1952 Washington D.C. Sightings

During the dawn of Ufology in the United States, unidentified flying objects made themselves known to the leaders of the free world in 1952, buzzing over the White House, the Capitol building, and the Pentagon.Seemingly the unknown objects were defying the very governmental agencies sworn to protect the United States from foreign powers.

Washington National Airport and Andrews Air Force Base picked up a number of UFOs on their radar screens on July 19, 1952, beginning a wave of sightings still unexplained to this day.

These blips were objects traveling at about 100 M.P.H. but with the ability to accelerate to the unbelievable speed of 7,200 M.P.H.

The Washington National sighting was confirmed by other local radar, and then Andrews Air Force Base was contacted.

Washington Tower:

Andrews Tower, do you read? Did you have an airplane in sight west-northwest or east of your airport moving east-bound?

Andrews: No, but we just got a call from the center. We’re looking for it.

Washington: We’ve got a big target showing up on our scope. He’s just coming in on the west edge of your airport-the northwest edge of it eastbound. He’ll be passing right through the northern portion of your field on an east heading. He’s about a quarter of a mile from the northwest runway-right over the edge of your northwest runway now.

Andrews: What happened to your target now?

Washington: He’s still eastbound. He went directly over Andrews Fields and is now five miles east.

Andrews: Where did he come from?

Washington: We picked him up ourselves at about seven miles east, slightly southeast, and we have been tracking him ever since then. The Center has been tracking him farther than that.

Andrews: Was he waving his course?

Washington: Holding steady course, due east heading.

Andrews: This is Andrews. Our radar tracking says he’s got a big fat target out here northeast of Andrews. He says he’s got two more south of the field.

Washington: Yes, well the center has about four or five around the Andrews Range station. The Center is working a National Airlines – the center is working him and vectoring him around his target. He went around Andrews. He saw one of them – looks like a meteor. (Garbled)… Went by him… or something.

He said he’s got one about three miles off his right wing right now. There are so many targets around here it is hard to tell as they are not moving very fast.

Andrews: What about his altitude?

Washington: Well, must be over 8,000 feet as we don’t have him in radar any more.

Andrews Air Force Base notified the U.S. Air Force Air Defense Command. A couple of F-94 night fighters were ordered to the skies, but runway repairs held their mission up for several hours. By the time they were airborne, the mysterious objects were gone.

The fighters returned home, but soon the objects again showed up on the radar screens. For the next several hours, the fighters chased the illusive targets, but to no avail.

They were able to sight the UFOs, but lights of the unknown objects would darken as they were approached. Constant communication was kept with ground radar, and as the pilots lost sight of the UFOs, they also disappeared from ground radar. The UFOs were also separately witnessed by the crew of a B-29, and other commercial flights.

After a quiet week, the objects reappeared on July 26. After multiple radar operators confirmed the objects, the F-94s again began their search for the enigmatic lights over Washington. The results of their pursuit were identical to the week before. They could see the lights, but when they drew near, the lights would blackout.

After their fruitless journey, the planes returned home, only to hear that the objects again were being tracked by radar. One of the pilots stated his fear and frustration by air to ground radio.

“They’ve surrounded my plane, what should I do?” The phenomenal sights would bring about an Air Force press conference on July 29, with Major General John A. Samford in charge.

The official explanation was “temperature inversions,” which supposedly caused ground lights to bounce off of clouds, giving the appearance of lighted craft in the skies. The naive and trusting press accepted this explanation at first, in lieu of any other “reasonable” one.

This explanation was scoffed at, however, by Ufologists, knowing that it just did not explain what was seen by pilots and radar operators. Even Project Bluebook would also dismiss the “temperature inversion” explanation, as it later labeled the Washington sightings as “unknown.”

The radar operators offered their own reason for the rejecting the Air Force explanation. Radar controller Barnes would state, “Inversion blips are always recognized by experts, we are familiar with what weather conditions, flying birds, and [other] such things can cause on radar.

Temperature inversions on radar are typically weak returns and move at a slow ground speed. These blips were distinctly clear, reported as a very good return, solid and often traveled at unbelievable speeds.”

The Washington D. C. sightings are a solid case of UFO activity. Literally hundreds of eyewitnesses saw the objects, and photographed them. Many of these were Air Force personnel, considered as reliable. Many of them made comment of the sightings, one was a Sergeant Harrison: “I saw the … light moving from the Northeast toward the range station.

These lights did not have the characteristics of shooting stars. There were no trails and seemed to go out rather than disappear, and traveled faster than any shooting star I have ever seen.” The sightings continued throughout the month of July.

(B J Booth)

See transcript of article below

July 28, 1952

“Saucer” outran jet, pilot reveals

Investigation on in secret after chase over capital

Radar spot blips like aircraft for nearly six hours – only 1,700 feet up

By Paul Sampson, Post Reporter

Military secrecy veils an investigation of the mysterious, glowing aerial objects that showed up on radar screens in the Washington area Saturday night for the second consecutive week.

