seen by "skin paint" Only, i.e., by direct radar
reflection rather than via an IFF transponder, Col. Chase explained.)
This information, each of the men emphasized to me in one way or another,
made them a bit uneasy for the first time. I asked McClure a question that
the Colorado investigators either failed to ask or did not summarize in
their Report. Was the signal in all respects comparable to that of a
typical ground radar? McClure told me that this was what baffled him the
most, then and now. All the radar signature characteristics, as read out on
his ALA-5 pulse analyser, were completely normal -- it had a pulse
repetition frequency and pulse width like a CPS-6B and even simulated a scan
rate: But its intensity, McClure pointed out, was so strong that "it would
have to had an antenna bigger than a bomber to put out that much signal."
And now, the implications of the events over Gulfport took on new meaning.
The upscope- downscope sweep of his #2 monitor lobe implied that this
source, presuming it to be the same one now also being seen on ground radar
at Carswell GCI, had flown a circle around the RB-47 at 30-35,000 ft
altitude while the aircraft was doing about 500 kts.
Shortly after Carswell GCI began following the two targets, RB-47 and
unknown, still another significant action unfolded. McClure suddenly noted
the lobe on the #2 monitor was beginning to go upscope, and almost
simultaneously, Chase told me, GCI called out that the second airborne
target was starting to move forward. Keep in mind that no visual target was
observable here; after blinking out at the 12 o'clock position, following
its lightning-like traverse across the nose of the aircraft, no light had
been visible. The unknown now proceeded to move steadily around to the 12
o'clock position, followed all the while on the #2 monitor and on the GCI
scope down at Carswell near Ft. Worth.
As soon as the unknown reached the 12 o'clock position, Chase and McCoid
suddenly saw a bright red glow "bigger than a house", Chase said, and lying
dead ahead, precisely the bearing shown on the passive radar
direction-finder that McClure was on and precisely the bearing now indicated
on the GCI scope. _Three independent sensing systems_ were at this juncture
giving seemingly consistent-indications: two pairs of human eyes, a ground
radar, and a direction-finding radar receiver in the aircraft.
One of the important points not settled by the Colorado investigations
concerned the question of whether the unknown was ever painted on any radar
set on the RB-47 itself. Some of the men thought the navigator had seen it
on his set, others were unsure. I eventually located Maj. Hanley at
Vandenberg and he informed me that all through the incident, which he
remembered very well, he tried, unsuccessfully to pick up the unknown on his
navigational radar (K-system). I shall not recount all of the details of
his efforts and his comments, but only mention the end result of my two
telephone interviews with him. The important question was what sort of
effective range that set had. Hanley gave the pertinent information that it
could just pick up a large tanker of the KC-97 type at about 4 miles range,
when used in the "altitude-hold" mode, with antenna tipped up to maximum
elevation. But both at the start of its involvement and during the object's
swing into the 12 o'clock position, GCI showed it remaining close to 10
miles in range from the RB-47. Thus Hanley's inability to detect it on his
K-system navigational radar in altitude hold only implies that whatever was
out there had a radar cross-section that was less than about 16 times that
of a KC-97 (roughly twice 4 miles, inverse 4th-power law), The unknown gave
a GCI return that suggested a cross-section comparable to an ordinary
aircraft, Chase told me, which is consistent with Hanley's non-detection of
the object. The Condon Report gives the impression the navigator did detect
it, but this is not correct.
I have in my files many pages of typed notes on my interviews, and cannot
fill in all of the intriguing details here. Suffice it to say that Chase
then went to maximum allowable power, hoping to close with the unknown, but
it just stayed ahead at about 10 miles as GCI kept telling them; it stayed
as a bright red light dead ahead, and it kept painting as a bright lobe on
the top of McClure's ALA-6 scope. By this time they were well into Texas
still at about 35,000 ft and doing upwards of 500 knots, when Chase saw it
begin to veer to the right and head between Dallas and Ft. Worth. Getting
FAA clearance to alter his own flight plan and to make sure other jet
traffic was out of his way, he followed its turn, and then realized he was
beginning to close on it for the first time. Almost immediately GCI told
him the unknown had stopped moving on the ground-radarscope. Chase and
McCoid watched as they came almost up to it. Chase's recollections on this
segment of the events were distinctly clearer than McCoid's. McCoid was, of
course, sitting aft of Chase and had the poorer view; also he said he was
doing fuel-reserve calculations in view of the excess fuel-use in their
efforts to shake the unknown, and had to look up from the lighted cockpit to
try to look out intermittently, while Chase in the forward seat was able to
keep it in sight more nearly continuously. Chase told me that he'd estimate
that it was just ahead of the RB-47 and definitely below them when it
instantaneously blinked out, At that same moment McClure announced on the
interphone that he'd lost the 2800 mcs signal, and GCI said it had
disappeared from their scope. Such simultaneous loss of signal on what we
can term three separate channels is most provocative, most puzzling.
Putting the aircraft into a left turn (which Chase noted consumes about
15-20 miles at top speed), they kept looking back to try to see the light
again. And, about halfway through the turn (by then the aircraft had
reached the vicinity of Mineral Wells, Texas, Chase said), the men in the
cockpit suddenly saw the bright red light flash on again, back along their
previous flight path but distinctly lower, and simultaneously GCI got a
target again and McClure started picking up a 2800 mcs signal at that
bearing: (As I heard one after another of these men describe all this, I
kept trying to imagine how it was possible that Condon could listen, at the
October, 1967, plasma conference at the UFO Project, as Col. Chase
recounted all this and shrug his shoulders and walk out.)
Securing permission from Carswell GCI to undertake the decidedly non-
standard maneuver of diving on the unknown, Chase put the RB-47 nose down
and had reached about 20,000 ft, he recalls, when all of a sudden the light
blinked out, GCI lost it on their scope, and McClure reported loss of signal
on the #2 monitor: Three-channel consistency once more.
Low on fuel, Chase climbed back up to 25,000 and headed north for Oklahoma.
He barely had it on homeward course when McClure got a blip dead astern and
Carswell radioed that they had a target once more trailing the RB-47 at
about 10 miles. Rear visibility from the topblisters of the RB-4 now
precluded easy visual check, particularly if the unknown was then at lower
altitude (Chase estimated that it might have been near 15,000 ft when he
lost it in the dive). It followed them to southern Oklahoma and then
disappeared.
2. Discussion:
This incident is an especially good example of a UFO case in which observer
credibility and reliability do not come into serious question, a case in
which more than one (here three) channel of information figures in the
over-all observations, and a case in which the reported phenomena appear to
defy explanation in terms of either natural or technological phenomena.
In the Condon Report, the important initial incident in which the unknown
2800 MC source appeared to orbit the RB-47 near Gulfport is omitted. In the
Condon Report, the reader is given no hint that the object was with the
aircraft for over 600 miles and for over an hour. No clear sequence of
these events is spelled out, nor is the reader made aware of all of the
"three- channel" simultaneous appearances or disappearances that were so
emphatically stressed to me by both Chase and McClure in my interviews with
them. But even despite those degrees of incompleteness, any reader of the
account of this case in the Condon Report must wonder that an incident of
this sort could be left as unexplained and yet ultimately treated, along
with the other unexplained cases in that Report, as calling for no further
scientific attention.
Actually, various hypotheses (radar anomalies, mirage effects) are weighed
in one part of the Condon Report where this case is discussed separately
(pp. 136-138). But the suggestion made there that perhaps an inversion
near 2 km altitude was responsible for the returns at the Carswell GCI unit
is wholly untenable. In an Appendix, a very lengthy but non-relevant
discussion of ground return from anomalous propagation appears; in fact, it
is so unrelated to the actual circumstances of this case as to warrant no
comment here. Chase's account emphasized that the GCI radar(s) had his
aircraft and the unknown object on-scope for a total flight-distance of the
order of several hundred miles, including a near overflight of the ground
radar. With such wide variations in angles of incidence of the ground-radar
beam on any inversion or duct, however intense, the possibility of anomalous
propagation effects yielding a consistent pattern of spurious echo matching
the reported movements and the appearances and disappearances of the target
is infinitesimal. And the more so in view of the simultaneous appearances
and disappearances on the ECM gear and via visible emissions from the
unknown. To suggest, as is tentatively done on p. 138 that the "red glow"
might have been a "mirage of Oklahoma City", when the pilot's description of
the luminous source involves a wide range of viewing angles, including two
instances when he was viewing it at quite large depression angles, is wholly
unreasonable. Unfortunately, that kind of casual ad hoc hypothesizing with
almost no attention to relevant physical considerations runs all through the
case-discussions in the treatment of radar and optical cases in the Condon
Report, frequently (though not in this instance) being made the basis of
"explanations" that are merely absurd. On p. 265 of the Report, the
question of whether this incident might be explained in terms of any "plasma
effect" is considered but rejected. In the end, this case is conceded to be
unexplained.
No evidence that a report on this event reached Project Bluebook was found
by the Colorado investigators. That may seem hard to believe for those who
are under the impression that the Air Force has been diligently and
exhaustively investigating UFO reports over the past 22 years. But to those
who have examined more closely the actual levels of investigation, lack of a
report on this incident is not so surprising. Other comparable instances
could he cited, and still more where the military aircrews elected to spare
themselves the bother of interrogation,by not even reporting events about as
puzzling as those found in this RB-47 incident.
But what is of greatest present interest is the point that here we have a
well-reported, multi-channel, multiple-witness UFO report, coming in fact
from within the Air Force itself, investigated by the Condon Report team,
conceded to be unexplained, and yet it is, in final analysis, ignored by Dr.
Condon. In no section of the Report specifically written by the principal
investigator does he even allude to this intriguing case. My question is
how such events can be written off as demanding no further scientific study.
To me, such cases seem to cry out for the most intensive scientific study --
and the more so because they are actually so much more numerous than the
scientific community yet realizes. There is a scientific mystery here that
is being ignored and shoved under the rug; the strongest and most
unjustified shove has come from the Condon Report. "unjustified" because
that Report itself contains so many scientifically puzzling unexplained
cases (approximately 30 out of 90 cases considered) that it is extremely
difficult to understand how its principal investigator could have construed
the contents of the Report as supporting a view that UFO studies should be
terminated.
Case 2. Lakenheath and Bentwaters RAF/USAF units; England, August 13-14,
1956.
Brief summary: Observations of unidentified objects by USAF and RAF
personnel, extending over 5 hours, and involving ground-radar,
airborne-radar, ground visual and airborne-visual sightings of high-speed
unconventionally maneuvering obJects in the vicinity of two RAF stations at
night. It is Case 2 in the Condon Report and is there conceded to be
unexplained.
1. Introduction:
This case will illustrate, in significant ways, the following points:
a) It illustrates the fact that many scientifically intriguing UFO reports
have lain in USAF/Bluebook files for years without knowledge thereof by the
scientific community.
b) It represents a large subset of UFO cases in which all of the
observations stemmed from military sources and which, had there been serious
and competent scientific interest operating in Project Bluebook, could have
been very thoroughly investigated while the information was fresh. It also
illustrates the point that the actual levels of investigation were entirely
inadequate in even as unexplainable and involved cases as this one.
c) It illustrates the uncomfortably incomplete and internally inconsistent
features that one encounters in almost every report of its kind in the
USAF/Bluebook files at Wright-Patterson AFB, features attesting to the
dearth of scientific competence in the Air Force UFO investigations over the
past 20 years.
d) It illustrates, when the original files are carefully studied and
compared with the discussion thereof in the Condon Report, shortcomings in
presentation and critique given many cases in the Condon Report.
e) Finally, I believe it illustrates an example of those cases conceded to
be unexplainable by the Condon Report that argue need for much more
extensive and more thorough scientific investigation of the UFO problem, a
need negated in the Condon Report and in the Academy endorsement thereof.
My discussion of this case will be based upon the 30-page Bluebook case-
file, plus certain other information presented on it in the Condon Report.
This "Lakenheath case" was not known outside of USAF circles prior to
publication of the Condon Report. None of the names of military personnel
involved are given in the Condon Report. (Witness names, dates, and locales
are deleted from all of the main group of cases in that Report, seriously
impeding independent scientific check of case materials.) I secured copies
of the case-file from Bluebook, but all names of military personnel involved
in the incident were cut out of the Xerox copies prior to releasing the
material to me. Hence I have been unable to interview personally the key
witnesses. However, there is no indication that anyone on the colorado
Project did any personal interviews, either; so it would appear I have had
access to the same basic data used in the Condon Report's treatment of this
extremely interesting case.
For no Justified reason, the Condon Report not only deletes witness names,
but also names of localities of the UFO incidents in its main sample of 59
cases. In this Lakenheath case, deletion of locality names creates much
confusion for the reader, since three distinct RAF stations figure in,the
incident and since the discharged non-commissioned officer from whom they
received first word of this UFO episode confused the names of two of those
stations in his own account that appears in the Condon Report. That, plus
other reportorial deficiencies in the presentation of the Lakenheath case in
the Condon Report, will almost certainly have concealed its real
significance from most readers of the Report.
Unfortunately, the basic Bluebook file is itself about as confusing as most
Bluebook files on UFO cases. I shall attempt to mitigate as many of those
difficulties as I can in the following, by putting the account into better
over-all order than one finds in the Condon Report treatment.
2. General Circumstances:
The entire episode extended from about 2130Z, August 13, to 0330Z, August
14, 1956; thus this is a nighttime case. The events occurred in east-central
England, chiefly in Suffolk. The initial reports centered around Bentwaters
RAF Station, located about six miles east of Ipswich, near the coast, while
much of the subsequent action centers around Lakenheath RAF Station, located
some 20 miles northeast of Cambridge. Sculthorpe RAF Station also figures in
the account, but only to a minor extent; it is near Fakenham, in the
vicinity of The Wash. GCA (Ground Controlled Approach) radars at two of
those three stations were involved in the ground-radar sightings, as was an
RTCC (Radar Traffic Control Center) radar unit at Lakenheath. The USAF
non-com who wrote to the Colorado Project about this incident was a Watch
Supervisor on duty at the Lakenheath RTCC unit that night. His detailed
account is reproduced in the Condon Report (pp. 248-251). The Report
comments on "the remarkable accuracy of the account of the witness as given
in (his reproduced letter), which was apparently written from memory 12
years after the incident." I would concur, but would note that, had the
Colorado Project only investigated more such striking cases of past years,
it would have found many other witnesses in UFO cases whose vivid
recollections often match surprising well checkable contemporary accounts.
My experience thereon has been that, in multiple- witness cases where one
can evaluate consistency of recollections, the more unusual and inexplicable
the original UFO episode, the more it impressed upon the several witnesses'
memories a meaningful and still-useful pattern of relevant recollections.
