From: Francisco Lopez <d005734c@dcfreenet.seflin.lib.fl.us>
Date: Fri, 20 Dec 1996 02:58:08 -0500 (EST)
Fwd Date: Fri, 20 Dec 1996 17:55:59 -0500
Subject: 01/04 - 22 Years of Inadequate UFO Investigations
Note: Any Changes?
AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE, 134th MEETING
Subject Science in Default: 22 Years of Inadequate
UFO Investigations
Author James E. McDonald, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences
Address The University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, 85721
Time 9:00 a.m., December 27, 1969
Place Sheraton Plaza Ballroom
Program General Symposium, Unidentified Flying Objects
Convention
Address Sheraton Plaza Hotel
RELEASE TIME
A.M,'s December 28
No scientifically adequate investigation of the UFO problem has been
carried out during the entire 22 years that have now passed since the first
extensive wave of sightings of unidentified aerial objects in the summer of
1947. Despite continued public interest, and despite frequent expressions of
public concern, only quite superficial examinations of the steadily growing
body of unexplained UFO reports from credible witnesses have been conducted in
this country or abroad. The latter point is highly relevant, since all
evidence now points to the fact that UFO sightings exhibit similar
characteristics throughout the world.
Charging inadequacy of all past UFO investigations, I speak not only from
a background of close study of the past investigations, but also from a
background of three years of rather detailed personal research, involving
interviews with over five hundred witnesses in selected UFO cases, chiefly in
the U. S. In my opinion, the UFO problem, far from being the nonsense problem
that it has often been labeled by many scientists, constitutes a problem of
extraordinary scientific interest.
The grave difficulty with essentially all past UFO studies has been that
they were either devoid of any substantial scientific content, or else have
lost their way amidst the relatively large noise-content that tends to obscure
the real signal in the UFO reports. The presence of a percentually large
number of reports of misidentified natural or technological phenomena
(planets, meteors, and aircraft, above all) is not surprising, given all the
circumstances surrounding the UFO problem. Yet such understandable and usually
easily recognized instances of misidentification have all too often been
seized upon as a sufficient explanation for all UFO reports, while the residue
of far more significant reports (numbering now of order one thousand) are
ignored. I believe science is in default for having failed to mount any truly
adequate studies of this problem, a problem that has aroused such strong and
widespread public concern during the past two decades. Unfortunately, the
present climate of thinking, above all since release of the latest of a long
series of inadequate studies, namely, that conducted under the direction of
Dr. E. U. Condon at the University of Colorado, will make it very difficult to
secure any new and more thorough investigations, yet my own examination of the
problem forces me to call for just such new studies. I am enough of a realist
to sense that, unless the present AAAS UFO Symposium succeeds in making the
scientific community aware of the seriousness of the UFO problem, little
immediate response to any call for new investigation is likely to appear.
In fact, the over-all public and scientific response to the UFO phenomena
is itself a matter of substantial scientific interest, above all in its
social-psychological aspects. Prior to my own investigations, I would never
have imagined the wide spread reluctance to report an unusual and seemingly
inexplicable event, yet that reluctance, and the attendant reluctance of
scientists to exhibit serious interest in the phenomena in question, are quite
general. One regrettable result is the fact that the most credible of UFO
witnesses are often those most reluctant to come forward with a report of the
event they have witnessed. A second regrettable result is that only a very
small number of scientists have taken the time and trouble to search out the
nearly puzzling reports that tend to be diluted out by the much larger number
of trivial and non-significant UFO reports. The net result is that there still
exists no general scientific recognition of the scope and nature of the UFO
problem.
* * *
Within the federal government official responsibility for UFO
investigations has rested with the Air Force since early 1948. Unidentified
aerial objects quite naturally fall within the area of Air Force concern, so
this assignment of responsibility was basically reasonable, However, once it
became clear (early 1949) that UFO reports did not seem to involve advanced
aircraft of some hostile foreign power, Air Force interest subsided to
relatively low levels, marked, however, by occasional temporary resurgence of
interest following large waves of UFO reports, such as that of 1952, or 1957,
or 1965.
