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UFOs Buzz Washington, D.C., 1952

It probably came as a very unwanted shock to a number of high governmental officials. A crashed UFO found in the distant, isolated desert sands of New Mexico was one thing; having them buzz the White House quite another.

At 11:40 p.m. on Saturday, July 19, 1952, Edward Nugent, an air-traffic controller at Washington National Airport, spotted seven objects on his radarscope. He quickly calculated that the objects were located fifteen miles (twenty-four kilometers) south-southwest of the city; no known aircraft were in the area, and the objects were not following any established flight paths.

Nugent’s superior, Harry Barnes, a senior air-traffic controller, watched the objects on Nugent’s radarscope. He later described what he saw: “We knew immediately that a very strange situation existed . . . their movements were completely radical compared to those of ordinary aircraft.”¹

Barnes ordered two controllers to check Nugent’s radar equipment; they found that it was working normally. Barnes then called National Airport’s second radar center and talked to controller Howard Cocklin, who told Barnes that he was tracking the objects on his radarscope as well. Moreover, Cocklin said that he could see one of the objects through the window of the control tower: “A bright orange light. I can’t tell what’s behind it.”²

At this point, more objects appeared on the radar screens of both centers. They quickly headed in the direction of the White House and the Capitol Building; Barnes placed an urgent call to Andrews Air Force Base, located ten miles from National Airport. Although the controllers in the tower at Andrews first reported that they had no unusual objects on their radar, an airman soon reported sighting an unidentified object.

From the control tower, Airman William Brady saw an “object which appeared to be like an orange ball of fire, trailing a tail . . . [it was] unlike anything I had ever seen before.” As Brady was trying to get the attention of other personnel in the tower, the object “took off at an unbelievable speed.”³

At the same time, S. C. Pierman, a Capital Airlines pilot, was in the cockpit of his DC-4. After spotting what he believed to be a meteor, he was told that National Airport’s control tower had picked up UFOs closing in on his position. Pierman observed six objects—“white, tailless, fast-moving lights”—over a fourteen-minute period.⁴

Pierman was in radio contact with Barnes during his sighting, and Barnes later related that “each sighting coincided with a pip we could see near his plane. When he reported that the light streaked off at a high speed, it disappeared on our scope.”⁵

The control tower at Andrews continued to keep radar contact on the objects. Staff Sergeant Charles Davenport reported an orange-red light to the south; the light “would appear to stand still, then make an abrupt change in direction and altitude . . . this happened several times.”⁶

The radar centers at the civilian airport and the military air force base were tracking an object hovering over a radio tower. The radar operators at both centers reported that the object vanished at the same time.⁷

By this point, the Air Force had launched an intercept operation. At 3 a.m., just as two jet fighters from Delaware’s New Castle Air Force Base arrived over Washington, all of the objects vanished. However, when the inceptor jets ran low on fuel and had to return to base, the UFOs returned. This fact convinced Barnes that “the UFOs were monitoring radio traffic and behaving accordingly.”⁸

The objects were last detected by radar at 5:30 a.m. Around sunrise, E. W. Chambers, a civilian radio engineer in Washington’s suburbs, observed “five huge disks circling in a loose formation. They tilted upward and left on a steep ascent.”⁹

It just so happened that Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, the head of Project Blue Book, was in Washington, D.C., that day. Nonetheless, Ruppelt did not learn about the sightings until Tuesday, July 22, when he read the headlines in a Washington-area newspaper. Of course, having a swarm of UFOs buzzing the nation’s capital created quite a stir.

However, that sequence was only act one; act two would follow quickly on its heels.

At 8:15 p.m. on Saturday, July 26, 1952, a National Airlines pilot and stewardess on a Washington-bound flight observed several UFOs above their plane. Within minutes, radar centers at National Airport and Andrews Air Force Base reported tracking more unidentified objects.

A master sergeant at Andrews reported seeing the objects; he later described them as follows: “These lights did not have the characteristics of shooting stars. There was [sic] no trails. . . they traveled faster than any shooting star I have ever seen.”¹⁰

Meanwhile, Albert M. Chop, the press spokesman for Project Blue Book, arrived at National Airport and refused several reporters’ requests to photograph the radar screens. He then joined the radar center personnel.¹¹ At 9:30 p.m., the radar center was picking up UFOs in every sector.

Reports reveal that the objects alternated speeds; they first traveled slowly, and then reversed direction and moved across the radarscope at speeds calculated at seven thousand miles per hour.