Doubtless, another important factor operates: the UFO incidents that are the
most striking and most puzzling probably have been discussed by the key
witnesses enough times that their recollections have been thereby reinforced
in a useful way.
The only map given in the Condon Report is based on a sketch-map made by the
non-com who alerted them to the case. It is misleading, for Sculthorpe is
shown 50 miles east of Lakenheath, whereas it actually lies 30 miles north-
northeast. The map does not show Bentwaters at all; it is actually some 40
miles east-southeast of Lakenheath. Even as basic items as those locations
do not appear to have been ascertained by those who prepared the discussion
of this case in the Condon Report, which is most unfortunate, yet not
atypical.
That this incident was subsequently discussed by many Lakenheath personnel
was indicated to me by a chance event. In the course of my investigations of
another radar UFO case from the Condon Report, that of 9/11/67 at Kincheloe
AFB, I found that the radar operator involved therein had previously been
stationed with the USAF detachment at Lakenheath and knew of the events at
second-hand because they were still being discussed there by radar personnel
when he arrived many months later.
3. Initial Events at Bentwaters, 2130Z to 2200Z;
One of the many unsatisfactory aspects of the Condon Report is its frequent
failure to put before the reader a complete account of the UFO cases it
purports to analyze scientifically. In the present instance, the Report
omits all details of three quite significant radar-sightings made by
Bentwaters GCA personnel prior to their alerting the Lakenheath GCA and RTCC
groups at 2255 LST. This omission is certainly not because of
correspondingly slight mention in the original Bluebook case-file; rather,
the Bentwaters sightings actually receive more Bluebook attention than the
subsequent Lakenheath events. Hence, I do not see how such omissions in the
Condon Report can be justified.
a) _First radar siqhting, 2130Z._ Bentwaters GCA operator, A/2c ______ (I
shall use a blank to indicate the names razor-bladed out of my copies of the
case-file prior to release of the file items to me), reported picking up a
target 25-30 miles ESE, which moved at very high speed on constant 295 deg.
heading across his scope until he lost it 15-20 miles to the NW of
Bentwaters. In the Bluebook file, A/2c _____ is reported as describing it as
a strong radar echo, comparable to that of a typical aircraft, until it
weakened near the end of its path across his scope. He is quoted as
estimating a speed of the order of 4000 mph, but two other cited quantities
suggest even higher speeds. A transit time of 30 seconds is given, and if
one combines that with the reported range of distance traversed, 40-50
miles, a speed of about 5000- 6000 mph results. Finally, A/2c _____ stated
that it covered about 5-6 miles per sweep of the AN/MPN-llA GCA radar he was
using. The sweep-period for that set is given as 2 seconds (30 rpm), so this
yields an even higher speed- estimate of about 9000 mph. (Internal
discrepancies of this sort are quite typical of Bluebook case-files, I
regret to say. My study of many such files during the past three years
leaves me no conclusion but that Bluebook work has never represented
high-caliber scientific work, but rather has operated as a perfunctory
bookkeeping and filing operation during most of its life. Of the three speed
figures just mentioned, the latter derives from the type of observation most
likely to be reasonably accurate, in my opinion. The displacement of a
series of successive radar blips on a surveillance radar such as the
MPN-11A, can be estimated to perhaps a mile or so with little difficulty,
when the operator has as large a number of successive blips to work with as
is here involved. Nevertheless, it is necessary to regard the speed as quite
uncertain here, though presumably in the range of several thousand miles pr
hour and hence not associable with any conventional aircraft, nor with still
higher-speed meteors either.)
b) _Second radar siqhting, 2130-2155Z._ A few minutes after the preceding
event, T/Sgt _____ picked up on the same MPN-11A a group of 12-15 objects
about 8 miles SW of Brentwaters. In the report to Bluebook, he pointed out
that "these objects appeared as normal targets on the GCA scope and that
normal checks made to determine possible malfunctions of the GCA radar
failed to indicate anything was technically wrong." The dozen or so objects
were moving together towards the NE at varying speeds, ranging between 80
and 125 mph, and "the 12 to 15 unidentified objects were preceded by 3
objects which were in a triangular formation with an estimated 1000 feet
separating each object in this formation." The dozen objects to the rear
"were scattered behind the lead formation of 3 at irregular intervals with
the whole group simultaneously covering a 6 to 7 mile area," the official
report notes.
Consistent radar returns came from this group during their 25-minute
movement from the point at which they were first picked up, 8 mi. SW, to a
point about 40 mi. NE of Bentwaters, their echoes decreasing in intensity as
they moved off to the NE. When the group reached a point some 40 mi. NE,
they all appeared to converge to form a single radar echo whose intensity is
described as several times larger than a B-36 return under comparable
conditions. Then motion ceased, while this single strong echo remained
stationary for 10-15 minutes. Then it resumed motion to the NE for 5-6
miles, stopped again for 3-5 minutes, and finally moved northward and off
the scope.
c) _Third radar siqhting, 2200Z._ Five minutes after the foregoing formation
moved off-scope, T/Sgt _____ detected an unidentified target about 30 mi. E
of the Bentwaters GCA station, and tracked it in rapid westward motion to a
point about 25 mi. W of the station, where the object "suddenly disappeared
off the radar screen by rapidly moving out of the GCS radation pattern,"
according to his interpretation of the event. Here, again, we get discordant
speed information, for T/Sgt _____ gave the speed only as being "in excess
of 4000 mph," whereas the time-duration of the tracking, given as 16 sec,
implies a speed of 12,000 mph, for the roughly 55 mi. track-length reported.
Nothing in the Bluebook files indicates that this discrepancy was
investigated further or even noticed, so one can say only that the apparent
speed lay far above that of conventional aircraft.
d) _Other observations at Bentwaters._ A control tower sergeant, aware of
the concurrent radar tracking, noted a light "the size of a pin-head at
arm's length" at about 10 deg. elevation to the SSE. It remained there for
about one hour, intermittently appearing and disappearing. Since Mars was in
that part of the sky at that time, a reasonable interpretation is that the
observer was looking at that planet.
A T-33 of the 512th Fighter Interceptor Squadron, returning to Bentwaters
from a routine flight at about 2130Z, was vectored to the NE to search for
the group of objects being tracked in that sector. Their search, unaided by
airborne radar, led to no airborne sighting of any aircraft or other objects
in that area, and after about 45 minutes they terminated search, having seen
only a bright star in the east and a coastal beacon as anything worth
noting. The Bluebook case-file contains 1956 USAF discussions of the case
that make a big point of the inconclusiveness of the tower operator's
sighting and the negative results of the T-33 search, but say nothing about
the much more puzzling radar-tracking incidents than to stress that they
were of "divergent" directions, intimating that this somehow put them in the
category of anomalous propagation, which scarcely follows. Indeed, none of
the three cited radar sightings exhibits any features typical of AP echoes.
The winds over the Bentwaters area are given in the file. They jump from the
surface level (winds from 230 deg. at 5-10 kts) to the 6000 ft level (260
deg., 30 kts), and then hold at a steady 260 deg. up to 50,000 ft, with
speeds rising to a maximum of 90 kts near 30,000 ft. Even if one sought to
invoke the highly dubious Borden-Vickers hypothesis (moving waves on an
inversion surface), not even the slowest of the tracked echoes (80-125 mph)
could be accounted for, nor is it even clear that the direction would be
explainable. Furthermore, the strength of the individual echoes (stated as
comparable to normal aircraft returns), the merging of the 15 or so into a
single echo, the two intervals of stationarity, and final motion off-scope
at a direction about 45 deg. from the initial motion, are all wholly
unexplainable in terms of AP in these 2130-2155Z incidents. The extremely
high-speed westward motion of single targets is even further from any known
radar-anomaly associated with disturbed propagation conditions. Blips that
move across scopes from one sector to the opposite, in steady heading at
steady apparent speed, correspond neither to AP nor to internal electronic
disturbances. Nor could interference phenomena fit such observed echo
behavior. Thus, this 30-minute period, 213O- 2200Z, embraced three distinct
events for which no satisfactory explanation exists. That these three events
are omitted from the discussions in the Condon Report is unfortunate, for
they serve to underscore the scientific significance of subsequent events at
both Bentwaters and Lakenheath stations.
4. Comments on Reporting of Events After 2255Z, 8/13/56:
The events summarized above were communicated to Bluebook by Capt. Edward L.
Holt of the 81st Fighter-Bomber Wing stationed at Bentwaters, as Report No.
IR-1-56, dated 31 August, 1956. All events occurring subsequent to 2200Z, on
the other hand, were communicated to Project Bluebook via an earlier,
lengthy teletype transmission from the Lakenheath USAF unit, sent out in the
standard format of the report-form specified by regulation AFR200-2. Two
teletype transmissions, dated 8/17/56 and 8/21/56, identical in basic
content, were sent from Lakenheath to Bluebook. The Condon Report presents
the content of that teletype report on pp. 252-254, in full, except for
deletion of all names and localities and omission of one important item to
be noted later here. However, most readers will be entirely lost because
what is presented actually constitutes a set of answers to questions that
are not stated! The Condon Report does not offer the reader the hint that
the version of AFR200-2 appearing in the Report's Appendix, pp. 819-826
(there identified by its current designation, AFR80-17) would provide the
reader with the standardized questions needed to translate much of the
otherwise extremely confusing array of answers on pp. 252-254. For that
reason, plus others, many readers will almost certainly be greatly (and
entirely unnecessarily) confused on reading this important part of the
Lakenheath report in the Condon Report.
That confusion, unfortunately, does not wholly disappear upon laboriously
matching questions with answers, for it has long been one of the salient
deficiencies of the USAF program of UFO report collection that the format of
AFR200-2 (or its sequel AFR80-17) is usually only barely adequate and
(especially for complex episodes such as that involved here) often entirely
incapable of affording the reporting office enough scope to set out clearly
and in proper chronological order all of the events that may be of potential
scientific significance. Anyone who has studied many Bluebook reports in the
AFR200-2 format, dating back to 1953, will be uncomfortably aware of this
gross difficulty. Failure to carry out even modest followup investigations
and incorporate findings thereof into Bluebook case-files leaves most
intriguing Bluebook UFO cases full of unsatisfactorily answered questions.
But those deficiencies do not, in my opinion, prevent the careful reader
from discerning that very large numbers of those UFO cases carry highly
significant scientific implications, implications of an intriguing problem
going largely unexamined in past years.
5. _Initial Alerting of Lakenheath GCA and RTCC:_
The official files give no indication of any further UFO radar sightings by
Bentwaters GCA from 2200 until 2255Z. But, at the latter time, another
fast-moving target was picked up 30 mi. E of Bentwaters, heading almost due
west at a speed given as "2000-4000 mph". It passed almost directly over
Bentwaters, disappearing from their GCA scope for the usual beam-angle
reasons when within 2-3 miles (the Condon Report intimates that this close
in disappearance is diagnostic of AP, which seems to be some sort of tacit
over- acceptance of the 1952 Borden-Vickers hypothesis), and then moving on
until it disappeared from the scope 30 mi. W of Bentwaters.
Very significantly, this radar-tracking of the passage of the unidentified
target was matched by concurrent visual observations, by personnel on the
ground looking up and also from an overhead aircraft looking down. Both
visual reports involved only a light, a light described as blurred out by
its high speed; but since the aircraft (identified as a C-47 by the
Lakenheath non-com whose letter called this case to the attention of the
Colorado Project) was flying only at 4000 ft, the altitude of the unknown
object is bracketed within rather narrow bounds. (No mention of any sonic
boom appears; but the total number of seemingly quite credible reports of
UFOs moving at speeds far above sonic values and yet not emitting booms is
so large that one must count this as just one more instance of many
currently inexplicable phenomena associated with the UFO problem.) The
reported speed is not fast enough for a meteor, nor does the low-altitude
flat traJectory and absence of a concussive shock wave match any meteoric
hypothesis. That there was visual confirmation from observation points both
above and below this fast-moving radar-tracked obJect must be viewed as
adding still further credence to, and scientific interest in, the prior
three Bentwaters radar sightings of the previous hour.
Apparently immediately after the 2255Z events, Bentwaters GCA alerted GCA
Lakenheath, which lay off to its WNW. The answers to Questions 2(A) and 2(B)
of the AFR200-2 format (on p. 253 of the Condon Report) seem to imply that
Lakenheath ground observers were alerted in time to see a luminous object
come in, at an estimated altitude of 2000-2500 ft, and on a heading towards
SW. The lower estimated altitude and the altered heading do not match the
Bentwaters sighting, and the ambiguity so inherent in the AFR200-2 format
simply cannot be eliminated here, so the precise timing is not certain. All
that seems certain here is that, at or subsequent to the Bentwaters
alert-message, Lakenheath ground observers saw a luminous object come in out
of the NE at low altitude, then _stop_, and take up an easterly heading and
resume motion eastward out of sight.
The precise time-sequence of the subsequent observations is not clearly
deducible from the Lakenheath TWX sent in compliance with AFR200-2. But that
many very interesting events, scientifically very baffling events, soon took
place is clear from the report. No followup, from Bluebook or other USAF
sources,'was undertaken, and so this potentially very important case, like
hundreds of others, simply sent into the Bluebook files unclarified. I am
forced to stress that nothing reveals so clearly the past years of
scientifically inadequate UFO investigation as a few days' visit to Wright-
Patterson AFB and a diligent reading of Bluebook case reports. No one with
any genuine scientific interest in solving the UFO problem would have let
accumulate so many years of reports like this one without seeing to it that
the UFO reporting and followup investigations were brought into entirely
different status from that in which they have lain for over 20 years.
Deficiencies having been noted, I next catalog, without benefit of the exact
time-ordering that is so crucial to full assessment of any UFO event, the
intriguing observations and events at or near Lakenheath subsequent to the
2255Z alert from Bentwaters.
6. Non-chronological Summary of Lakenheath Sightings, 2255Z-0330Z.
a. _Visual observations from ground._
As noted two paragraphs above, following the 2255Z alert from GCA
Bentwaters, USAF ground observers at the Lakenheath RAF Station observed a
luminous object come in on a southwesterly heading, stop, and then move off
out of sight to the east. Subsequently, at an unspecified time, two moving
white lights were seen, and "ground observers stated one white light joined
up with another and both disappeared in formation together" (recall earlier
radar observations of merging of targets seen by Bentwaters GCA). No
discernible features of these luminous sources were noted by ground
observers, but both the observers and radar operators concurred in their
report-description that "the objects (were) travelling at terrific speeds
and then stopping and changing course immediately." In a passage of the
original Bluebook report which was for some reason not included in the
version presented in the Condon Report, this concordance of radar and visual
observations is underscored: "Thus two radar sets (i.e., Lakenheath GCA and
RATCC radars) and three ground observers report substantially same." Later
in the original Lakenheath report, this same concordance is reiterated: "the
fact that radar and ground visual observations were made on its rapid
acceleration and abrupt stops certainly lend credulance (sic) to the
report."
