Part 13 (2/2)
Under normal conditions the path that the radar waves take as they travel through the air is known Normal conditions are when the temperature and relative humidity of the air decrease with an increase in altitude But sometimes a condition will occur where at some level, instead of the te with altitude, it will begin to increase This layer of warm, moist air is known as an inversion layer, and it can do all kinds of crazy things to a radar wave It can cause part of the radar wave to travel in a big arc and actually pick up the ground many h to pick up trucks, cars, houses, or anything that has a surface perpendicular to the ground level
One would i, and a car or truck isonly 40, 50, or 60 miles an hour, a radar operator should be able to pick these objects out froet But it isn't as simple as that The inversion layer shi+ up the ground or a truck in one spot and the next second itin a different spot This causes a series of returns on the scope and can give the illusion of extremely fast or slow speeds
These are but a few of the effects of an inversion layer on radar
Some of the effects are well known, but others aren't The 3rd Weather Group at Air Defense Cos has done a lot of work on the effects of weather on radar, and they have developedhow favorable weather conditions are for ”anoets caused by weather
The first proble picked up on radar is to deterive ano weather data into a formula If they are, then it is necessary to deterets were real or caused by the weather This is the difficult job In et on the radar-scope Many tiet will be a fuzzy and indistinct spot on the scope while a real target, an airplane for exaht and sharp This question of whether a target looked real is the cause of the uet looked like And whenever hument is involved in a decision, there is plenty of roo the early suht the syndicate” trying to et un wedding, the long-overdue respectability arrived The date was September 12, 1951, and the exact time was 3:04PM
On this date and tian to chatter out a e Thirty-six inches of paper rolled out of the machine before the operator ripped off the copy, staave it to a special ot the nal Corps radar center at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, and it was red-hot
The incident had started two days before, on Septe a de brass at the radar school He de up local air traffic, then he announced that he would de, in which the set is put on a target and follows it without help fro at jet speeds
The operator spotted an object about 12,000 yards southeast of the station, flying loard the north He tried to switch the set to autoain He turned to his audience of VIPs, e too fast for the set,” he said ”Thatfaster than a jet!”
A lot of very important eyebrows lifted What flies faster than a jet?
The object was in range for three et into auto the red-faced operator talking to himself The radar technicians at Fort Monhtest indication of an inversion layer
Twenty-fivean Air Force20,000 feet over Point Pleasant, New Jersey, spotted a dull silver, disklike object far below him He described it as 30 to 50 feet in dia toward Sandy Hook from an altitude of a mile or so He banked the T-33 over and started down after it As he shot down, he reported, the object stopped its descent, hovered, then sped south, ree turn, and vanished out to sea
The Fort Monroup At 3:15PM they got an excited, alh and to the north--which here the first ”faster-than-a-jet” object had vanished--and to pick it up in a hurry They got a fix on it and reported that it was traveling slowly at 93,000 feet They also could see it visually as a silver speck
What flies 18two radar sets picked up another target that couldn't be tracked autoo into a dive When it cliht up
The two-day sensation ended that afternoon when the radar tracked another unidentified slow- object and tracked it for several one to Washi+ngton Before Jerry could digest the thirty-six inches of facts, ATIC's new chief, Colonel Frank Dunn, got a phone call It caence of the Air Force, Major General (now Lieutenant General) C P Cabell General Cabell wanted soet to New Jersey--fast--and find out as going on As soon as the reports had been thoroughly investigated, the general said that he wanted a co expedites like a telephone call froeneral officer, so in a s and Lieutenant Colonel N R Rosengarten were on an airliner, New Jersey-bound
The two officers worked around the clock interrogating the radar operators, their instructors, and the technicians at Fort Monmouth
The pilot who had chased the UFO in the T-33 trainer and his passenger were flown to New York, and they talked to cuarten All other radar stations in the area were checked, but their radars hadn't picked up anything unusual
At about 4:00AM the second ation was cos later told He and Lieutenant Colonel Rosengarten couldn't get an airliner out of New York in tion by 10:00AM, the time that had been set up for their report, so they chartered an airplane and flew to the capital to brief the general
General Cabell presided over the , and it was attended by his entire staff plus Lieutenant cuarten, and a special representative from Republic Aircraft Corporation The roup of top US industrialists and scientists who thought that there should be a lotthe UFO's The eneral officer
Every word of the two-hourwas so hot that it was later destroyed, but not before I had heard it several ti that was said but, to be conservative, it didn't exactly follow the tone of the official Air Force releases-- weren't as convinced that the ”hoax, hallucination, and eneral wanted to knoas, ”Who in hell has been givingis being investigated?”
Then others picked up the questioning