Part 18 (1/2)

While the radar operator was trying to pick up the target again, the F-94 arrived in the area The ground controller told the pilot that they had lost the target and asked him to cruise around the area to see if he and his radar operator could pick up anything on the F-94's radar The pilot said he would but that he was having a little difficulty, was low on fuel, and would have to get back to his base soon The ground controller acknowledged the pilot'sthem to scramble a second F-94

The first F-94 continued to search the area while the ground radar tried to pick up the target but neither could find it

About this tiround radar switched back to long range In a et on their scope The ground controller called the second F-94 and began to vector hiet

The first F-94 returned to its base

As both the second F-94 and the target approached the radar site, the operator again switched to short range and again he lost the jet and the target He switched back to long range, but by now they were too close to the radar site and he couldn't pick up either one

The pilot continued on tohere the unidentified target should have been Suddenly the F-94 radar operator reported a weak target off to the right at 28,000 feet They climbed into it but it faded before they couldthe F-94 around for another pass, and this ti return As they closed in, the F- 94's radar showed that the target was now al The F-94 continued on, but the target seemed to make a sudden dive and they lost it The pilot of the jet interceptor continued to search the area but couldn't find anything As the F-94 ain picked up on the ground radar, but the unidentified target was gone

A third F-94 had been scrambled, and in the meantime its crew took over the search They flew around for about ten ets on their radar They wereone last pass almost directly over the radar station when the radar operator in the back seat of the F-94 yelled over the interphone that he had a target on his scope The pilot called ground radar, but by this tiain too close to the radar station and they couldn't be picked up The F-94 closed in until it ithin 200 yards of the target; then the pilot pulled up, afraid he ht sky ahead of hiht spot on the radar operator's scope just stayed in one spot as if so the pilot to close in The pilot didn't take the dare On each pass he broke off at 200 yards

The F-94 crew ot a weak return, but it was soon lost as the target seeot a brief return, but in a et as it streaked out of range on a westerly heading

As usual, the first thing I did when I read this report was to check the weather But there was no weather report for this area that was detailed enough to tell whether a weather inversion could have caused the radar targets

But I took the report over to Captain Roy Jaht be able to find a clue that would identify the UFO

Captain James was the chief of the radar section at ATIC He and his people analyzed all our reports where radar picked up UFO's Roy had been fa set up one of the first stations in Florida during World War II, and later he took the first aircraft control and warning squadron to Saipan Besides worrying about keeping his radar operating, he had to worry about the japs' shooting holes in his antennae

Captain Ja I'd just shown him was caused by some kind of freak weather He based his analysis on the fact that the unknown target had disappeared each tie This, he pointed out, is an indication that the radar was picking up soet that was caused by weather The saround radar to act up ets on the F-94's radar too, he continued After all, they had closed to within 200 yards of what they were supposedly picking up; it was a clear ht, yet the crews of the F-94's hadn't seen a thing

Taking a clue from the law profession, he quoted a precedent About a year before over Oak Ridge, Tennessee, an F-82 interceptor had nearly flown into the ground three tiet that his radar operator was picking up There was a strong inversion that night, and although the target appeared as if it were flying in the air, it was actually a ground target

Since Captain James was the chief of the radar section and he had said ”Weather,” weather was the official conclusion on the report

But reports of UFO's' being picked up on radar are controversial, and soree with James's conclusion

A month or two after we'd received the report, I was out in Colorado Springs at Air Defense Co lunch in the officers' club when I saw an officer from the radar operations section at ADC He asked me to stop by his office when I had a spare minute, and I said that I would He said that it was important

It was the middle of the afternoon before I saw him and found out what he wanted He had been in Alaska on TDY when the UFO had been picked up at the outpost radar site In fact, he had made a trip to both the radar site and the interceptor base just two days after the sighting, and he had talked about the sighting with the people who had seen the UFO on the radar He wanted to knoe thought about it

When I told hi had been written off as weather, I reot a funny look on his face and said, ”Weather!

What are you guys trying to pull, anyway?”

It was obvious that he didn't agree with our conclusion I was interested in learning what this ht because I knew that he was one of ADC's ace radar trouble shooters and that he traveled all over the world, on loan from ADC, to work out probleets looked like on the radarscopes, good, strong, bright ies, I can't believe that they were caused by weather,” he toldout that when the ground radar itched to short range both the F-94 and the unknown target disappeared If just the unknown target had disappeared, then it could have been weather But since both disappeared, very probably the radar set wasn't working on short ranges for some reason Next he pointed out that if there was a tehly unlikely in northern Alaska, the saround radar wouldn't be present at 25,000 feet or above

I told hie that Captain James had used as an exae, he pointed out, that F-82 was at only 4,000 feet He didn't kno the F-94's could get to within 200 yards of an object without seeing it, unless the object was painted a dull black

”No,” he said, ”I can't believe that those radar targets were caused by weather I'd bereal, so the early spring of 1952 reports of radar sightings increased rapidly Most of them caencies One day, soon after the Alaskan Incident, I got a telephone call from the chief of one of the sections of a civilian experimental radar laboratory in New York State The people in this lab orking on the development of the latest types of radar Several ti radars, they had detected unidentified targets To quote inning to worry me” He went on to tell how the people in his lab had checked their radars, the weather, and everything else they could think of, but they could find absolutely nothing to account for the targets; they could only conclude that they were real I proht people if he'd put it in a letter and send it to ATIC In about a week the letter arrived--hand-carried by no less than a general The general, as from Headquarters, Air Materiel Command, had been in New York at the radar laboratory, and he had heard about the UFO reports He had personally checked into them because he knew that the people at the lab were soineers in the world When he found out that these people had already contacted us and had prepared a report for us, he offered to hand-carry it to Wright-Patterson