Since the date of this incident coincides with the date of peak frequency of
the Perseid meteors, one might ask whether any part of the visual
observations could have been due to Perseids. The basic Lakenheath report to
Bluebook notes that the ground observers reported "unusual amount of
shooting stars in sky", indicating that the erratically moving light(s) were
readily distinguishable from meteors. The report further remarks thereon
that "the objects seen were definitely not shooting stars as there were no
trails as are usual with such sightings." Furthermore, the stopping and
course reversals are incompatible with any such hypothesis in the first
place.
AFR200-2 stipulates that observer be asked to compare the UFO to the size of
various familiar objects when held at arm's length (Item 1-B in the format).
In answer to that item, the report states: "One observer from ground stated
on first observation object was about size of golf ball. As object continued
in flight it became a 'pin point'." Even allowing for the usual inaccuracies
in such estimates, this further rules out Perseids, since that shower yields
only meteors of quite low luminosity.
In summary of the ground-visual observations, it appears that three ground
observers at Lakenheath saw at least two luminous objects, saw these over an
extended though indefinite time period, saw them execute sharp course
changes, saw them remain motionless at least once, saw two objects merge
into a single luminous object at one juncture, and reported motions in
general accord with concurrent radar observations. These ground-visual
observations, in themselves, constitute scientifically interesting UFO
report-material. Neither astronomical nor aeronautical explanations, nor any
meteorological-optical explanations, match well those reported phenomena.
One could certainly wish for a far more complete and time-fixed report on
these visual observations, but even the above information suffices to
suggest some unusual events. The unusualness will be seen to be even greater
on next examining the ground-radar observations from Lakenheath. And even
stronger interest emerges as we then turn, last of all, to the
airborne-visual and airborne-radar observations made near Lakenheath.
b. _Ground-radar observations at Lakenheath._
The GCA surveillance radar at Lakenheath is identified as a CPN-4, while the
RATCC search radar was a CPS-5 (as the non-com correctly recalled in his
letter). Because the report makes clear that these two sets were
concurrently following the unknown targets, it is relevant to note that they
have different wavelengths, pulse repetition frequencies, and scan-rates,
which (for reasons that need not be elaborated here) tends to rule out
several radar-anomaly hypotheses (e.g., interference echoes from a distant
radar, second-time-around effects, AP). However, the reported maneuvers are
so unlike any of those spurious effects that it seems almost unnecessary to
confront those possibilities here.
As with the ground-visual observations, so also with these radar-report
items, the AFR200-2 format limitations plus the other typical deficiencies
of reporting of UFO events preclude reconstruction in detail, and in
time-order, of all the relevant events. I get the impression that the first
object seen visually by ground observers was not radar-tracked, although
this is unclear from the report to Bluebook. One target whose motions were
jointly followed both on the CPS-5 at the Radar Air Traffic Control Center
and on the shorter- range, faster-scanning CPN-4 at the Lakenheath GCA unit
was tracked "from 6 miles west to about 20 miles SW where target stopped and
assumed a stationary position for five minutes. Target then assumed a
heading northwesterly (I presume this was intended to read 'northeasterly',
and the non-com so indicates in his recollective account of what appears to
be the same maneuvers) into the Station and stopped two miles NW of Station.
Lakenheath GCA reports three to four additional targets were doing the same
maneuvers in the vicinity of the Station. Thus two radar sets and three
ground observers report substantially same." (Note that the quoted item
includes the full passage omitted from the Condon Report version, and note
that it seems to imply that this devious path with two periods of stationary
hovering was also reported by the visual observers. However, the latter is
not entirely certain because of ambiguities in the structure of the basic
report as forced into the AFR200-2 format).
At some time, which context seems to imply as rather later in the night (the
radar sightings went on until about 0330Z), "Lakenheath Radar Air Traffic
Control Center observed object 17 miles east of Station making sharp
rectangular course of flight. This maneuver was not conducted by circular
path but on right angles at speeds of 600-800 mph. Object would stop and
start with amazing rapidity." The report remarks that "...the controllers
are experienced and technical skills were used in attempts to determine just
what the objects were. When the target would stop on the scope, the MTI was
used. However, the target would still appear on the scope." (The latter is
puzzling. MTI, Moving Target Indication, is a standard feature on search or
surveillance radars that eliminates ground returns and returns from large
buildings and other motionless objects. This very curious feature of display
of stationary modes while the MTI was on adds further strong argument to the
negation of any hypothesis of anomalous propagation of ground-returns. It
was as if the unidentified target, while seeming to hover motionless, was
actually undergoing small-amplitude but high-speed jittering motion to yield
a scope- displayed return despite the MTI. Since just such jittery motion
has been reported in visual UFO sightings on many occasions, and since the
coarse resolution of a PPI display would not permit radar-detection of such
motion if its amplitude were below, say, one or two hundred meters, this
could conceivably account for the persistence of the displayed return during
the episodes of "stationary" hovering, despite use of MTI.)
The portion of the radar sightings just described seems to have been vividly
recollected by the retired USAF non-com who first called this case to the
attention of the Colorado group. Sometime after the initial Bentwaters
alert, he had his men at the RATCC scanning all available scopes, various
scopes set at various ranges. He wrote that "...one controller noticed a
stationary target on the scopes about 20 to 25 miles southwest. This was
unusual, as a stationary target should have been eliminated unless it was
moving at a speed of at least 40 to 45 knots. And yet we could detect no
movement at all. We watched this target on all the different scopes for
several minutes and I called the GCA Unit at (Lakenheath) to see if they had
this target on their scope in the same geographical location. As we watched,
the stationary target started moving at a speed of 400 to 600 mph in a
north- northeast direction until it reached a point about 20 miles north
northwest of (Lakenheath). There was no slow start or build-up to this speed
-- it was constant from the second it started to move until it stopped."
(This description, written 11 years after the event, matches the 1956
intelligence report from the Lakenheath USAF unit so well, even seeming to
avoid the typographical direction-error that the Lakenheath TWX contained,
that one can only assume that he was deeply impressed by this whole
incident. That, of course, is further indicated by the very fact that he
wrote the Colorado group about it in the first place.) His letter (Condon
Report, p. 249) adds that "the target made several changes in location,
always in a straight line, always at about 600 mph and always from a
standing or stationary point to his next stop at constant speed -- no
build-up in speed at all -- these changes in location varied from 8 miles to
20 miles in length --no set pattern at any time. Time spent stationary
between movements also varied from 3 or 4 minutes to 5 or 6 minutes..."
Because his account jibes so well with the basic Bluebook file report in the
several particulars in which it can be checked, the foregoing quotation from
the letter as reproduced in the Condon Report stands as meaningful
indication of the highly unconventional behavior of the unknown aerial
target. Even allowing for some recollective uncertainties, the non-com's
description of the behavior of the unidentified radar target lies so far
beyond any meteorological, astronomical, or electronic explanation as to
stand as one challenge to any suggestions that UFO reports are of negligible
scientific interest.
The non-com's account indicates that they plotted the discontinuous stop-
and-go movements of the target for some tens of minutes before it was
decided to scramble RAF interceptors to investigate. That third major aspect
of the Lakenheath events must now be considered. (The delay in scrambling
interceptors is noteworthy in many Air Force-related UFO incidents of the
past 20 years. I believe this reluctance stems from unwillingness to take
action lest the decision-maker be accused of taking seriously a phenomenon
which the Air Force officially treats as non-existent.)
c. Airborne radar and visual sightings by Venom interceptor.
An RAF jet interceptor, a Venom single-seat subsonic aircraft equipped with
an air-intercept (AI) nose radar, was scrambled, according to the basic
Bluebook report, from Waterbeach RAF Station, which is located about 6 miles
north of Cambridge, and some 20 miles SW of Lakenheath. Precise time of the
scramble does not appear in the report to Bluebook, but if we were to try to
infer the time from the non-com's recollective account, it would seem to
have been somewhere near midnight. Both the non-com's letter and the
contemporary intelligence report make clear that Lakenheath radar had one of
their unidentified targets on-scope as the Venom came in over the Station
from Waterbeach. The TWX to Blue book states: "The aircraft flew over RAF
Station Lakenheath and was vectored toward a target on radar 6 miles east of
the field. Pilot advised he had a bright white light in sight and would
investigate. At thirteen miles west (east?) he reported loss of target and
white light."
It deserves emphasis that the foregoing quote clearly indicates that the UFO
that the Venom first tried to intercept was being monitored via three
distinct physical "sensing channels." It was being recorded by _ground
radar_, by _airborne radar_, and _visually_. Many scientists are entirely
unaware that Air Force files contain such UFO cases; for this very
interesting category has never been stressed in USAF discussions of its UFO
records. Note, in fact, the similarity to the 1957 RB-47 case (Case 1 above)
in the evidently simultaneous loss of visual and airborne-radar signal here.
One wonders if ground radar also lost it simultaneously with the Venom
pilot's losing it, but, loss of visual and airborne-radar signal here. One
wonders if ground radar also lost it simultaneously with the Venom pilot's
losing it, but, as is so typical of AFR200-2 reports, incomplete reporting
precludes clarification. Nothing in the Bluebook case-file on this incident
suggests that anyone at Bluebook took any trouble to run down that point or
the many other residual questions that are so painfully evident here. The
file does, however, include a lengthy dispatch from the then-current Blue
book officer, Capt. G. T. Gregory, a dispatch that proposes a series of what
I must term wholly irrelevant hypotheses about Perseid meteors with "ionized
gases in their wake which may be traced on radarscopes", and inversions that
"may cause interference between two radar stations some distance apart."
Such basically irrelevant remarks are all too typical of Bluebook critique
over the years. The file also includes a case- discussion by Dr. J. A.
Hynek, Bluebook consultant, who also toys with the idea of possible radar
returns from meteor wake ionization. Not only are the radar frequencies here
about two orders of magnitude too high to afford even marginal likelihood of
meteor-wake returns, but there is absolutely no kinematic similarity between
the reported UFO movements and the essentially straight-line hypersonic
movement of a meteor, to cite just a few of the strong objections to any
serious consideration of meteor hypotheses for the present UFO case. Hynek's
memorandum on the case makes some suggestions about the need for upgrading
Bluebook operations, and then closes with the remarks that "The Lakenheath
report could constitute a source of embarrassment to the Air Force; and
should the facts, as so far reported, get into the public domain, it is not
necessary to point out what excellent use the several dozen UFO societies
and other 'publicity artists' would make of such an incident. It is,
therefore, of great importance that further information on the technical
aspects of the original observations be obtained, without loss of time from
the original observers." That memo of October 17, 1956,is followed in the
case-file by Capt. Gregory's November 26, 1956 reply, in which he concludes
that "our original analyses of anomalous propagation and astronimical is
(sic) more or less correct"; and there the case investigation seemed to end,
at the same casually closed level at which hundreds of past UFO cases have
been closed out at Bluebook with essentially no real scientific critique. I
would say that it is exceedingly unfortunate that "the facts , as so far
reported" did not get into the public domain, along with the facts on
innumerable other Bluebook case-files that should have long ago startled the
scientific community just as much as they startled me when I took the
trouble to go to Bluebook and spend a number of days studying those
astonishing files.
Returning to the scientifically fascinating account of the Venom pilot's
attempt to make an air-intercept on the Lakenheath unidentified object, the
original report goes on to note that, after the pilot lost both visual and
radar signals, "RATCC vectored him to a target 10 miles east of Lakenheath
and pilot advised target was on radar and he was 'locking on.'" Although
here we are given no information on the important point of whether he also
saw a luminous object, as he got a radar lock-on, we definitely have another
instance of at least two-channel detection. The concurrent detection of a
single radar target by a ground radar and an airborne radar under conditions
such as these, where the target proves to be a highly maneuverable object
(see below), categorically rules out any conventional explanations
involving, say, large ground structures and propagation anomalies. That MTI
was being used on the ground radar also excludes that, of course.
The next thing that happened was that the Venom suddenly lost radar lock- on
as it neared the unknown target. RATCC reported that "as the Venom passed
the target on radar, the target began a tail chase of the friendly fighter."
RATCC asked the Venom pilot to acknowledge this turn of events and he did,
saying "he would try to circle and get behind the target." His attempts were
unsuccessful, which the report to Bluebook describes only in the terse
comment, "Pilot advised he was unable to 'shake' the target off his tail and
requested assistance." The non-com's letter is more detailed and much more
emphatic. He first remarks that the UFO's sudden evasive movement into tail
position was so swift that he missed it on his own scope, "but it was seen
by the other controllers." His letter then goes on to note that the Venom
pilot "tried everything -- he climbed, dived, circled, etc., but the UFO
acted like it was glued right behind him, always the same distance, very
close, but we always had two distinct targets." Here again, note how the
basic report is annoyingly incomplete. One is not told whether the pilot
knew the UFO was pursuing his Venom by virtue of some tail-radar warning
device of type often used on fighters (none is alluded to), or because he
could see a luminous object in pursuit. In order for him to "acknowledge"
the chase seems to require one or the other detection-mode, yet the report
fails to clarify this important point. However, the available information
does make quite clear that the pursuit was being observed on ground radar,
and the non-com's recollection puts the duration of the pursuit at perhaps
10 minutes before the pilot elected to return to his base. Very
significantly, the intelligence report from Lakenheath to Bluebook quotes
this first pilot as saying "clearest target I have ever seen on radar",
which again eliminates a number of hypotheses, and argues most cogently the
scientific significance of the whole episode.
The non-com recalled that, as the first Venom returned to Waterbeach
Aerodrome when fuel ran low, the UFO followed him a short distance and then
stopped; that important detail is, however, not in the Bluebook report. A
second Venom was then scrambled, but, in the short time before a malfunction
forced it to return to Waterbeach, no intercepts were accomplished by that
second pilot.
7. Discussion:
The Bluebook report material indicates that other radar unknowns were being
observed at Lakenheath until about 0330Z. Since the first radar unknowns
appeared near Bentwaters at about 2130Z on 8/13/56, while the Lakenheath
events terminated near 0330Z on 8/14/56, the total duration of this UFO
episode was about six hours. The case includes an impressive number of
scientifically provocative features:
1) At least three separate instances occurred in which one ground-radar
unit, GCA Bentwaters, tracked some unidentified target for a number of tens
of miles across its scope at speeds in excess of Mach 3. Since even today,
12 years later, no nation has disclosed military aircraft capable of flight
at such speeds (we may exclude the X-15), and since that speed is much too
low to fit any meteoric hypothesis, this first feature (entirely omitted
from discussion in the Condon Report) is quite puzzling. However, Air Force
UFO files and other sources contain many such instances of nearly hypersonic
speeds of radar-tracked UFOs.