A most unfortunate pattern of press reporting developed by about 1953, in
which the Air Force would assert that they had found no evidence of anything
"defying explanation in terms of present-day science and technology" in their
growing files of UFO reports. These statements to the public would have done
little harm had they not been coupled systematically to press statements
asserting that "the best scientific facilities available to the U. S. Air
Force" had been and were being brought to bear on the UFO question. The
assurances that substantial scientific competence was involved in Air Force
UFO investigations have, I submit, had seriously deleterious scientific
effects. Scientists who might otherwise have done enough checking to see that
a substantial scientific puzzle lay in the UFO area were misled by these
assurances into thinking that capable scientists had already done adequate
study and found nothing. My own extensive checks have revealed so slight a
total amount of scientific competence in two decades of Air Force-supported
investigations that I can only regard the repeated asseverations of solid
scientific study of the UFO . problem as the single most serious obstacle that
the Air Force has put in the way of progress towards elucidation of the matter
I do not believe, let me stress, that this has been part of some top-
secret coverup of extensive investigations by Air Force or security agencies;
I have found no substantial basis for accepting that theory of why the Air
Force has so long failed to respond appropriately to the many significant and
scientifically intriguing UFO reports coming from within its own ranks.
Briefly, I see grand foulup but not grand coverup. Although numerous instances
could be cited wherein Air Force spokesmen failed to release anything like
complete details of UFO reports, and although this has had the regrettable
consequence of denying scientists at large even a dim notion of the almost
incredible nature of some of the more impressive Air Force-related UFO
reports, I still feel that the most grievous fault of 22 years of Air Force
handling of the UFO problem has consisted of their repeated public assertions
that they had substantial scientific competence on the job.
Close examination of the level of investigation and the level of
scientific analysis involved in Project Sign (1948-9), Project Grudge (1949-
52), and Project Bluebook (1953 to date), reveals that these were, viewed
scientifically, almost meaning less investigations. Even during occasional
periods (e.g., 1952) characterized by fairly active investigation of UFO
cases, there was still such slight scientific expertise involved that there
was never any real chance that the puzzling phenomena encountered in the most
significant UFO cases would be elucidated. Furthermore, the panels,
consultants, contractual studies, etc., that the Air Force has had working on
the UFO problem over the past 22 years have, with essentially no exception,
brought almost negligible scientific scrutiny into the picture. Illustrative
examples will be given.
The Condon Report, released in January, 1968, after about two years of
Air Force-supported study is, in my opinion, quite inadequate. The sheer bulk
of the Report, and the inclusion of much that can only be viewed as
"scientific padding", cannot conceal from anyone who studies it closely the
salient point that it represents an examination of only a tiny fraction of the
most puzzling UFO reports of the past two decades, and that its level of
scientific argumentation is wholly unsatisfactory. Furthermore, of the roughly
90 cases that it specifically confronts, over 30 are conceded to be
unexplained. With so large a fraction of unexplained cases (out of a sample
that is by no means limited only to the truly puzzling cases, but includes an
obJectionably large number of obviously trivial cases), it is far from clear
how Dr. Condon felt justified in concluding that the study indicated "that
further extensive study of UFOs probably cannot be justified in the
expectation that science will be advanced thereby. "
I shall cite a number of specific examples of cases from the Condon
Report which I regard as entirely inadequately investigated and reported. One
at Kirtland AFB, November 4, 1957, involved observations of a wingless egg-
shaped object that was observed hovering about a minute over the field prior
to departure at a climb rate which was described to me as faster than that of
any known jets, then or now. The principal witnesses in this case were
precisely the type of witnesses whose accounts warrant closest attention,
since they were CAA tower observers who watched the UFO from the CAA tower
with binoculars. Yet, when I located these two men in the course of my own
check of cases from the Condon Report, I found that neither of them had even
been contacted by members of the University of Colorado project! Both men were
fully satisfied that they had been viewing a device with performance
characteristics well beyond any thing in present or foreseeable aeronautical
technology. The two men gave me descriptions that were mutually consistent and
that fit closely the testimony given on Nov. 6, 1957, when they were
interrogated by an Air Force investigator. The Condon Report attempts to
explain this case as a light-aircraft that lost its way, came into the field
area, and then left. This kind of explanation runs through the whole Condon
Report, yet is wholly incapable of explaining the details of sightings such as
that of the Kirtland AFB incident. Other illustrative instances in which the
investigations summarized in the Condon Report exhibit glaring deficiencies
will be cited. I suggest that there are enough significant unexplainable UFO
reports just within the Condon Report itself to document the need for a
greatly increased level of scientific study of UFOs.