A jet pilot sent up by the Air Defense Command to investigate the objects reported he was unable to overtake the glowing lights moving near Andrews Air Force Base.

The CAA reported the objects traveled at “predominantly lower levels” – about 1700 feet. July 19.

Air Force spokesmen said yesterday only that an investigation was being made into the sighting of the objects on the radar screen in the CAA Air Route Traffic Control Center at Washington National Airport, and on two other radar screens . Methods of the investigations were classified as secret, a spoken said.

“We have no evidence they are flying saucers; conversely we have no evidence they are not flying saucers. We don’t know what they are,” a spokesman added.

The same source reported an expert from the Air Technical Intelligence Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton Ohio, was here last week investigating the objects sighted July 19.

The expert has been identified as Capt. E. J. Ruppelt. Reached by telephone at his home in Dayton yesterday, Ruppelt said he could make no comment on his activity in Washington.

Capt. Ruppelt confirmed he was in Washington last week but said he had not come here to investigate the mysterious objects. He recalled he did make an investigation after hearing of the objects, but could not say what he investigated.

Another Air Force spokesman said here yesterday the Air Force is taking all steps necessary to evaluate the sightings. “The intelligence people,” this spokesman explained, “sent someone over to the control center at the time of the sightings and did whatever necessary to make the proper evaluation.

Asked whether the radar equipment might have been malfunctioning, the spokesman said, “radar, like the compass is not a perfect instrument and is subject to error.” He thought, however, the investigation would be made by persons acquainted with the problems of radar.

Two other radar screens in the area picked up the objects. An employee of the National Airport control tower said the radar scope there picked up very weak “blips” of the objects. The tower radar’s for “short range” and is not as powerful as that at the center. Radar at Andrews Air Force Base also registered the objects from about seven miles south of the base.

A traffic control center spokesman said the nature of the signals on the radar screen ruled out any possibility they were from clouds or any other “weather” disturbance.

“The returns we received from the unidentified objects were similar and analogous to targets representing aircraft in flight,” he said.

The objects, “flying saucer or what have you, appeared on the radar scope at the airport center at 9:08 PM. Varying from 4 to 12 in number, the objects appeared on the screen until 3:00 AM., when they disappeared.

At 11:25 PM., two F-94 jet fighters from Air Defense Command squadron, at New Castle Delaware, capable of 600 hundred mph speeds, took off to investigate the objects.

Airline, civil and military pilots described the objects as looking like the lit end of a cigarette or a cluster of orange and red lights.

One jet pilot observed 4 lights in the vicinity of Andrews Air Force Base, but was not able to over-take them, and they disappeared in about two minutes.

The same pilot observed a steady white light in the vicinity of Mt Vernon at 11:49 PM. The light, about 5 miles from him, faded in a minute. The lights were also observed in the Beltsville, MD., vicinity. At 1:40 AM two-other F-94 jet fighters took off and scanned the area until 2:20 AM., but did not make any sightings.

Visible two days

Although “unidentified objects” have been picked up on radar before, the incidents of the last two Saturdays are believed to be the first time the objects have been picked up on radar-while visible to the human eye.

Besides the pilots, who last Saturday saw the lights, a woman living on Mississippi Ave., told the Post she saw a very “bright light streaking across the sky towards Andrews Air Force Base about 11:45 PM. Then a second object with a tail like a comet whizzed by, and a few seconds later, a third passed in a different direction toward Suntland, she said.

Radar operators plotted the speed of “Saturday night’s visitors” at from 38 to 90 mph, but one jet pilot reported faster speeds for the light he saw.

The jet pilot reported he had no apparent “closing speed” when he attempted to reach the lights he saw near Andrews Air Force Base. That means the lights were moving at least as fast as his top speed-a maximum of 600 mph.

One person who saw the lights when they first appeared in this area did not see them last night. He is E.W. Chambers, an engineer at Radio Station WRC, who spotted the lights while working early the morning of July 20 at station’s Hyattsville tower.

Chambers said he was sorry he had seen the lights because he had been skeptical about “flying saucers” before. Now he said, he sort of “wonders” and worries about the whole thing.

Leon Davidson, 804 South Irving St. Arlington, a chemical engineer who made an exhaustive study of “flying saucers” as a hobby, said yesterday reports of saucers in the East, have been relatively rare.

Davidson has studied the official report on the saucers, including some of the secret portions never made public, and analyzed all the data in the report.

Davidson, whose study of saucers is impressively detailed and scientific, said he believes the lights are American “aviation products” – probably “circular flying wings,” using new type jet engines that permit rapid acceleration and relatively low speeds. He believes they are either “new fighter,” guided missiles or piloted guided missiles.

He cited some of the recent jet fighters, including the Navy’s new “F-4-D, which has a radical “bat-wing,” as examples of what the objects might resemble.

Davidson thinks the fact that the lights have been seen in this area indicates the authorities may be ready to disclose the “new aircraft” in the near future. Previously, most of the “verified saucers” have been seen over sparsely inhabited areas, Davidson explained, and now, when they appear here, it may indicate that “secrecy” is not so important any more.