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Air traffic was light at Washington Airport one midnight last week, and the radar scope of the Civil Aeronautics Authority was almost clear. At 12:40 a.m. a group of bright blips showed. The operator estimated that they were about 15 miles southwest of Washington. Then the blips disappeared abruptly and reappeared a few seconds later over northeast Washington. The operator called his boss, Senior Controller Harry Barnes, 39, a graduate of the Buffalo Technical Institute who has worked for the CAA as an electronics expert since 1941. The operator told Barnes: “Here are some flying saucers for you.”
Barnes laughed at first, but the blips kept popping up all over the scope. They sometimes hovered, sometimes flew slowly and sometimes incredibly fast. Over the White House. Barnes began to get worried when he saw the blips apparently flying over the White House and other prohibited areas. He called the airport control tower. Sure enough, its radar showed the strange blips too. When the towermen measured the speed of a fast blip, they found that it had flown for eight miles at 7,200 m.p.h. Air Force to the Rescue. Over from a Delaware base came a flight of radar-equipped F94 jet fighters. Before they reached Washington, all the blips vanished. The jets saw nothing at all. But when the jets departed the blips reappeared, playing all over the scope, Barnes said, “like a bunch of kids.” He called all airliners flying near Washington, asked their pilots to report any strange objects. One pilot saw a white light, moving fast. But during all this uproar, other radars near Washington (e.g., Quantico and Fort Meade) saw nothing unusual. All the rest of the week, a few strange blips appeared now & then. Then on Saturday night they broke out all over, crisscrossing the capital as they had the week before. This time, the radar at Andrews was seeing the things too. One blip hung over Boiling Field, across the Potomac from the airport, but observers at Boiling saw nothing in the sky. Some airline pilots saw mysterious lights; others saw nothing.
An old story for sure, yet man made or not, this has been an extremely active year for UFO sightings worldwide.
Geez, you think that’s weird – it just gets weirder… When they scrambled those jets last week, what showed up were a flight of F94s… last seen flying in 1959! But I for one believe this story since it was verified by their most senior controller Harry Barnes, a man working for the company since 1941 and now 106 years old!!!
RBG
They probably just came to ask Hillary to drop out.
meh… UFO’s will always exist and be pervasive so long as there is an ignorant group of sentient beings to observe them.
This is the Official Air Force Aircraft Identification Chart that should help with the identification.
(Click chart to enlarge.)
The controllers have Windows Vista on their computers. No wonder they are seeing random blips.
1. Damn. Try that last part again:
But wait, you don’t know weird… it was also revealed that a bizarre experiment using alien technology enabled Senior Controller Harry Barnes to work for CAA prior to being born!!!
RBG
What’s new about this old story?
Yep there are UFOs. That just means we don’t know what they are. That’s it. Nothing more. It’s too bad many institutions keep their employees mum about it or we might actually find out more about them, in all their varieties, be it weather phenomena, military tests (which I really don’t think should exist if they do this), or some actual construction from another country, society, civilization.
Some of them could be related to sprites and similar weather phenomena. How come we don’t hear more about this stuff, which definitely causes strange lights. Maybe they affect more than just the upper atmosphere.
#7. Its an old photo, the story is from last week.
“Some of them could be related to sprites and similar weather phenomena.”
I dont think they would scramble jets for sprites or weather anomalies.
“Yep there are UFOs. That just means we don’t know what they are. That’s it. Nothing more.”
Thus the term UNIDENTIFIED. The editor didnt claim any more than that. It doesnt need to be clarified.
The original story is from Monday, Aug. 4, 1952. For some reason, Time ran it again today. I guess they missed April Fool’s Day.
Ha… someone (*cough* *girlfriend* *cough*) the other day asked me “How many UFO’s have been found to be extra-terrestrial?”.
“Zero!”, I answered with 100 percent confidence.
The person thought I was being a smart-ass and stormed off angry with me.
Well gee. Her own question answered itself. If one was identified as extraterrestrial (or terrestrial for that matter), then it is no longer UN-Identified. Hence, not a UFO.
Now if she had asked me how many flying saucers have found to be from outer-space… damn… same answer.
Not worth spending a night in the dog-house for.
Why does the source article at the “Times” web site have this date under the title:
Monday, Aug. 04, 1952?
Boiling AFB? Guy could be in hot water over that.
Last time I looked, it was Bolling.
On the other hand, #1 RBG has a guy born in 1941 at age 104. That’s older than my mother, born in 1907, now age 100.
Good, reliable reporting. All of it.
Humph!
Sheesh, I’ll spell it out:
“The 1952 Washington D.C. UFO incident, also known as the Washington flap, was a series of unidentified flying object reports from July 13 to July 29, 1952, over Washington D.C.”
Wikipedia:
http://tinyurl.com/6ynvw3
Oh, 1952.
Radar “mirage effects caused by a double inversion”, and the sightings as “meteors coupled with the normal excitement of witnesses.”
Or maybe someday advanced alien civilizations will discover stealth aircraft.
“crew of a B-25 bomber, who had been flying over Washington during the sightings of July 26-27. The bomber was vectored several times by National Airport over unknown targets on the airport’s radarscopes, yet the crew could see nothing unusual. … “the radar had a target [which] turned out to be the Wilson Lines steamboat trip to Mount Vernon””
No way. The more likely explanation is Flying Saucers from thousands of light-years away.
Change #4 graphic to “Tin Foil Aircraft Identification Chart” and add “Flying Saucer” to each ID.
RBG
I have an extra testicle.
And here I was thinking that Aliens were scared of Bush too!!
Some of those “Thousand Points of Light” HW Bush was talking about?
It was starbuck finding earth!
Guess it turns out that W is “Charlie X” after all (obscure STOS reference).
They came to DC looking for intelligent life forms, found nothing so left.
Wait a minute… did somebody have an extra testicle?