At 11:30 p.m., two jet fighters from New Castle Air Force Base flew over Washington. Captain John McHugo, the flight leader, was vectored toward the radar pips but made no visual contact, despite repeated attempts.¹² However, his wingman, Lieutenant William Patterson, did see four white “glows,” which he pursued. As he was in hot pursuit, the “glows” turned on a dime and surrounded his fighter.

Patterson radioed the control tower at National Airport asking what he should do; according to Chop, the tower answered with a “stunned silence.” The four objects then sped away from Patterson’s jet and disappeared.¹³

On July 27, after midnight, Major Dewey Fournet, Project Blue Book’s liaison at the Pentagon, and a Lieutenant Holcomb, an air force radar specialist, arrived at the radar center at National Airport. During the night, Holcomb received a call from the Washington National Weather Station.

They told him that a slight temperature inversion was present over the city. This is a weather pattern in which a layer of warm, moist air covers a layer of cool, dry air closer to the ground. This condition can cause radar signals to bend and give false returns. However, Holcomb felt that the inversion was not “nearly strong enough to explain the ‘good and solid’ returns on the radarscopes.”¹⁴

Fournet relayed that all those present in the radar room were convinced that the targets were most likely caused by solid metallic objects. There had been weather-related targets on the scope, too, he said, but this was a common occurrence and the controllers “were paying no attention to them.”¹⁵

Two more jets from Newcastle were scrambled during the night. One pilot saw nothing unusual; the other pilot moved toward a white light that “vanished” when he closed in. A Capital Airlines flight leaving Washington spotted “odd lights,” which remained visible for about twelve minutes.¹⁶ As they had on July 20, the sightings and unidentified radar returns ended at sunrise.

The foregoing account has been derived from completely confirmed military documents and the testimonies of military and a few civilian eyewitnesses. The fact that this UFO sighting occurred over the nation’s capital created a massive public relations headache for the White House and the Pentagon.

President Harry S. Truman called Ruppelt and asked for an explanation of the sightings. Ruppelt, remembering a conversation he had with Captain Roy James, radar specialist, told the president that the sightings might have been caused by the temperature inversion.

However, at this point Ruppelt had not conducted any interviews of the witnesses nor had he even begun a formal investigation. He admitted his comments were made on the fly, so to speak.¹⁷

Nonetheless, the White House needed to allay the mounting anxieties and concerns of both the press and the public. Of course, all were worried about the security of the nation’s capital. However, there was equal concern about an alleged “shoot-them-down” order that had been made public and confirmed by an air force public information officer, Lieutenant Colonel Moncel Monte.

Neither as nervous nor as irrational as officials assumed, the public sent telegrams and letters to the White House stating that the policy was dangerous. If extraterrestrial beings controlled the UFOs, they would obviously be much more technologically advanced than humans, people remarked.

Following these events, the government stated that no pilot had been able to get close enough to take a shot at a “flying saucer,” as the objects would disappear or instantly accelerate as soon as an interceptor approached, sometimes out-maneuvering the pilot by “as much as a thousand miles an hour.”

However, in seeming contradiction to the admitted “shoot-themdown” order, air force headquarters also put out statements claiming that the UFOs were no threat to the United States and were not controlled by “a reasoning body.”

A press conference was called to combat contradictory stories, to assuage public anxiety, and perhaps to slow down the numbers of UFO reports being sent to Project Blue Book, which were clogging normal intelligence channels. Air force Major Generals John Samford, director of intelligence, and Roger Ramey, director of operations, held the press conference at the Pentagon on July 29, 1952.

(Yes, the same General Roger Ramey who debunked the Roswell case.)

It was the largest post–World War II Pentagon press conference to that point in time. The press reports characterized Samford and Ramey as the air force’s two top UFO experts. Samford declared that the visual sightings over Washington could be explained as misidentified aerial phenomena (such as stars or meteors).

He also stated that the unidentified radar targets could be explained by temperature inversion, which was present in the air over Washington on both nights the radar returns were reported. (Uh huh . . . and Roswell was nothing but a weather balloon.)

That these remarks were concocted to explain the events away with a plausible cover story is obvious. We have to consider the gravity of the situation as well as the underlying inferences.

For a general to dismiss the radarscope data, which included the expert opinions of a number of trained operators, by claiming that the operators could not tell the difference between stars, meteors, and a squadron of UFOs is to suggest that our military personnel are highly incompetent.

In addition to radar operators, the above events were witnessed by numerous highly qualified pilots and other personnel. To simply wipe away their credibility with one fell blow seems incredible. If we cannot trust our military personnel to distinguish between a star and a potential enemy aircraft flying over our airspace, what are we to do?

