Radar-Visual Sightings Prove Extraterrestrial Presence
Date: August 5, 1953
Location: Rapid City, South Dakota, United States
The following case is one of the few cases even the skeptics at Project Blue Book could not disregard and dismiss. It was two in the morning when Edward J. Ruppelt received a call from Airman First Class Max Futch, who at the time was at the United States Air Force’s Air Technical Intelligence Center. On the call, Futch told Ruppelt, “Captain, you know that for a year I’ve read every flying saucer report that’s come in and that I never really believed in the things. But you should read this wire.” 133
Futch had always downplayed the extraterrestrial hypothesis and he never took UFO reports seriously. On this day however, Ruppelt sensed the urgency and panic in his voice.
Ruppelt hurried to the Intelligence Center where he had officials from the Pentagon on the phone, asking about the several reports that were being made describing a flying saucer infiltrating American airspace. The incident was occurring in South Dakota where, at around 20:05, a woman at Black Hawk (which is around seven miles from Rapid City) had seen a bright light hovering at a very low altitude. The woman immediately called the local ground observer police, which forwarded the report to the Ellsworth Air Force Base just outside of Rapid City. For the next several minutes, the radar operators at the base tracked two unidentified targets at the same location where the woman had reported seeing the bright light. The operators described the objects as being well-defined and solid, which made them unlikely to be a weather target.
On radar, the objects were at sixteen thousand feet and began picking up their speed as they started approaching Rapid City. Every individual in the room was fixated on the radar scope. As two men ran outside to try and locate the moving target, they saw a large bright red light sweeping across the sky completely silently. At the time of the sighting, there was already an F-84 fighter jet in the sky, and thus, the pilot instructed to pursue and intercept the UFO. After a few moments, four targets started showing up on the radar, and this was only the beginning of one of the most eerie nights the involved personnel would experience.
On the airborne radar, the pilot was tracking four separate blips, but he was only able to locate one bright light outside his cockpit windows. He put the F-84 on full throttle in an attempt to close down the distance and get as close as he possibly could to the bright light. He described how as the light increased in its speed so did its brightness, which he described to be “brighter than the brightest star.” 134 The pilot kept at its tail and each time he would try to close down the distance and get three miles from it, the object would make a rapid acceleration. Throughout the entire encounter, the object had maintained the three-mile distance. After several minutes of chasing down the bright light, the jet was running low on fuel and the pilot had to abort the mission and return back to base. What he did not expect, however, was for the light to follow him back.
As the pilot started flying back to base, he noticed that the bright light was now just fifteen miles behind, now keeping at the F-84’s tail. The tables had completely turned and now the fighter jet was the one being pursued. At the base, another F-84 was already warming up and ready to take off, and luckily the first jet was able to make a safe landing. With another fighter jet in the sky, the pursuit continued. The red light illuminated the entire sky and the pilot was able to spot it right away. Once again, as the pilot attempted to close down the distance, the object responded and initiated a vertical climb, climbing to twenty-six thousand feet.
The pilot mirrored the vertical climb, but in an instant, the object made a nose dive, going exactly below his fighter jet. Just like a cat chasing down a mouse, the pilot made the same dive, and as he gained speed, the UFO responded, and, once again, as he reached the three mile distance from the object, it accelerated, leaving the fighter jet behind. The pilot, completely bewildered at what he was experiencing, wanted to confirm that the light was not a reflection. He turned off all the lights inside the cockpit, but the light remained in the sky. He swerved the plane to the side to make sure it wasn’t a reflection from the ground, but once again, the light remained in the sky. The last explanation he could think of was that it was a celestial body, however, the light was moving in relation to the three stars; it hadn’t remained in a stationary position. In actual fact, it had carried out maneuvers and was responding according to the F-84’s position in space, proving that whoever was piloting the aircraft possessed spatial awareness.
The nearby Weather Bureau station at the Rapid City Municipal Airport were immediately contacted and asked whether a weather balloon had been released. They did confirm that a weather balloon had been released at 20:00, however, it had moved south from the Municipal Airport, which put it outside the area where the encounter had taken place, leaving this case unsolved. Ruppelt wrote of the investigation: “The sighting was thoroughly investigated, and I could devote pages of detail on how we looked into every facet of the incident; but it will suffice to say that in every facet we looked into we saw nothing. Nothing but a big question mark asking what it was.” 135
Conclusion
One of the main reasons why this case is one of the most significant ones in UFO history is due to the fact that no other explanation except for the extraterrestrial hypothesis holds true. There is no other hypothesis that can explain what the object in the sky, or what the targets on the radar, could have been.
The most interesting aspect of this encounter is the awareness the beings piloting the aircraft seemed to possess. The fact that the UFO responded according to the maneuvers the fighter-jet carried out proves that whoever was piloting that light possessed great spatial awareness, implying that these beings must be conscious beings.