2) In one instance, about a dozen low-speed (order of 100 mph) targets
moved in loose formation led by three closely-spaced targets, the assemblage
yielding consistent returns over a path of about 50 miles, after which they
merged into a single large target, remained motionless for some 10-15
minutes, and then moved off-scope. Under the reported wind conditions, not
even a highly contrived meteorological explanation invoking anomalous
propagation and inversion layer waves would account for this sequence
observed at Bentwaters. The Condon Report omits all discussion of items 1)
and 2), for reasons that I find difficult to understand.
3) One of the fast-track radar sightings at Bentwaters, at 2255Z, coincided
with visual observations of some very-high-speed luminous source seen by
both a tower operator on the ground and by a pilot aloft who saw the light
moving in a blur below his aircraft at 4000 ft altitude. The radar-derived
speed "as given as 2000-4000 mph. Again, meteors won't fit such speeds and
altitudes, and we may exclude aircraft for several evident reasons,
including absence of any thundering sonic boom that would surely have been
reported if any near hypothetical secret 1956-vintage hypersonic device were
flying over Bentwaters at less than 4000 ft that night.
4) Several ground observers at Lakenheath saw luminous obJects exhibiting
non-ballistic motions, including dead stops and sharp course reversals.
5) In one instance, two luminous white objects merged into a single
object, as seen from the ground at Lakenheath. This wholly unmeteoric and
unaeronautical phenomenon is actually a not-uncommon feature of UFO reports
during the last two decades. For example, radar-tracked merging of two
targets that veered together sharply before Joining up was reported over
Kincheloe AFB, Michigan, in a UFO report that also appears in the Condon
Report (p. 164), quite unreasonably attributed therein to "anomalous
propagation."
6) Two separate ground radars at Lakenheath, having rather different radar
parameters, were concurrently observing movements of one or more unknown
targets over an extended period of time. Seemingly stationary hovering modes
were repeatedly observed, and this despite use of MTI. Seemingly
"instantaneous" accelerations from rest to speeds of order of Mach 1 were
repeatedly observed. Such motions cannot readily be explained in terms of
any known aircraft flying then or now, and also fail to fit known electronic
or propagation anomalies. The Bluebook report gives the impression (somewhat
ambiguously, however) that some of these two-radar observations were
coincident with ground-visual observations.
7) In at least one instance, the Bluebook report makes clear that an
unidentified luminous target was seen visually from the air by the pilot of
an interceptor while getting simultaneous radar returns from the unknown
with his nose radar concurrent with ground-radar detection of the same
unknown. This is scientifically highly significant, for it entails three
separate detection-channels all recording the unknown object.
8) In _at least_ one instance, there was simultaneous radar disappearance
and visual disappearance of the UFO. This is akin to similar events in other
known UFO cases, yet is not easily explained in terms of conventional
phenomena.
9) Attempts of the interceptor to close on one target seen both on ground
radar and on the interceptor's nose radar, led to a puzzling rapid
interchange of roles as the unknown object moved into tail- position behind
the interceptor. While under continuing radar observation from the ground,
with both aircraft and unidentified object clearly displayed on the
Lakenheath ground radars, the pilot of the interceptor tried unsuccessfully
to break the tail chase over a time of some minutes. No ghost-return or
multiple-scatter hypothesis can explain such an event.
I believe that the cited sequence of extremely baffling events, involving so
many observers and so many distinct observing channels, and exhibiting such
unconventional features, should have led to the most intensive Air Force
inquiries. But I would have to say precisely the same about dozens of other
inexplicable Air Force-related UFO incidents reported to Bluebook since
1947. What the above illustrative case shows all too well is that highly
unusual events have been occurring under circumstances where any
organization with even passing scientific curiosity should have responded
vigorously, yet the Air Force UFO program has repeatedly exhibited just as
little response as I have noted in the above 1956 Lakenheath incident. The
Air Force UFO program, contrary to the impression held by most scientists
here and abroad, has been an exceedingly superficial and generally quite
incompetent program. Repeated suggestions from Air Force press offices, to
the effect that "the best scientific talents available to the U.S. Air
Force" have been brought to bear on the UFO question are so far from the
truth as to be almost laughable, yet those suggestions have served to
mislead the scientific community, here and abroad, into thinking that
careful investigations were yielding solid conclusions to the effect that
the UFO problem was a nonsense problem. The Air Force has given us all the
impression that its UFO reports involved only misidentified phenomena of
conventional sorts. That, I submit, is far from correct, and the Air Force
has not responsibly discharged its obligations to the public in conveying so
gross a misimpression for twenty years. I charge incompetence, not
conspiracy, let me stress.
The Condon Report, although disposed to suspicion that perhaps some sort of
anomalous radar propagation might be involved (I record here my objection
that the Condon Report exhibits repeated instances of misunderstanding of
the limits of anomalous propagation effects), does concede that Lakenheath
is an unexplained case. Indeed, the Report ends its discussion with the
quite curious admission that, in the Lakenheath episode, "...the probability
that at least one genuine UFO was involved appears to be fairly high."
One could easily become enmeshed in a semantic dispute over the meaning of
the phrase, "one genuine UFO", so I shall simply assert that my own position
is that the Lakenheath case exemplifies a disturbingly large group of UFO
reports in which the apparent degree of scientific inexplicability is so
great that, instead of being ignored and laughed at, those cases should all
along since 1947 have been drawing the attention of a large body of the
world's best scientists. Had the latter occurred, we might now have some
answers, some clues to the real nature of the UFO phenomena. But 22 years of
inadequate UFO investigations have kept this stunning scientific problem out
of sight and under a very broad rug called Project Bluebook, whose final
termination on December 18, 1969 ought to mark the end of an era and the
start of a new one relative to the UFO problem.
More specifically, with cases like Lakenheath and the 1957 RB-47 case and
many others equally puzzling that are to be found within the Condon Report,
I contest Condon's principal conclusion "that further extensive study of
UFOs probably cannot be justified in the expectation that science will be
advanced thereby." And I contest the endorsement of such a conclusion by a
panel of the National Academy of Sciences, an endorsement that appears to be
based upon essentially _zero_ independent scientific cross-checking of case
material in the Report. Finally, I question the judgment of those Air Force
scientific offices and agencies that have accepted so weak a report. The
Lakenheath case is just one example of the basis upon which I rest those
objections. I am prepared to discuss many more examples.
8. The Extraterrestrial Hypothesis:
In this Lakenheath UFO episode, we have evidence of some phenomena defying
ready explanation in terms of present-day science and technology, some
phenomena that include enough suggestion of intelligent control (tail-chase
incident here), or some broadly cybernetic equivalent thereof, that it is
difficult for me to see any reasonable alternative to the hypothesis that
something in the nature of extraterrestrial devices engaged-in something in
the nature of surveillance lies at the heart of the UFO problem. That is the
hypothesis that my own study of the UFO problem leads me to regard as most
probable in terms of my present information. This is, like all scientific
hypotheses, a working hypothesis to be accepted or rejected only on the
basis of continuing investigation. Present evidence surely does not amount
to incontrovertible proof of the extraterrestrial hypothesis. What I find
scientifically dismaying is that, while a large body of UFO evidence now
seems to point in no other direction than the extraterrestrial hypothesis,
the profoundly important implications of that possibility are going
unconsidered by the scientific community because this entire problem has
been imputed to be little more than a nonsense matter unworthy of serious
scientific attention. Those overtones have been generated almost entirely by
scientists and others who have done essentially no real investigation of the
problem-area in which they express such strong opinions. Science is not
supposed to proceed in that manner, and this AAAS Symposium should see an
end to such approaches to the UFO problem.
Put more briefly, doesn't a UFO case like Lakenheath warrant more than a
mere shrug of the shoulders from science?
Case 3. Haneda Air Force Base, Japan, August 5-6, 1952.
Brief summary: USAF tower operators at Haneda AFB observed an unusually
bright bluish-white light to their NE, alerted the GCI radar unit at Shiroi,
which then called for a scramble of an F94 interceptor after getting radar
returns in same general area. GCI ground radar vectored the F94 to an
orbiting unknown target, which the F94 picked up on its airborne radar. The
target then accelerated out of the F94's radar range after 90 seconds of
pursuit that was followed also on the Shiroi GCI radar.
1. Introduction:
The visual and radar sightings at Haneda AFB, Japan, on August 5-6, 1952,
represent an example of a long-puzzling case, still carried as an
unidentified case by Project Bluebook, at my latest check, and chosen for
analysis in the Condon Report. In the latter, is putatively explained in
terms of a combination of diffraction and mirage distortion of the star
Capella, as far as the visual parts are concerned, while the radar portions
are attributed to anomalous propagation. I find very serious difficulties
with those "explanations" and regard them as typical of a number of rather
casually advanced explanations of long-standing UFO cases that appear in the
Condon Report. Because this case has been discussed in such books as those
of Ruppelt, Keyhoe, and Hall, it is of particular interest to carefully
examine case-details on it and then to examine the basis of the Condon
Report's explanation of it, as example of how the Condon Report disposed of
old "classic cases."
Haneda AFB, active during the Korean War, lay about midway between central
Tokyo and central Yokohama, adjacent to Tokyo International Airport. The
1952 UFO incident began with visual sightings of a brilliant object in the
northeastern sky, as seen by two control tower operators going on duty at
2330 LST (all times hereafter will be LST). It will serve brevity to
introduce some coded name designations for these men and for several
officers involved, since neither the Condon Report, nor my copies of the
original Bluebook case-file show names (excised from latter copies in
accordance with Bluebook practice on non-release of witness names in UFO
cases):
Coded Identification
Designation --------------
-----------
Airman A One of two Haneda tower operators who first sighted light.
Rank was A/3c.
Airman B Second Haneda tower operator to first sight light. Rank was
A/1c.
Lt. A Controller on duty at Shiroi GCI unit up to 2400, 8/5/52.
Rank was 1st Lt.
Lt. B Controller at Shiroi after 0000, 8/6/52, also 1st Lt.
Lt. P Pilot of scrambled F94, also 1st Lt.
Lt. R Radar officer in F94, also 1st Lt.
Shiroi GCI Station, manned by the 528th AC&W (Aircraft Control and Warning)
Group, lay approximately 20 miles NE of Haneda (specifically at 35 deg. 49'
N, 140 deg. 2' E) and had a CPS-1 10-cm search radar plus a CPS 10- cm
height-finding radar. Two other USAF facilities figure in the incident,
Tachikawa AFB, lying just over 20 miles WNW of Haneda, and Johnson AFB,
almost 30 miles NW of Waneda. The main radar incidents center over the north
extremity of Tokyo Bay, roughly midway from central Tokyo to Chiba across
the Bay.
The Bluebook case-file on this incident contains 25 pages, and since the
incident predates promulgation of AFR200-2, the strictures on
time-reporting, etc., are not here so bothersome as in the Lakenheath case
of 1956, discussed above. Nevertheless, the same kind of disturbing internal
inconsistencies are present here as one finds in most Bluebook case reports;
in particular, there is a bothersome variation in times given for specific
events in different portions of the case-file. One of these, stressed in the
Condon Report, will be discussed explicitly below; but for the rest, I shall
use those times which appear to yield the greatest over-all internal
consistency. This will introduce no serious errors, since the uncertainties
are mostly only 1 or 2 minutes and, except for the cited instance, do not
alter any important implications regardless of which cited time is used. The
over-all duration of the visual and radar sightings is about 50 minutes. The
items of main interest occurred between 2330 and 0020, approximately.
Although this case involves both visual and radar observations of
unidentified objects, careful examination does not support the view that the
same object was ever assuredly seen visually and on radar at the same time,
with the possible exception of the very first radar detection just after
2330. Thus it is not a "radar-visual" case, in the more significant sense of
concurrent two-channel observations of an unknown object. This point will be
discussed further in Section 5.
2. Visual Observations:
a. First visual detection.
At 2330, Airmen A and B, while walking across the ramp at Haneda AFB to go
on the midnight shift at the airfield control tower, noticed an
"exceptionally bright light" in their northeastern sky. They went
immediately to the control tower to alert two other on-duty controllers to
it and to examine it more carefully with the aid of the 7x50 binoculars
available in the tower. The Bluebook case-file notes that the two
controllers already on tower-duty "had not previously noticed it because the
operating load had been keeping their attention elsewhere. "
b. Independent visual detection at Tachikawa AFB.
About ten minutes later, according to the August 12, 1952, Air Intelligence
Information Report (IR-35-52) in the Bluebook case-file; Haneda was queried
about an unusually bright light by controllers at Tachikawa AFB, 21 miles to
their WNW. IR-35-52 states: "The control tower at Tachikawa Air Force Base
called Haneda tower at approximately 2350 to bring their attention to a
brilliant white light over Tokyo Bay. The tower replied that it had been in
view for some time and that it was being checked."
This feature of the report is significant in two respects: 1) It indicates
that the luminous source was of sufficiently unusual brilliance to cause two
separate groups of Air Force controllers at two airfields to respond
independently and to take alert-actions; and 2) More significantly, the fact
that the Tachikawa controllers saw the source in a direction "over Tokyo
Bay" implies a line-of-sight distinctly south of east. From Tachikawa, even
the north end of the Bay lies to the ESE. Thus the intersection of the two
lines of sight fell somewhere in the northern half of the Bay, it would
appear. As will be seen later, this is where the most significant parts of
the radar tracking occurred subsequently.
c. Direction, intensity, and configuration of the luminous source.
IR-35-52 contains a signed statement by Air man A, a sketch of the way the
luminous source looked through 7-power binoculars, and summary comments by
Capt. Charle"s J. Malven, the FEAF intelligence officer preparing the report
for transmission to Bluebook.
Airman A's own statement gives the bearing of the source as NNE; Malven
summary specifies only NE. Presumably the witness' statement is the more
reliable, and it also seems to be given a greater degree of precision,
whence a line-of-sight azimuth somewhere in the range of 25 to 35 deg. east
of north appears to be involved in the Haneda sightings. By contrast, the
Tachikawa sighting-azimuth was in excess of 90 deg. from north, and probably
beyond 100 deg., considering the geography involved, a point I shall return
to later.