That a panel of the National Academy of Sciences could endorse this study
is to me disturbing. I find no evidence that the Academy panel did any
independent checking of its own; and none of that 11-man panel had any
significant prior investigative experience in this area, to my knowledge. I
believe that this sort of Academy endorsement must be criticized; it hurts
science in the long run, and I fear that this particular instance will
ultimately prove an embarrassment to the National Academy of Sciences.
The Condon Report and its Academy endorsement have exerted a highly
negative influence on clarification of the long-standing UFO problem; so much,
in fact, that it seems almost pointless to now call for new and more extensive
UFO investigations. Yet the latter are precisely what are needed to bring out
into full light of scientific inquiry a phenomenon that could well constitute
one of the greatest scientific problems of our times.
* * *
Some examples of UFO cases conceded to be unexplainable in the Condon Report
and containing features of particularly strong scientific interest: Utica,
N.Y., 6/23/55; Lakenheath, England, 8/13/56; Jackson, Ala., 11/14/56; Norfolk,
Va., 8/30/57; RB-47 case, 9/19/57; Beverly Mass., 4/22/66; Donnybrook, N.D.,
8/19/66; Haynesville, La., 12/30/66; Joplin, Mo., 1/13/67; Colorado Springs,
Colo., 5/13/67.
Some examples of UFO cases considered explained in the Condon Report for which
I would take strong exception to the argumentation presented and would regard
as both unexplained and of strong scientific interest: Flagstaff, Ariz.,
5/20/50; Washington, D. C., 7/19/52; Bellefontaine, O., 8/1/52; Haneda AFB,
Japan, 8/5/52; Gulf of Mexico, 12/6/52; Odessa, Wash., 12/10/52; Continental
Divide, N.M., 1/26/53; Seven Isles, Quebec, 6/29/54; Niagara Falls, N.Y.,
7/25/57; Kirtland AFB, N.M., 11/4/57; Gulf of Mexico, 11/5/57; Peru, 12/30/66;
Holloman AFB, 3/2/67; Kincheloe AFB, 9/11/67; Vandenberg AFB, 10/6/67;
Milledgeville, Ga., 10/20/67.
SCIENCE IN DEFAULT: 22 YEARS OF INADEQUATE UFO INVESTIGATIONS
James E. McDonald, Institute of Atmospheric Physics
University of Arizona, Tucson
(Material presented at the Symposium on UFOs,
134th Meeting, AAAS, Boston, Dec, 27, 1969)
***
ILLUSTRATIVE CASES
The following treats in detail the four principal UFO cases referred to
in my Symposium talk. They are presented as specific illustrations of what I
regard as serious shortcomings of case-investigations in the Condon Report and
in the 1947-69 Air Force UFO program. The four cases used as illustrations are
the following :
1. RB-47 case, Gulf Coast area, Sept. 19, 1957
2. Lakenheath RAF Station, England, August 13-14,
1956
3. Haneda AFB, Japan, August 5-6, 1952
4. Kirtland AFB, New Mexico, Nov. 4, 1957
My principal conclusions are that scientific inadequacies in past years
of UFO investigations by Air Force Project Bluebook have _not_ been remedied
through publication of the Condon Report, and that there remain scientifically
very important unsolved problems with respect to UFOs. The investigative and
evaluative deficiencies illustrated in the four cases examined in detail are
paralleled by equally serious shortcomings in many other cases in the sample
of about 90 UFO cases treated in the Condon Report. Endorsement of the
conclusions of the Condon Report by the National Academy of Sciences appears
to have been based on entirely superficial examination of the Report and the
cases treated therein. Further study, conducted on a much more sound
scientific level are needed.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
SOME ILLUSTRATIVE UFO CASES - J. E. McDonald
(AAAS UFO Symposium, Boston, Dec. 27, 1969.)
Case 1. USAF RB-47, Gulf Coast area, September 19-20, 1957.
Brief summary: An Air Force RB-47, equipped with ECM (Electronic
Countermeasures) gear, manned by six officers, was followed over a total
distance in excess of 600 miles and for a time period of more than an hour, as
it flew from near Gulfport, Miss., through Louisiana and Texas, and into
southern Oklahoma. The unidentified object was, at various times, seen
visually by the cockpit crew (as an intense white or red light), followed by
ground-radar, and detected on ECM monitoring gear aboard the RB-47.