I contend that this whole gambit, which began with Roswell, has had a very big backlash. The public does not really pay attention to what the air force has to say about UFOs, and the reputation of the armed services has suffered in general.

Do jet pilots know the difference between a star, light years away, and a squadron of UFOs suddenly encircling them? That is a purely rhetorical question that apparently escaped the mass media that are often dazzled by the ribbons that generals wear.

Of course, the reason that the press conference was convened at all was simply to deflect the press away from the story and defuse public interest, à la Roswell. Same General Ramey, same strategy, and it worked both times.

In response to a reporter’s question asking whether the air force had recorded similar UFO radar contacts prior to the Washington incident, Samford replied that there had been “hundreds” of such contacts in which air force interceptors had been dispatched, but he added that they were all “fruitless.”

Ruppelt later wrote that the conference proved to be successful “in getting the press off our backs.”¹⁸ Not everyone, especially some air force officers, bought Samford’s explanation. Ruppelt noted that Fournet and Holcomb, who disagreed with the air force’s explanation, were not in attendance at the press conference.

Ruppelt also observed that “hardly a night passed in June, July, and August in 1952 that there wasn’t a [temperature] inversion in Washington, yet the slow-moving, solid radar targets appeared on only a few nights.”¹⁹

The U.S. Weather Bureau, an entirely objective source and outside the military loop, also disagreed with the temperature inversion hypothesis; one official stated that such an inversion ordinarily would appear on a radar screen as a steady line rather than as single objects, as were sighted on the airport radarscope.

When Ruppelt, as the head of Project Blue Book, was able to interview the radar and control tower personnel at Washington National Airport, he found that not a single individual agreed with the air force explanation. The eyewitnesses stood their ground despite the Pentagon press conference.

However, the same was not the case when Ruppelt went to interview the eyewitness at Andrews Air Force Base. To a man, they agreed with Samford’s interpretation. They told the military investigator they had mistaken a “bright star” for a “huge fiery-orange sphere,” which is what they originally reported. Skeptical, Ruppelt checked an astronomical chart and found that there were no bright stars visible over the base that night.

Anything but naive, Ruppelt learned through a trusted source that the radar operators and other eyewitnesses had been “persuaded” by a superior officer that it was in their best interest to adopt Samford’s position.

(Anyone who has been in the service will understand exactly how this kind of political maneuvering works.)

The above account is taken from military documents and from verified military eyewitnesses, radar operators, and pilots involved in the UFO sightings over Washington, D. C.

Now we turn to examine how the press handled the story. On July 28, 1952, the following headline appeared in the Washington Post: “‘Saucer’ Outran Jet, Pilot Reveals.” The first two paragraphs of the article read as follows:

Washington Post

JULY 28, 1952

“SAUCER” OUTRAN JET, PILOT REVEALS.

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.²⁰

In other words, the Pentagon began stonewalling the press right away. The reporter goes into some detail about his efforts to pry key facts out of a military spokesman, but it is clear that he had little success. The next cogent section reads:

WASHINGTON POST, JULY 28, 1952

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.²¹

From this report, we know that the top-down debriefing had not yet been established. It is entirely consistent with the original reports contained in the eyewitness accounts.

WASHINGTON POST, JULY 28, 1952

At 11:25 PM., two F-94 jet fighters from Air Defense Command squadron, at New Castle Delaware, capable of 600 hundred [sic] 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.²²

Here the reporter establishes that ground radar and military aviation personnel agreed on the nature of the objects; they were neither balloons nor “weather effects.” The corroborating testimony gives a picture of a bright, reddish-orange squadron of UFOs moving in formation.

Next, the reporter makes a very good point:

WASHINGTON POST, JULY 28, 1952

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.”²³

The article closes with a human-interest angle that leaves the reader with a wry smile.

WASHINGTON POST, JULY 28, 1952

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.²⁴

CONCLUSION

The combination of radar contacts, civilian and military pilot observations, and eyewitness accounts from ground observers make this case unimpeachable. The Pentagon cooked up the weather-disturbance story based on Ruppelt’s off-the-cuff remarks. However, after investigating the entire case, Ruppelt did not agree with the official Pentagon postulation, a fact he later published in his book.

These three major cases represent the strongest, most well-documented cases of mass sightings by highly credible witnesses, including military and civilian air controllers, radar operators, intelligence officers, and so forth. This ought to be of some concern to UFO researchers because they all occurred more than sixty years ago, at the dawn of the modern UFO era; nothing like them has occurred since.