Several different items in the report indicate the high _intensity_ of the
source. Airman A's signed statement refers to it as "the intense bright
light over the Bay." The annotated sketch speaks of "constant brilliance
across the entire area" of the (extended) source, and remarks on "the
blinding effect from the brilliant light." Malven's summary even points out
that "Observers stated that their eyes would fatigue rapidly when they
attempted to concentrate their vision on the object," and elsewhere speaks
of "the brilliant blue-white light of the object." Most of these indications
of brightness are omitted from the Condon Report, yet bear on the Capella
hypothesis in terms of which that Report seeks to dispose of these visual
sightings.
Airman A's filed statement includes the remark that "I know it wasn't a
star, weather balloon or venus, because I compared it with all three." This
calls for two comments. First, Venus is referred to elsewhere in the
case-file, but this is certainly a matter of confusion, inasmuch as Venus
had set that night before about 2000 LST. Since elsewhere in the report
reference is made to Venus lying in the East, and since the only noticeable
celestial object in that sector at that time would have been Jupiter, I
would infer that where "Venus" is cited in the case-file, one should read
"Jupiter." Jupiter would have risen near 2300, almost due east, with
apparent magnitude -2.0. Thus Airman A's assertion that the object was
brighter than "Venus" may probably be taken to imply something of the order
of magnitude -3.0 or brighter. Indeed, since it is most unlikely that any
observer would speak of a -3.0 magnitude source as "blinding" or "fatiguing"
to look at, I would suggest that the actual luminosity, at its periods of
peak value (see below) must have exceeded even magnitude -3 by a substantial
margin.
Airman A's allusion to the intensity as compared with a "weather balloon"
refers to the comparisons (elaborated below) with the light suspended from a
pilot balloon released near the tower at 2400 that night and observed by the
tower controllers to scale the size and brightness. This is a very fortunate
scaling comparison, because the small battery-operated lights long used in
meteorological practice have a known luminosity of about 1.5 candle. Since a
1-candle source at 1 kilometer yields apparent magnitude 0.8, inverse-square
scaling for the here known balloon distance of 2000 feet (see below) implies
an apparent magnitude of about -0.5 for the balloon-light as viewed at time
of launch. Capt. Malven's summary states, in discussing this quite helpful
comparison, "The balloon's light was described as extremely dim and yellow,
when compared to the brilliant blue white light of the object." Here again,
I believe one can safely infer an apparent luminosity of the object well
beyond Jupiter's -2.0. Thus, we have here a number of compatible indications
of apparent brightness well beyond that of any star, which will later be
seen to contradict explanations proposed in the Condon Report for the visual
portions of the Haneda sightings.
Of further interest relative to any stellar source hypothesis are the
descriptions of the _configuration_ of the object as seen with 7-power
binoculars from the Haneda tower, and its approximate _angular diameter_.
Fortunately, the latter seems to have been adjudged in direct comparison
with an object of determinate angular subtense that was in view in the
middle of the roughly 50-minute sighting. At 2400, a small weather balloon
was released from a point at a known distance of 2000 ft from the control
tower. Its diameter at release was approximately 24 inches. (IR-35-52 refers
to it as a "ceiling balloon", but the cloud-cover data contained therein is
such that no ceiling balloon would have been called for. Furthermore, the
specified balloon mass, 30 grams, and diameter, 2 ft, are precisely those of
a standard pilot balloon for upper-wind measurement. And finally, the time
[2400 LST = 1500Z] was the standard time for a pilot balloon run, back in
that period.) A balloon of 2-ft diameter at 2000-ft range would subtend 1
milliradian, or just over 3 minutes of arc, and this was used by the tower
observers to scale the apparent angular subtense of the luminous source. As
IR-35-52 puts it: "Three of the operators indicated the size of the light,
when closest to the tower, was approximately the same as the small ceiling
balloons (30 grams, appearing 24 inches in diameter) when launched from the
weather station, located at about 2000 ft from the tower. This would make
the size of the central light about 50 ft in diameter, when at the 10 miles
distance tracked by GCI.... A lighted weather balloon was launched at 2400
hours..." Thus, it would appear that an apparent angular subtense close to 3
minutes of arc is a reasonably reliable estimate for the light as seen by
naked eye from Haneda. This is almost twice the average resolution-limit of
the human eye, quite large enough to match the reported impressions that it
had discernible extent, i.e., was not merely a point source.
But the latter is very much more clearly spelled out, in any event, for
IR-35-52 gives a fairly detailed description of the object's appearance
through 7-power binoculars. It is to be noted that, if the naked-eye
diameter were about 3 minutes, its apparent subtense when viewed through
7X-binoculars would be about 20 minutes, or two-thirds the naked-eye angular
diameter of the full moon -- quite large enough to permit recognition of the
finer details cited in IR-35-52, as follows: "The light was described as
circular in shape, with brilliance appearing to be constant across the face.
The light appeared to be a portion of a large round dark shape which was
about four times the diameter of the light. When the object was close enough
for details to be seen, a smaller, less brilliant light could be seen at the
lower left hand edge, with two or three more dim lights running in a curved
line along the rest of the lower edge of the dark shape. Only the lower
portion of the darker shape could be determined, due to the lighter sky
which was believed to have blended with the upper side of the object. No
rotation was noticed. No sound was heard."
Keeping in mind that those details are, in effect, described for an image
corresponding in apparent angular size to over half a lunar diameter, the
detail is by no means beyond the undiscernible limit. The sketch included
with IR-35-52 matches the foregoing description, indicating a central disc
of "constant brilliance across entire area (not due to a point source of
light)", an annular dark area of overall diameter 3-4 times that of the
central luminary, and having four distinct lights on the lower periphery,
"light at lower left, small and fairly bright, other lights dimmer and
possibly smaller." Finally, supportive comment thereon is contained in the
signed statement of Airman A. He comments: "After we got in the tower I
started looking at it with binoculars, which made the object much clearer.
Around the bright white light in the middle, there was a darker object which
stood out against the sky, having little white lights along the outer edge,
and a glare around the whole thing."
All of these configurational details, like the indications of a quite un-
starlike brilliance, will be seen below to be almost entirely unexplainable
on the Capella hypothesis with which the Condon Report seeks to settle the
Haneda visual sightings. Further questions ultimately arise from examination
of reported apparent motions of the luminous source, which will be
considered next.
d. Reported descriptions of apparent motions of the luminous source.
Here we meet the single most important ambiguity in the Haneda case-file,
though the weight of the evidence indicates that the luminous object
exhibited definite movements. The ambiguity arises chiefly from the way
Capt. Malven summarized the matter in his IR-35-52 report a week after the
incident; "The object faded twice to the East, then returned. Observers were
uncertain whether disappearance was due to a dimming of the lights, rotation
of object, or to the object moving away at terrific speed, since at times of
fading the object was difficult to follow closely, except as a small light.
Observers did agree that when close, the object did appear to move
horizontally, varying apparent position and speed slightly." Aside from the
closing comment, all of Malven's summary remarks could be interpreted as
implying either solely radial motion (improbable because it would imply the
Haneda observers just happened to be in precisely the spot from which no
crosswise velocity component could be perceived) or else merely illusion of
approach and recession due to some intrinsic or extrinsic time-variation in
apparent brightness.
In contrast to the above form in which Malven summarized the reported
motions, the way Airman A described them in his own statement seems to refer
to distinct motions, including transverse components: "I watched it
disappear twice through the glasses. It seemed to travel to the East and
gaining altitude at a very fast speed, much faster than any jet. Every time
it disappeared it returned again, except for the last time when the jets
were around. It seemed to know they were there. As for an estimate of the
size of the object -- I couldn't even guess." Recalling that elsewhere in
that same signed statement this tower controller had given the observed
direction to the object as NNE, his specification that the object "seemed to
travel to the East" seems quite clearly to imply a non radial motion, since,
if only an impression of the latter were involved, one would presume he
would have spoken of it in some such terms as "climbing out rapidly to the
NNE". Since greater weight is presumably to be placed on direct-witness
testimony than on another's summary thereof, it appears necessary to assume
that not mere radial recession but also transverse components of recession.
upwards and towards the East, were observed.
That the luminous source varied substantially in angular subtense is made
very clear at several points in the case-file: One passage already cited
discusses the "size of the light, when closest to the tower...", while, by
contrast, another says that: "At the greatest distance, the size of the
light appeared slightly larger than Venus, approximately due East of Haneda,
and slightly brighter." (For "Venus" read "Jupiter" as noted above. Jupiter
was then near quadrature with angular diameter of around 40 seconds of arc.
Since the naked eye is a poor judge of comparative angular diameters that
far below the resolution limit, little more can safely be read into that
statement than the conclusion that the object's luminous disc diminished
quite noticeably and its apparent brightness fell to a level comparable to
or a bit greater than Jupiter's when at greatest perceived distance. By
virtue of the latter, it should be noted, one has another basis for
concluding that when at peak brilliance it must have been considerably
brighter than Jupiter's -2.0, a conclusion already reached by other
arguments above.
In addition to exhibiting what seems to imply recession, eastward motion,
and climb to disappearance, the source also disappeared for at least one
other period far too long to be attributed to any scintillation or other
such meteorological optical effect: "When we were about half way across the
ramp (Airman A stated), it disappeared for the first time and returned to
approximately the same spot about 15 seconds later." There were scattered
clouds over Haneda at around 15-16,000 ft, and a very few isolated clouds
lower down, yet it was full moon that night and, if patches of clouds had
drifted very near the controllers' line-of-sight to the object, they could
be expected to have seen the clouds. (The upper deck was evidently thin, for
Capt. Malven notes in his report that "The F94 crew reported exceptional
visibility and stated that the upper cloud layer did not appreciably affect
the brilliancy of the moonlight.") A thin cloud interposed between observer
and a distant luminous source would yield an impression of dimming and
enhanced effective angular diameter, not dimming and reduced apparent size,
as reported here. I believe the described "disappearances" cannot, in view
of these several considerations, reasonably be attributed to cloud effects.
I have now summarized the essential features of the Haneda report dealing
with just the visual observations of some bright luminous source that
initiated the alert and that led to the ground-radar and air borne-radar
observations yet to be described. Before turning to those, which comprise,
in fact, the more significant portion of the over-all sighting, it will be
best to turn next to a critique of the Blue book and the Condon Report
attempts to give an explanation of the visual portions of the sighting.
3. Bluebook Critique of the Visual Sightings:
In IR-35-52. Capt, Malven offers only one hypothesis, and that in only
passing manner: He speculates briefly on whether "reflections off the water
(of the Bay, I presume) were...sufficient to form secondary reflections off
the lower clouds," and by the latter he refers to "isolated patches of thin
clouds reported by the F-94 crew as being at approximately 4000 feet..." He
adds that "these clouds were not reported to be visible by the control tower
personnel," which, in view of the 60-mile visibility cited elsewhere in the
case-file and in view of the full moon then near the local meridian,
suggests that those lower clouds must have been exceedingly widely scattered
to escape detection by the controllers.
What Malven seems to offer there, as an hypothesis for the observed visual
source, is cloud-reflection of moonlight -- and in manner all too typical of
many other curious physical explanations one finds scattered through
Bluebook case-files, he brings in a consideration that reveals lack of
appreciation of what is central to the issue. If he wants to talk about
cloud-reflected moonlight, why render a poor argument even weaker by
invoking not direct moon light but moonlight secondarily reflected off the
surface of Tokyo Bay? Without even considering further that odd twist in his
tentative hypothesis, it is sufficient to note that even direct moonlight
striking a patch of cloud is not "reflected in any ordinary sense of that
term. It is scattered from the cloud droplets and thereby serves not to
create any image of a discrete light source of blinding intensity that
fatigues observers' eyes and does the other things reported by the Haneda
observers, but rather serves merely to palely illuminate a passing patch of
cloud material. A very poor hypothesis.
Malven drops that hypothesis without putting any real stress on it (with
judgment that is not always found where equally absurd "explanations" have
been advanced in innumerable other Bluebook case-files by reporting officers
or by Bluebook staff members). He does add that there was some thunderstorm
activity reported that night off to the northwest of Tokyo, but mentions
that there was no reported electrical activity therein. Since the direction
is opposite to the line of sight and since the reported visual phenomena
bear no relation to lightning effects, this carried the matter no further,
and the report drops that point there.
Finally, Malven mentions very casually an idea that I have encountered
repeatedly in Bluebook files yet nowhere else in my studies of atmospheric
physics, namely, "reflections off ionized portions of the atmosphere." He
states: "Although many sightings might be attributed to visual and
electrical reflections off ionized areas in the atmosphere, the near-perfect
visibility on the night of the sighting, together with the circular orbit of
the object would tend to disprove this theory." Evidently he rejects the
"ionized areas" hypothesis on the ground that presence of such areas is
probably ruled out in view of the unusually good visibility reported that
night. I trust that, for most readers of this discussion, I would only be
belaboring the obvious to remark that Bluebook mythology about radar and
visual "reflections" off "ionized regions" in the clear atmosphere (which
mythology I have recently managed to trace back even to pre-1950 Air Force
documents on UFO reports) has no known basis in fact, but is just one more
of the all too numerous measures of how little scientific critique the Air
Force has managed to bring to bear on its UFO problems over the years.
Although the final Bluebook evaluation of this entire case, including the
visual portions, was and is "Unidentified", indicating that none of the
above was regarded as an adequate explanation of even the visual features of
the report, one cannot overlook extremely serious deficiencies in the basic
report ing and the interrogation and follow-up here. This incident occurred
in that period which my own studies lead me to describe as sort of a
highwater mark for Project Bluebook. Capt. Edward J. Ruppelt was then
Bluebook Officer at Wright-Patterson AFB, and both he and his superiors were
then taking the UFO problem more seriously than it was taken by USAF at any
other time in the past 22 years. Neither before nor after 1952-3 were there
as many efforts made to assemble case-information, to go out and actually
check in the field on sightings, etc. Yet it should be uncomfortably
apparent already at this point in this discussion of the Haneda case that
quite basic points were not run to ground and pinned down. Ruppelt, in his
1956 book, speaks of this Haneda case as if it were regarded as one of the
most completely reported cases they'd received as of mid-1952. He mentioned
that his office sent a query to FEAF offices about a few points of
confusion, and that the replies came back with impressive promptness, etc.
If one needed some specific clue to the regrettably low scientific level of
the operation of Bluebook even during this period of comparatively energetic
case-investigation, one can find it in study of the Haneda report. Even so
simple a matter as checking whether Venus was actually in the East was
obviously left undone; and numerous cross-questions and followup queries on
motions, angles, times, etc., not even thought of. That, I stress, is what
any scientist who studies the Bluebook files as I have done will find all
through 22 years of Air Force handling of the UFO problem. Incompetence and
superficiality -- even at the 1952 highwater mark under Ruppelt's relatively
vigorous Project-direction.