Simultaneous appearances and disappearances on all three of those physically
distinct "channels" mark this UFO case as especially intriguing from a
scientific viewpoint. The incident is described as Case 5 in the Condon Report
and is conceded to be unexplained. The full details, however, are not
presented in that Report.
1. Summary of the Case:
The case is long and involved and filled with well-attested phenomena
that defy easy explanation in terms of present-day science and technology. The
RB-47 was flying out of Forbes AFB, Topeka, on a composite mission including
gunnery exercises over the Texas-Gulf area, navigation exercises over the open
Gulf, and ECM exercises in the return trip across the south-central U.S. This
was an RB-47 carrying a six-man crew, of whom three were electronic warfare
officers manning ECM (Electronic counter-measures) gear in the aft portion of
the aircraft. One of the extremely interesting aspects of this case is that
electromagnetic signals of distinctly radar-like character appeared definitely
to be emitted by the UFO, yet it exhibited performance characteristics that
seem to rule out categorically its having been any conventional or secret
aircraft.
I have discussed the incident with all six officers of the crew:
Lewis D. Chase, pilot, Spokane, Wash.
James H. McCoid, copilot, Offutt AFB
Thomas H. Hanley, navigator, Vandenberg AFB
John J. Provenzano, No. 1 monitor, Wichita
Frank B. McClure, No. 2 monitor, Offutt AFB
Walter A. Tuchscherer, No. 3 monitor, Topeka
Chase was a Major at the time; I failed to ask for information on 1957 ranks
of the others. McClure and Hanley are currently Majors, so might have been
Captains or Lieutenants in 1957. All were experienced men at the time. Condon
Project investigators only talked with Chase, McCoid, and McClure, I
ascertained. In my checking it proved necessary to telephone several of them
more than once to pin down key points; nevertheless the total case is so
complex that I would assume that there are still salient points not clarified
either by the Colorado investigators or by myself. Unfortunately, there
appears to be no way, at present to locate the personnel involved in ground-
radar observations that are a very important part of the whole case. I shall
discuss that point below.
This flight occurred in September, 1957, just prior to the crew's
reassignment to a European base. On questioning by Colorado investigators,
flight logs were consulted, and based on the recollection that this flight was
within a short time of departure from Forces to Germany, (plus the requirement
that the date match a flight of the known type and geography) the 9/19/57 date
seems to have emerged. The uncertainty as to whether it was early on the 19th
or early on the 20th, cited above is a point of confusion I had not noted
until preparing the present notes. Hence I am unable to add any clarification,
at the moment; in this matter of the date confusion found in Thayer's
discussion of the case (1, pp. 136-138). I shall try to check that in the near
future. For the present, it does not vitiate case-discussion in any
significant way.
The incident is most inadequately described in the Condon Report. The
reader is left with the general notion that the important parts occurred near
Ft. Worth, an impression strengthened by the fact that both Crow and Thayer
discuss meteorological data only for that area. One is also left with no clear
impression of the duration, which was actually over an hour. The incident
involved an unknown airborne object that stayed with the RB-47 for over 600
miles. In case after case in the Condon Report, close checking reveals that
quite significant features of the cases have been glossed over, or omitted, or
in some instances seriously misrepresented. I submit that to fail to inform
the reader that this particular case spans a total distance-range of some 600
miles and lasted well over an hour is an omission difficult to justify.
From my nine separate interviews with the six crew members, I assembled a
picture of the events that makes it even more puzzling than it seems on
reading the Condon Report -- and even the latter account is puzzling enough.
Just as the aircraft crossed the Mississippi coast near Gulfport,
McClure, manning the #2 monitor, detected a signal near their 5 o'clock
position (aft of the starboard beam). It looked to him like a legitimate
ground-radar signal, but corresponded to a position out in the Gulf. This is
the actual beginning of the complete incident; but before proceeding with
details it is necessary to make quite clear what kind of equipment we shall be
talking about as we follow McClure's successive observations.
