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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.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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 oniy 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.
irtland 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.