4. Condon Report Critique of the Visual Sightings:
On p. 126 of the Condon Report, the luminous source discussed above is
explained as a diffracted image of the star Capella: "The most likely source
to have produced the visual obJect is the star Capella (magnitude 0.2),
which was 8 deg. above horizon at 37 deg. azimuth at 2400 LST. The precise
nature of the optical propagation mechanism that would have produced such a
strangely diffracted image as reported by the Haneda AFB observers must
remain conjectural."
Suggesting that perhaps "a sharp temperature inversion may have existed at
the top of (an inferred) moist layer, below which patches of fog or mist
could collect," the Report continues as follows: "The observed diffraction
pattern could have been produced by either (1) interference effects
associated with propagation within and near the top of an inversion, or (2)
a corona with a dark aureole produced by a mist of droplets of water of
about 0.2 mm diameter spaced at regular intervals is described by Minnaert
(1954). In either event, the phenomenon must be quite rare. The brightness
of the image may have been due in part to 'Raman brightening' of an image
seen through an inversion layer."
And in the final paragraph discussing this case, the Condon Report merely
rounds it off to: "In summary , it appears that the most probable causes of
this UFO report are an optical effect on a bright light source that produced
the visual sighting..." (and goes on to a remark on the radar portions we
have yet to examine here) .
There are some very serious difficulties with the more specific parts of the
suggested explanation, and the vagueness of the other parts is sufficiently
self-evident to need little comment.
First, nothing in the literature of meteorological optics discusses any
diffraction-produced coronae with a dark annular space extending out to
three or four diameters of the central luminary, such as is postulated in
the above Condon Report explanation. The radial intensity pattern of a
corona may be roughly described as a damped oscillatory radial variation of
luminosity, with zero intensity minima (for the simple case of a
monochromatic luminary) at roughly equal intervals, and no broad light-free
annulus comparable to that described in detail by the Haneda controllers.
Thus, lack of understanding of the nature of coronae is revealed at the
outset in attempting to fit the Haneda observations to such a phenomenon.
Second, droplets certainly do not have to be "spaced at regular intervals"
to yield a corona, and Minnaert's book makes no such suggestion, another
measure of misunderstanding of the meteorological optics here concerned. Nor
is there any physical mechanism operating in clouds capable of yielding any
such regular droplet spacing. Both Minnaert and cloud physics are
misunderstood in that passage.
Third, one quickly finds, by some trial calculations, using the familiar
optical relation (Exner equation) for the radial positions of the minima of
the classical corona pattern, that the cited drop diameter of 0.2 mm = 200
microns was obtained in the Condon Report by back-calculating from a tacit
requirement that the first-order minimum lay close to 3 milliradians, for
these are the values that satisfy the Exner equation for an assumed
wavelength of about 0.5 microns for visible light. This discloses even more
thorough misunderstanding of corona optics, for that first-order minimum
marks not some outer edge of a broad dark annulus as described and sketched
by the Haneda tower operators, but the outer edge of the innermost annulus
of high intensity of diffracted light. This clearly identifies basic
misunderstanding of the matters at hand.
Fourth, the just-cited computation yielded a droplet diameter of 200
microns, which is so large as to be found only in drizzling or raining
clouds and never in thin scattered clouds of the sort here reported, clouds
that scarcely attenuated the full moon's light. That is, the suggestion that
"patches of fog or mist" collected under an hypothesized inversion could
grow droplets of that large size is meteorologically out of the question. If
isolated patches of clouds interposed themselves on an observer's line of
sight to some distant luminary, under conditions of the sort prevailing at
Haneda that night, drop diameters down in the range of 10-20 microns would
be the largest one could expect, and the corona-size would be some 10 to 20
times greater than the 3 milliradians which was plugged into the Exner
equation in the above-cited computation. And this would, of course, not even
begin to match anything observed that night.
Fifth, the vague suggestion that "Raman brightening" or other "interference
effects associated with propagation within and near the top of an inversion"
is involved here makes the same serious error that is made in attempted
optical explanations of other cases in the Condon Report. Here we are asked
to consider that light from Capella, whose altitude was about 8 deg. above
the NE horizon (a value that I confirm) near the time of the Haneda
observations, was subjected to Raman brightening or its equivalent; yet one
of the strict requirements of all such interference effects is that the ray
paths impinge on the inversion surface at grazing angles of incidence of
only a small fraction of a degree. No ground observer viewing Capella at 8
deg. elevation angle could possibly see anything like Raman brightening, for
the pertinent angular limits would be exceeded by one or two orders of
magnitude. Added to this measure of misunderstandlng of the optics of such
interference phenomena in this attempted explanation is the further
difficulty that, for any such situation as is hypothesized in the Condon
Report explanation, the observer's eye must be physically located at or
directly under the index- discontinuity, which would here mean up in the air
at the altitude of the hypothesized inversion. But all of the Haneda
observations were made from the ground level. Negation of Raman brightening
leaves one more serious gap in the Capella hypothesis, since its magnitude
of 0.2 lies at a brightness level well below that of Jupiter, yet the Haneda
observers seem to have been comparing the object's luminosity to Jupiter's
and finding it far brighter, not dimmer.
Sixth, the Condon Report mentions the independent sighting from Tachikawa
AFB, but fails to bring out that the line of sight from that observing site
(luminary described as lying over Tokyo Bay, as seen from Tachikawa) pointed
more than 45 deg. away from Capella, a circumstance fatal to fitting the
Capella hypothesis to both sightings. Jupiter lay due East, not "over Tokyo
Bay" from Tachikawa, and it had been rising in the eastern sky for many
days, so it is, in any event, unlikely to have suddenly triggered an
independent response at Tachikawa that night. And, conversely, the area
intersection of the reported lines of sight from Haneda and Tachikawa falls
in just the North Bay area where Shiroi GCI first got radar returns and
where all the subsequent radar activity was localized.
Seventh, nothing in the proffered explanations in the Condon Report
confronts the reported movements and disappearances of the luminous object
that are described in the Bluebook case-file on Haneda. If, for the several
reasons offered above, we conclude that not only apparent radial motions,
but also lateral and climbing motions were observed, neither diffraction nor
Raman effects can conceivably fit them.
Eighth, the over-all configuration as seen through 7X binoculars,
particularly with four smaller lights perceived on the lower edge of the
broad, dark annulus, is not in any sense explained by the ideas
qualitatively advanced in the Condon Report on the weak basis now remarked.
Ninth, the Condon Report puts emphasis on the point that, whereas Haneda and
Tachikawa observers saw the light, airmen at the Shiroi GCI site went
outside and looked in vain for the light when the plotted radar position
showed one or more targets to their south or south-southeast. This is
correct. But we are quite familiar with both highly directional and
semi-directional light sources on our own technological devices, so the
failure to detect a light from the Shiroi side does not very greatly
strengthen the hypothesis that Capella was the luminary in the Haneda visual
sightings. The same can be said for lack of visual observations from the
F-94, which got only radar returns as it closed on its target,
I believe that it is necessary to conclude that the "explanation" proposed
in the Condon Report for the visual portions of the Haneda case are almost
wholly unacceptable. And I remark that my analysis of many other
explanations in the Condon Report finds them to be about equally weak in
their level of scientific argumentation. We were supposed to get in the
Condon Report a level of critique distinctly better than that which had come
from Bluebook for many years; but much of the critique in that Report is
little less tendentious and ill-based than that which is so dismaying in 22
years of Air Force discussions of UFO cases. The above stands as only one
illustration of the point I make there; many more could be cited.
Next we must examine the radar aspects of the 8/5-6/52 Haneda case.
5. Radar Observations:
Shortly after the initial visual sighting at Haneda, the tower controllers
alerted the Shiroi GCI radar unit (located about 15 miles NE of central
Tokyo), asking them to look for a target somewhere NE of Haneda at an
altitude which they estimated (obviously on weak grounds) to be somewhere
between 1500 and 5000 feet, both those figures appearing in the Bluebook
case-file. Both a CPS-1 search radar and a CPS-4 height-finder radar were
available at Shiroi, but only the first of those picked up the target,
ground clutter interference precluding useful CPS-4 returns. The CPS-1 radar
was a 10-cm, 2-beam set with peak power of 1 megawatt, PRF of 400/sec,
antenna tilt 3 deg., and scan-rate operated that night at 4 rpm. I find no
indication that it was equipped with MTI, but this point is not certain.
It may help to keep the main sequence of events in better time order if I
first put down the principal events that bear on the radar sightings from
ground and air, and the times at which these events occurred. In some
instances a 1-2 minute range of times will be given because the case-file
contains more than a single time for that event as described in separate
sections of the report. I indicate 0015-16 LST (all times still LST) as the
time of first airborne radar contact by the F-94, and discuss that matter in
more detail later, since the Condon Report suggests a quite different time.
Time (LST) Events
----------- ------
2330 Tower controllers at Haneda see bright light to NE, call Shiroi
GCI within a few minutes thereafter.
2330-45 Lt. A, Shiroi radar controller on evening watch, looks for
returns, finds 3-4 stationary blips to NE of Haneda on low
beam of CPS-1.
2345 Lt. B comes on duty for midwatch at Shiroi; he and Lt. A discuss
possible interceptor scramble.
2355 Lt. A calls Johnson AFB, asks for F-94 scramble. Fuel system
trouble causes delay of 5-10 min in the scramble.
0001 Lt. B has unknown in right orbit at varying speeds over north
Tokyo Bay, 8 miles NE of Haneda. Loses contact again.
0003-04 F-94 airborne out of Johnson AFB, Lt. P as pilot, Lt. R,
radarman.
0009-10 Shiroi alerts F-94 to airborne target to its starboard as it
heads down Tokyo Bay, and Lt. p visually identifies target as
C-54 in pattern to land at Haneda. Lt. B instructs Lt. P to
begin search over north Bay area at flight altitude of 5000 ft.
0012 Shiroi regains CPS-1 contact on unknown target in right orbit
over same general area seen before, target splits into three
separate targets, and Lt. B vectors F-94 towards strongest
of three returns.
0015-16 F-94 gets airborne radar contact on moving target at range and
bearing close to vector information, has to do hard starboard
turn to keep on scope as target moves with acceleration across
scope.
0017-18 After 90 seconds pursuit, with no lock-on achieved, target moves
off scope at high speed; Shiroi GCI tracks both unknown and F-94
into its ground clutter, where both are then lost in clutter.
0033 Shiroi releases F-94 from scramble-search.
0040 F-94 visually spots another C-54, over Johnson.
0120 P-94 lands back at Johnson
Thus the period 2330 on 8/5 through about 0018 on 8/6 is of present
interest: Next, events in that period will be examined in closer detail.
a. Initial attempts at radar detection from Shiroi GCI.
When, at about 2335 or so, Haneda requested Shiroi to search the area of the
bay to the NE of Haneda (SSW from Shiroi, roughly), Lt. A, then duty
controller at Shiroi, found his CPS-4 giving too much ground clutter to be
useful for the relatively low estimated heights Haneda had suggested. Those
heights are indicated as 1500-2000 ft in one portion of the case- file,
though Airman A elsewhere gave 5000 ft as his impression of the height.
Clearly, lack of knowledge of size and slant ranges precluded any exact
estimates from Haneda, but they offered the above indicated impressions.
Trying both low and high beams on the CPS-1 search radar, Lt. A did detect
three or four blips "at a position 050 deg. bearing from Haneda, as reported
by the tower, but no definite movement could be ascertained..." The report
gives no information on the range from Shiroi, nor inferred altitude of
those several blips, only the first of a substantial number of missing items
of quite essential information that were not followed up in any Bluebook
inquiries, as far as the case-file shows. No indication of the spacing of
the several targets is given either, so it is difficult to decide whether to
consider the above as an instance of "radar visual" concurrency or not. One
summary discussion in the Bluebook case-file so construes it: "The radar was
directed onto the target by visual observations from the tower. So it can
safely be assumed that both visual and radar contacts involved the same
object." By contrast, the Condon Report takes the position that there were
no radar observations that ever matched the visual observations. The latter
view seems more justified than the former, although the issue is basically
unresolvable. One visual target won't, in any event, match 3-4 radar
targets, unless we invoke the point that later on the main radar target
split up into three separate radar targets, and assume that at 2335, 3-4
unknown objects were airborne and motionless, with only one of these
luminous and visually detectable from Haneda. That is conceivable but
involves too strained assumptions to take very seriously; so I conclude
that, even in this opening radar search, there was not obvious
correspondence between visual and radar unknowns. As we shall see, later on
there was definitely not correspondence, and also the F-94 crew never
spotted a visual target. Thus, Haneda cannot be viewed as a case involving
the kind of "radar-visual" concurrency which does characterize many other
important cases. Nonetheless, both the visual and the radar features,
considered separately, are sufficiently unusual in the Haneda case to regard
them as mutually supporting the view that inexplicable events were seen and
tracked there that night.
One may ask why a radar-detected object was not seen visually, and why a
luminous object was not detected on search radar; and no fully satisfactory
answer lies at hand for either question. It can only be noted that there are
many other such cases in Bluebook files and that these questions stand as
part of the substantial scientific puzzle that centers around the UFO
phenomena. We know that light-sources can be turned off, and we do know that
ECM techniques can fool radars to a certain extent. Thus, we might do well
to maintain open minds when we come to these questions that are so numerous
in UFO case analyses.
b. F-94 scramble.
When Lt. B came on duty at 2345, he was soon able, according to Capt.
Malven's summary in IR-35-52, "to make radar contact on the 50-mile high
beam," whereupon he and Lt. A contacted the ADCC flight controller at
Johnson AFB 35 miles to their west, requesting that an interceptor be
scrambled to investigate the source of the visual and the radar sightings.
An F-94B of the 339th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron, piloted by Lt. P, with
Lt. R operating the APG-33 air-intercept radar, was scrambled, though a
delay of over ten minutes intervened because of fuel-system difficulties
during engine runup. The records show the F-94 airborne at about 0003-04,
and it then took about 10 minutes to reach the Tokyo Bay area. The APG-33
set was a 3-cm (X-band) set with 50 KW power, and lock-on range of about
2500 yards, according to my information. The system had a B-scope, i.e., it
displayed target range vs. azimuth. The case-file notes that: "The APG-33
radar is checked before and after every mission and appeared to be working
normally."
At 0009, Shiroi picked up a moving target near Haneda and alerted the F-94
crew, who had no difficulty identifying it visually as an Air Force C-54 in
the Haneda pattern. The crew is quoted in the report as reporting
"exceptional visibility." Shiroi instructed the F-94 to begin searching at
5000 ft altitude as it got out over the Bay. But before proceeding with
events of that search, a GCI detection of a moving target at about 0001 must
be reviewed.
c. First GCI detection of orbiting object.
Just before the F-94 became airborne out of Johnson AFB, Lt. B picked up the
first definitely unusual moving target, at about 0000-01. His statement in
the Bluebook case-file reads: "At the time of the scramble, I had what was
believed to be the object in radar contact. The radar sighting indicated the
object to be due south of this station over Tokyo Bay and approximately
eight (8) miles northeast of Haneda. The target was in a right orbit moving
at varying speeds. It was impossible to estimate speed due to She short
distance and times involved." That passage is quoted in the Condon Report,
but not the next, which comes from Malven's summary and indicates that Lt. B
only meant that it was impossible to estimate the target's speed with much
accuracy. The omitted passage is interesting, for it is one of a number of
indications that anomalous propagation (which is the Condon Report's
explanation for the radar sightings) is scarcely creditable: "An F-94 was
scrambled to investigate. The object at this time had left the ground
clutter and could be tracked (on the CPS-1) at varying speeds in a right
orbit. Although impossible to accurately estimate speed, Lt. B gave a rough
estimate of 100-150 knots, stopping, and hovering occasionally, and a
maximum speed during the second orbit (just before F-94 was vectored in) of
possibly 250-300 knots."
A map accompanying IR-35-52 shows the plotted orbiting path of the unknown
target. The orbit radius is approximately 4 miles, centered just off the
coast from the city of Funabashi, east of Tokyo. The orbiting path is about
half over land, half over water. The map sketch, plus the file comments,
imply that GCI had good contacts with the target only while it was moving
out over the Bay. The ground-clutter pattern of the CPS-1 is plotted on the
same map (and on other maps in the file), and it seems clear that the
difficulty in tracking the target through the land portion of the roughly
circular orbit was that most of that portion lay within the clutter area.
The presumption is strong that this set did not have MTI, which is
unfortunate.
The circumference of the orbit of about 4-mi radius would be about 25 miles.
Taking Lt. B's rough estimate of 100-150 knots in the first of the two
circuits of this orbit (i.e., the one he detected at about 0001), a total
circuit-time of perhaps 12-13 minutes is indicated. Although the basis for
this time-estimate is quite rough, it matches reasonably well the fact that
it was about 0012 when it had come around again, split up into three
targets, and looped onshore again with the F-94 in pursuit this time.
If the object executing the above orbits had been the luminous object being
watched from Haneda, it would have swung back and forth across their sky
through an azimuth range of about 30 deg. Since no such motion seems to have
been noted by the Haneda observers, I believe it must be concluded that the
source they watched was distinct from the one radar-tracked in orbit.
d. Second orbit and F-94 intercept attempt.
The times given in Lt. B's account of this phase of the sighting do not
match those given by the pilot and radarman of the F-94 in their signed
statements in the file. Other accounts in the file match those of the
aircrew, but not the times in Lt. B's summary. This discrepancy (about 10-12
minutes) is specifically noted in Capt. Malven's IR-35-52 summary: "The ten
minute difference in time between the statement by Lt. B, 528th ACGW SQ, and
that reported by other personnel concerned, is believed to be a
typographical error, since the statement agrees on every other portion of
the sighting." That Lt. B and the aircrew were describing one and the same
intercept seems beyond any doubt; and in view of Malven's quoted comment, I
here use the times recorded by the aircrew and accepted as the correct times
in other parts of the case-file. Further comment on this will be given
below.
After completing the first of the two orbits partially tracked by GCI
Shiroi, the target came around again where it was out of the CPS-1 ground-
clutter pattern, and Lt. B regained contact. Malven's summary comments on
the next developments as follows: "At 0012 the object reportedly broke into
three smaller contacts, maintaining an interval of about 1/4 miles, with one
contact remaining somewhat brighter. The F-94 was vectored on this object,
reporting weak contact at 1500 and loss of contact at 0018. Within a few
seconds, both the F-94 and the object entered the ground clutter and were
not seen again."
The same portion of the incident is summarized in Lt. B's account (with
different times), with the F-94 referred to by its code-name "Sun Dial 20."
Immediately following the part of his account referring to the first
starboard orbit in which he had plotted the target's movements, at around
0001, comes the following section: "Sun Dial 20 was ordered to search the
Tokyo Bay area keeping a sharp lookout for any unusual occurrences. The
obJect was again sighted by radar at 0017 on a starboard orbit in the same
area as before. Sun Dial 20 was vectored to the target. He reported contact
at 0025 and reported losing contact at 0028. Sun Dial 20 followed the target
into our radar ground clutter area and we were unable to give Sun Dial 20
further assistance in re- establishing contact. Sun Dial 20 again resumed
his visual search of the area until 0014, reporting negative visual sighting
on this object at any time." If Malven's suggestion of typographical error
is correct, the in-contact times in the foregoing should read 0015 and 0018,
and presumably 0017 should be 0012. But regardless of the precise times, the
important point is that Lt. B vectored the F-94 into the target, contact was
thereby achieved, and Lt. B followed the target and pursuing F-94
northeastward into his ground clutter. I stress this because, in the Condon
Report, the matter of the different times quoted is offered as the sole
basis of a conclusion that ground radar and airborne radar were never
following the same target. This is so clearly inconsistent with the actual
contents of the case-file that it is difficult to understand the Report
rationale.
Even more certain indication that the GCI radar was tracking target and F-
94 in this crucial phase is given in the accounts prepared and signed by the
pilot and his radarman. Here again we meet a code-designation, this time
"Hi- Jinx", which was the designation for Shiroi GCI used in the
air-to-ground radio transmissions that night and hence employed in these
next two accounts. The F-94 pilot, Lt. P states: "The object was reported to
be in the Tokyo Bay area in an orbit to the starboard at an estimated
altitude of 5,000 feet. I observed nothing of an unusual nature in this
area; however, at 0016 when vectored by Hi-Jinx on a heading of 320 degrees,
and directed to look for a bogie at 1100 o'clock, 4 miles, Lt. R made radar
contact at 10 degrees port, 6000 yards. The point moved rapidly from port to
starboard and disappeared from the scope. I had no visual contact with the
target."
And the signed statement from the radarman, Lt. R, is equally definite about
these events: "At 0015 Hi-Jinx gave us a vector of 320 degrees. Hi-Jinx had
a definite radar echo and gave us the vector to intercept the unidentified
target. Hi-Jinx estimated the target to be at 11 o'clock to us at a range of
4 miles. At 0016 I picked up the radar contact at 10 degrees port, 10
degrees below at 6,000 yards. The target was rapidly moving from port to
starboard and a 'lock on' could not be accomplished. A turn to the starboard
was instigated to intercept target which disappeared on scope in
approximately 90 seconds. No visual contact was made with the unidentified
target. We continued our search over Tokyo Bay under Hi-Jinx control. At
0033 Hi-Jinx released us from scrambled mission..."
Of particular importance is the very close agreement of the vectoring
instructions given by Shiroi GCI to the F-94 and the actual relative
position at which they accomplished radar contact; GCI said 4 miles range at
the aircraft's 11 o'clock position, and they actually got radar contact with
the moving target at a 6000-yard range, 10 degrees to their port. Nearly
exact aqreement, and thus incontrovertibly demonstrating that ground-radar
and airborne radar were then looking at the same moving unknown target,
despite the contrary suggestions made in the Condon Report. Had the Condon
Report presented all of the information in the case-file, it would have been
difficult to maintain the curious position that is maintained all of the way
to the final conclusion about these radar events in the Condon Report's
treatment of the Haneda case.
That the moving target, as seen by both ground and airborne radar was a
distinct target, though exhibiting radar cross-section somewhat smaller than
that typical of most aircraft, is spelled out in Malven's IR-35-52 summary:
"Lt.B, GCI Controller at the Shiroi GCI site, has had considerable
experience under all conditions and thoroughly understands the capabilities
of the CPS-1 radar. His statement was that the object was a bonafide moving
target, though somewhat weaker than that normally obtained from a single jet
fighter." And, with reference to the airborne radar contact, the same report
states; "Lt. R, F-94 radar operator, has had about seven years' experience
with airborne radar equipment. He states that the object was a bonafide
target, and that to his knowledge, there was nothing within an area of 15-20
miles that could give the radar echo." It is exceedingly difficult to follow
the Condon Report in viewing such targets as due to anomalous propagation.
Not only were there no visual sightings of the orbiting target as viewed
from the F-94, but neither were there any from the Shiroi site, though Lt. B
specifically sent men out to watch as these events transpired. Also, as
mentioned earlier, it seems out of the question to equate any of the Haneda
visual observations to the phase of the incident just discussed. Had there
been a bright light on the unknown object during the time it was in
starboard orbit, the Haneda observers would almost certainly have reported
those movements. To be sure, the case-file is incomplete in not indicating
how closely the Haneda observers were kept in touch as the GCI directed
radar- intercept was being carried out. But at least it is clear that the
Haneda tower controllers did not describe motions of the intensely bright
light that would fit the roughly circular starboard orbits of radius near
four miles. Thus, we seem forced to conclude either that the target the F-94
pursued was a different one from that observed at Haneda (likely
interpretation), or that it was non-luminous during that intercept (unlikely
alternative, since Haneda observations did not have so large a period of
non-visibility of the source they had under observation 2330-0020).
6. Condon Report Critique of the Radar Sightings:
The Bluebook case-file contains essentially no discussion of the radar
events, no suggestion of explanations in terms of any electronic or
propagational anomalies. The case was simply put in the Unexplained category
back in 1952 and has remained in that category since then at Bluebook.
By contrast, the Condon Report regards the above radar events as
attributable to anomalous propagation. Four reasons are offered (p. 126) in
support of that conclusion;
1) The tendency for targets to disappear and reappear;
2) The tendency for the target to break up into smaller targets;
3) The apparent lack of correlation between the targets seen on the GCI and
airborne radars;
4) The radar invisibility of the target when visibility was "exceptionally
good."
Each of these four points will now be considered.
First, the "tendency for the targets to disappear and reappear" was
primarily a matter of the orbiting target's moving into and out of the
ground- clutter pattern of the CPS-1, as is clearly shown in the map that
constitutes Enclosure #5 in the IR-35-52 report, which was at the disposal
of the Colorado staff concerned with this case. Ground returns from AP
(anomalous propagation) may fade in and out as ducting intensities vary, but
here we have the case of a moving target disappearing into and emerging from
ground clutter, while executing a roughly circular orbit some 4 miles in
radius. I believe it is safe to assert that nothing in the annals of
anomalous propagation matches such behavior. Nor could the Borden-Vickers
hypothesis of "reflections" off moving waves on inversions fit this
situation, since such waves would not propagate in orbits, but would, at
best, advance with the direction and speed of the mean wind at the
inversion. Furthermore, the indicated target speed in the final phases of
the attempted intercept was greater than that of the F-94, i.e., over 400
knots, far above wind speeds prevailing that night, so this could not in any
event be squared with the (highly doubtful) Borden-Vickers hypothesis that
was advanced years ago to account for the 1952 Washington National Airport
UFO incidents.
Second, the breakup of the orbiting target into three separate targets
cannot fairly be referred to as a "tendency for the target to break up into
smaller targets." That breakup event occurred in just one definite instance,
and the GCI controller chose to vector the F-94 onto the strongest of the
resultant three targets. And when the F-94 initiated radar search in the
specific area (11 o'clock at 4 miles) where that target was then moving, it
immediately achieved radar contact. For the Condon Report to gloss over such
definite features of the report and merely allude to all of this in language
faintly suggestive of AP seems objectionable.
Third, to build a claim that there was "apparent lack of correlation between
the targets seen on the GCI and airborne radars" on the sole basis of the
mismatch of times listed by Lt. B on the one hand and by the aircrew on the
other hand, to ignore the specific statement by the intelligence officer
filing IR-35-52 about this being a typographical error on the part of Lt. B,
and, above all, to ignore the obviously close correspondence between GCI and
air borne radar targeting that led to the successful radar-intercept, and
finally to ignore Lt. B's statement that the F-94 "followed the target into
our radar ground clutter", all amount to a highly slanted assessment of case
details, details not openly set out for the reader of the Condon Report to
evaluate for himself. I believe that all of the material I have here
extracted from the Haneda case file fully contradicts the third of the
Condon Report four reasons for attributing the radar events to AP. I would
suggest that it is precisely the impressive correlation between GCI and F-94
radar targeting on this non-visible, fast-moving object that constitutes the
most important feature of the whole case.
Fourth, it is suggested that AP is somehow suspected because of "the radar
invisibility of the target when visibility was 'exceptionally good.'" This
is simply unclear. The exceptional visibility of the atmosphere that night
is not physically related to "radar invisibility" in any way, and I suspect
this was intended to read "the invisibility of the radar target when
visibility was exceptionally good." As cited above, neither the Shiroi crew
nor the F-94 crew ever saw any visible object to match their respective
radar targets. Under some circumstances, such a situation would indeed be
diagnostic of AP. BUt not here, where the radar target is moving at high
speed around an orbit many miles in diameter, occasionally hovering
motionless (see Malven's account cited earlier), and changing speed from
100-150 knots up to 250-300 knots, and finally accelerating to well above an
F-94's 375-knot speed.
Thus, _all four_ of the arguments offered in the Condon Report to support
its claim that the Haneda radar events were due to anomalous propagation
must be rejected. Those arguments seem to me to be built up by a highly
selective extraction of details from the Bluebook case-file, by ignoring the
limits of the kind of effects one can expect from AP, and by using wording
that so distorts key events in the incident as to give a vague impression
where the facts of the case are really quite specific.
It has, of course, taken more space to clarify this Haneda case than the
case is given in the Condon Report itself. Unfortunately, this would also
prove true of the clarification of some fifteen to twenty other UFO cases
whose "explanation" in the Condon Report contains, in my opinion, equally
objectionable features, equally casual glossing-over of physical principles,
of important quantitative points. Equally serious omissions of basic case
information mark many of those case discussions in the Condon Report. Here I
have used Haneda only as an illustration of those points; but I stress that
it is by no means unique. The Condon Report confronted a disappointingly
small sample of the old "classic" cases, the long-puzzling cases that have
kept the UFO question alive over the years, and those few that it did
confront it explained away by argumentation as unconvincing as that which
disposes of the Haneda AFB events in terms of diffraction of Capella and
anomalous propagation. Scientifically weak argumentation is found in a large
fraction of the case analyses of the Condon Report, and stands as the
principal reason why its conclusions ought to be rejected.
Here are some other examples of UFO cases considered explained in the Condon
Report for which I would take strong exception to the argumentation
presented and would regard as both unexplained and of strong scientific
interest (page numbers in Condon Report are indicated): Flagstaff, Ariz.,
5/20/50 (p. 245); Washington, D. C., 7/19/52 (p. 153); Bellefontaine, O.,
8/1/52 (p. 161); Gulf of Mexico, 12/6/52 (p. 148); Odessa, Wash., 12/10/52
(p. 140); Continental Divide, N.M., 1/26/53 (p. 143); Seven Isles, Quebec,
6/29/54 (p. 139); Niagara Falls, N.Y., 7/25/57 (p. 145); Kirtland AFB, N.M.,
11/4/57 (p. 141); Gulf of Mexico, 11/5/57 (p. 165); Peru, 12/30/66 (p. 280);
Holloman AFB, 3/2/67 (p. 150); Kincheloe AFB, 9/11/67 (p. 164); Vandenberg
AFB, 10/6/67 (p. 353).
Case 4. Kirtland AFB, Novemeber 4, 1957.
Brief summary: Two CAA control tower operators observe a lighted egg-shaped
object descend to and cross obliquely the runway area at Kirtland AFB
(Albuquerque), hover near the ground for tens of seconds, then climb at
unprecedented speed into the overcast. On radar, it was then followed south
some miles, where it orbited a number of minutes before returning to the
airfield to follow an Air Force aircraft outbound from Kirtland.
1. Introduction:
This case, discussed in the Condon Report on p. 141, is an example of a UFO
report which had lain in Bluebook files for years, not known to anyone
outside of Air Force circles.
Immediately upon reading it, I became quite curious about it; more candidly,
I became quite suspicious about it. For, as you will note on reading it for
yourself, it purports to explain an incident in terms of an hypothesis with
some glaringly improbable assumptions, and makes a key assertion that is
hard to regard as factual. Let me quote from the first descriptive
paragraph: "Observers in the CAA (now FAA) control tower saw an unidentified
dark object with a white light underneath, about the 'shape of an automobile
on end', that crossed the field at about 1500 ft and circled as if to come
in for a landing on the E-W runway. This unidentified object appeared to
reverse direction at low altitude, while out of sight of the observers
behind some buildings, and climbed suddenly to about 200-300 ft., heading
away from the field on a 120 deg. course. Then it went into a steep climb
and disappeared into the overcast." The Condon Report next notes that; "The
Air Force view is that this UFO was a small, powerful private aircraft,
flying without flight plan, that became confused and attempted a landing at
the wrong airport. The pilot apparently realized his error when he saw a
brightly-lit restricted area, which was at the point where the object
reversed direction..." The Report next remarks very briefly that the radar
blip from this object was described by the operator as a "perfectly normal
aircraft return", that the radar tract "showed no characteristics that would
have been beyond the capabilities of the more powerful private aircraft
available at the time," and the conclusion arrived at in the Condon Report,
without further discussion, is that; "There seems to be no reason to doubt
the accuracy of this analysis."
2. Some Suspect Features of the Condon Report's Explanation
It seemed to me that there were several reasons "to doubt the accuracy of
this analysis." First, let me point out that the first line or two of the
account in the Condon Report contains information that the incident took
place with "light rain over the airfield", late in the evening (2245-2305
MST), which I found to be correct, on checking meteorological records. Thus
the reader is asked to accept the picture of a pilot coming into an
unfamiliar airfield at night and under rain conditions, and doing a 180 deg.
return at so low an altitude that it could subsequently climb suddenly to
about 200-300 ft; and we are asked to accept the picture of this highly
hazardous low-altitude nighttime turn being executed so sharply that it
occurred "while out of sight of the observers behind some buildings." Now
these are not casual bystanders doing the observing, but CAA controllers in
a tower designed and located to afford full view of all aircraft operations
occurring in or near its airfield. Hence my reaction to all of this was a
reaction of doubt. Pilots don't live too long who execute strange and
dangerous maneuvers of the type implied in this explanation. And CAA towers
are not located in such a manner that "buildings" obscure so large a block
of airfield-airspace as to permit aircraft to do 180 deg. turns while hidden
from tower view behind them (at night, in a rain!).
3. Search for the Principal Witnesses:
The foregoing points put such strong a priori doubt upon the "private
aircraft" explanation advanced in the Condon Report that I began an
independent check on this case, just as I have been checking several dozen
other Condon Report cases in the months since publication of the Report.
Here, as in all other cases in the Report, there are no witness-names given
to facilitate independent check, but by beginning my inquiries through the
FAA, I soon got in touch with the two CAA tower observers, both of whom are
still with FAA, one in Oklahoma, one in California. Concurrently, I
initiated a number of inquiries concerning the existence of any structures
back in 1957 that could have hidden an aircraft from tower view in the
manner suggested by the Report. What I ultimately learned constitutes only
one example of many that back up the statement I have been making recently
to many professional groups: The National Academy of Sciences is going to be
in a most awkward position when the full picture of the inadequacies of the
Condon Report is recognized; for I believe it will become all too obvious
that the Academy placed its weighty stamp on this dismal report without even
a semblance of rigorous checking of its contents.
The two tower controllers, R. M. Kaser and E. G. Brink, with whom I have had
a total of five telephone interviews in the course of clarifying the case,
explained to me that the object was so unlike an aircraft and exhibited
performance characteristics so unlike those of any aircraft flying then or
now that the "private aircraft" explanation was quite amusing. Neither had
heard of the Air Force explanation, neither had heard of the Condon Project
concurrence therein, and, most disturbing of all, neither had ever heard of
the Condon Project: _No one on the Condon Project ever contacted these two
men!_ A half-million-dollar Project, a Report filled with expensive trivia
and matters shedding essentially no light on the heart of the UFO: puzzle,
and no Project investigator even bothers to hunt down the two key witnesses
in this case, so casually closed by easy acceptance of the Bluebook
"aircraft" explanation.
Failure to locate those two men as part of the investigation of this case is
all the more difficult to understand because CAA tower operators involved as
witnesses of a UFO incident were actually on duty would seem to constitute
just the type of witnesses one should most earnestly seek out in attempts to
clarify the UFO puzzle. In various sections of the Condon Report, witness-
shortcomings (lack of experience, lack of familiarity with observing things
in the sky, basic lack of credibility, etc.) are lamented, yet here, where
the backgrounds of the witnesses and the observing circumstances are highly
favorable to getting reliable testimony, the Colorado group did not bother
to locate the witnesses. (This is not an isolated example. Even in cases
which were conceded to be Unexplained, such as the June 23, 1955 Mohawk
Airlines multiple-witness sighting near Utica, N.Y. [p. 143 in Report], or
the Jackson, Alabama, November 14, 1956 airline case, both conceded to be
unexplained, I found on interviewing key witnesses as part of my cross-check
on the Condon Report, that no one from Colorado had ever talked to the
witnesses. In still other important instances, only a fraction of the
available witnesses were queried in preparing the Condon Report. Suggestions
that the Report was based on intensive investigatory work simply are not
correct.)
4. Information Gained from Witness-Interviews:
When I contacted Kaser and Brink, they told me I was the first person to
query them on the case since their interrogation by an Air Force captain
from Colorado Springs, who had come to interview them at Kirtland just after
the incident. Subsequently, I secured the Bluebook case-file on this
sighting, and ascertained that a Capt. Patrick O. Shere, from Ent AFB did
the interrogation on Nov. 8, 1957, just four days after the sighting.
The accounts I secured in 1969 from Kaser and Brink matched impressively the
information I found in Shere's 1957 report in the Bluebook case-file. There
were a few recollective discrepancies of distance or time estimates in the
witness accounts given in 1969, as compared with their 1957 statements to
the Air Force, but the agreements were far more significant than the small
number of mismatches.
In contrast to the somewhat vague impressions I gained (and other readers
would surely also gain) from reading the Condon Report version, here is what
is in the Bluebook case-file and what they told me directly.
The object came down in a rather steep dive at the east end of Runway 26,
left the flight line, crossed runways, taxiways and unpaved areas at about a
30-degree angle, and proceeded southwestward towards the CAA tower at an
altitude they estimated at a few tens of feet above ground. Quickly getting
7x binoculars on it, they established that it had no wings, tail, or
fuselage, was elongated in the vertical direction, and exhibited a somewhat
eggshaped form (Kaser). It appeared to be perhaps 15-20 ft in vertical
dimension, about the size of an automobile on end, and had a single white
light in its base. Both men were emphatic in stressing to me that _it in no
way resembled an aircraft._
It came towards them until it reached a B-58 service pad near the northeast
corner of Area D (Drumhead Area, a restricted area lying south of the E-W
runway at Kirtland). That spot lay about 3000 ft ENE of the tower, near an
old machine-gun calibration bunker still present at Kirtland AFB. There it
proceeded to stop completely, hover just above ground _in full view_ for a
time that Kaser estimated at about 20 seconds, that Brink suggested to me
was more like a minute, and that the contemporary Air Force interrogation
implied as being rather more than a minute. Next they said it started moving
again, still at very low altitude, Still at modest speed, until it-again
reached the eastern boundary of the field. At that point, the object climbed
at an extremely rapid rate (which Kaser said was far faster than that of
such modern jets as the T-38).
The Bluebook report expresses the witness' estimate of the climb rate as
45,000 ft/min, which is almost certainly a too-literal conversion from Mach
1. My phone-interview notes include a quote of Brink's statement to me that,
"There was no doubt in my mind that no aircraft I knew of then, or ever
operating since then, would compare with it. " Both men were emphatic in
stating to me that at no time was this object hidden by any buildings. I
confirmed through the Albuquerque FAA office that Area D has never had
anything but chain-link fence around it, and that no buildings other than
scattered one-story metal buildings ever existed either inside or outside
Area D in that sector. The bunker is only about 15-20 feet high, judging
from my own recent observations and photos of it from the air. The Bluebook
interrogation report contains no statements hinting that the object was ever
hidden from view by any structures (although the Bluebook file contains the
usual number of internally inconsistent and confusingly presented details).
I asked both men whether they alerted anyone else while the foregoing
events were taking place. They both indicated that the object was of such
unprecedented nature that it wasn't until it shot up into the overcast that
they got on the phone to get the CAA Radar Approach Control (RAPCON) unit
to look for a fast target to the east. Kaser recalled that a CPN-18
surveillance radar was in use at that RAPCON unit at that time, a point
confirmed to me in subsequent correspondence with the present chief of the
Albuquerque Airport Traffic Control Tower, Mr. Robert L. Behrens, who also
provided other helpful information. Unfortunately, no one who was in the
Albuquerque/Kirtland RAPCON unit in 1957 is now available, and the person
whom Kaser thought was actually on the CPN-18 that night is now deceased.
Thus I have only Kaser and Brink recollections of the radar-plotting of the
unknown, plus the less than precise information in the Nov. 6, 1957 TWX to
Bluebook. Capt. Shere did not, evidently, take the trouble to secure any
information from radar personnel.
As seen on the RAPCON CPN-18, the unknown target was still moving in an
easterly direction when the alert call came from the tower. It then turned
southward, and as Kaser recalled, moved south at very high speed, though
nothing is said about speed in the Kirtland TWX of Nov. 6, 1957. It
proceeded a number of miles south towards the vicinity of the Albuquerque
Low Frequency Range Station, orbited there for a number of minutes, came
back north to near Kirtland, took up a trail position about a half-mile
behind an Air Force C-46 just then leaving Kirtland, and moved offscope with
the C-46. The Nov. 8, 1957 report from Commander, 34th Air Div. to ADC and
to the Air Technical Intelligence Command closed with the rather reasonable
comment: "Sighting and descriptions conform to no known criteria for
identification of UFOs." The followup report of Nov. 13, 1957, prepared by
Air Intelligence personnel from Ent AFB, contains a number of relevant
comments on the experience of the two witnesses (23 years of tower control
work between them as of that date), and on their intelligence, closing with
the remarks: "In the opinion of the interviewer, both sources (witnesses)
are considered completely competent and reliable."
5. Critique of the Evaluation in the Condon Report:
The Kirtland AFB case is a rather good (though not isolated) instance of the
general point I feel obliged to make on the basis of my continuing check of
the Condon Report: In it we have not been given anything superior to the
generally casual and often incompetent level of case-analysis that marked
Bluebook's handling of the UFO problem in past years.
In the Bluebook files, this case is carried as "Possible Aircraft". Study of
the 21-page case-file reveals that this is based solely on passing comment
made by Capt. Shere in closing his summary letter of November 8: "The
opinion of the preparing officer is that this object may possibly have been
an unidentified aircraft, possibly confused by the runways at Kirtland AFB.
The reasons for this opinion are: (a) The observers are considered competent
and reliable sources, and in the opinion of this interviewer actually saw an
object they could not identify. (b) The object was tracked on a radar scope
by a competent operator. (c) The object does not meet identification
criteria for any other phenomena."
The stunning non sequitur of that final conclusion might serve as an epitome
of 22 years of Air Force response to unexplainable objects in our airspace.
But when one then turns to the Condon Report's analysis and evaluation, a
Report that was identified to the public and the scientific community as the
definitive study of UFOs, no visible improvement is found. Ignoring almost
everything of interest in the case-file except that a lighted airborne
object came down near Kirtland airfield and left, the Condon Report covers
this whole intriguing case in two short paragraphs, cites the Air Force
view, embellishes it a bit by speaking of the lost aircraft as "powerful"
(presumably to account for its observed Mach 1 climb-out) and suggesting
that it was "flying without flight plan" (this explains why it was wandering
across runways and taxiways at night, in a rain, at an altitude of a few
tens of feet), and the Report then closes off the case with a terse
conclusion: "There seems to be no reason to doubt the accuracy of this
analysis.
Two telephone calls to the two principal witnesses would have confronted the
Colorado investigators with emphatic testimony, supporting the contents
(though not the conclusions) of the Bluebook file, and that would have
rendered the suggested "powerful private aircraft" explanation untenable. By
not contacting the witnesses and by overlooking most of the salient features
of the reported observations, this UFO report has been left safely in the
"explained" category where Bluebook put it. One has here a sample of the low
scientific level of investigative and evaluative work that will be so
apparent to any who take the trouble to study carefully and thoroughly the
Condon Report on UFOs. AAAS members are urged to study it carefully for
themselves and to decide whether it would be scientifically advisable to
accept it as the final word on the 22-year-long puzzle of the UFO problem. I
submit that it is most inadvisable.
** End of File **
Don
--- FMail 0.92
* Origin: ** I tried to contain myself but I escaped ** (1:123/26.1)