Under conditions of war, bombing aircraft entering hostile territory can
be assisted in their penetrations if any of a variety of electronic
countermeasures (ECM techniques as they are collectively termed) are brought
into action against ground-based enemy radar units. The initial step in all
ECM operations is, necessarily, that of detecting the enemy radar and
quantitatively identifying a number of relevant features of the radar system
(carrier frequency, pulse repetition frequency, scan rate, pulse width) and,
above all, its bearing relative to the aircraft heading. The latter task is
particularly ample in principle, calling only for direction-finding antennas
which pick up the enemy signal and display on a monitor scope inside the
reconnaissance aircraft a blip or lobe that paints in the relative bearing
from which the signal is coming.
The ECM gear used in RB-47's in 1957 is not now classified; the #2
monitor that McClure was on, he and the others pointed out, involved an ALA-6
direction-finder with back-to-back antennas in a housing on the undersurface
of the RB-47 near the rear, spun at either 150 or 300 rpm as it scanned in
azimuth. Inside the aircraft, its signals were processed in an APR-9 radar
receiver and an ALA-5 pulse analyser. All later references to the #2 monitor
imply that system. The #1 monitor employed an APD-4 direction finding system,
with a pair of antennas permanently mounted on either wing tip. Provenzano was
on the #1 monitor. Tuchscherer was on the #3 monitor, whose specifications I
did not ascertain because I could find no indication that it was involved in
the observations.
Returning now to the initial features of the UFO episode, McClure at
first thought he had 180-degree ambiguity in his scope, i.e., that the signal
whose lobe painted at his 5 o'clock position was actually coming in from the
11 o'clock position perhaps from some ground radar in Louisiana. This
suspicion, he told me, was temporarily strengthened as he became aware that
the lobe was moving upscope. (It is important here and in features of the case
cited below to understand how a fixed ground-radar paints on the ECM monitor
scope as the reconnaissance aircraft flies toward its general direction:
Suppose the ground radar is, at some instant, located at the 1 o'clock
position relative to the moving aircraft, i.e., slightly off the starboard
bow. As the aircraft flies along, the relative bearing steadily changes, so
that the fixed ground unit is "seen" successively at the 2 o'clock, the 3
o'clock, and the 4 o'clock positions, etc. The lobe paints on the monitor
scope at these successive relative azimuths, the 12 o'clock position being at
the top of the scope, 3 o'clock at the right, etc. Thus any legitimate signal
from a fixed ground radar must move downscope, excluding the special cases in
which the radar is dead ahead or dead astern. Note carefully that we deal here
only with direction finding gear. Range is unknown; we are not here speaking
of an airborne radar set, just a radar-frequency direction-finder. In
practice, range is obtained by triangulation computations based on successive
fixes and known aircraft speed.)
As the lobe continued moving _upscope_, McClure said the strength of the
incoming signal and its pulse characteristics all tended to confirm that this
was some ground unit being painted with 180-degree ambiguity for some unknown
electronic reason. It was at 2800 megacycles, a common frequency for S-band
search radars.
However, after the lobe swung dead ahead, his earlier hypothesis had to
be abandoned for it continued swinging over to the 11 o'clock position and
continued downscope on the port side. Clearly, no 180-degree ambiguity was
capable of accounting for this. Curiously, however, this was so anomalous that
McClure did not take it very seriously and did not at that juncture mention it
to the cockpit crew nor to his colleagues on the other two monitors. This
upscope-downscope "orbit" of the unknown was seen only on the ALA-6, as far as
I could establish. Had nothing else occurred, this first and very significant
portion of the whole episode would almost certainly have been for gotten by
McClure.
The signal faded as the RB-47 headed northward to the scheduled turning
point over Jackson, Miss. The mission called for simulated detection and ECM
operations against Air Force ground radar units all along this part of the
flight plan, but other developments intervened. Shortly after making their
turn westward over Jackson, Miss., Chase noted what he thought at first were
the landing lights of some other jet coming in from near his 11 o'clock
position, at roughly the RB-47's altitude. But no running lights were
discernible and it was a single very bright white light, closing fast. He had
just alerted the rest of the crew to be ready for sudden evasive maneuvers,
when he and McCoid saw the light almost instantaneously change directions and
rush across from left to right at an angular velocity that Chase told me he'd
never seen matched in his flight experience. The light went from their 11
o'clock to the 2 o'clock position with great rapidity, and then blinked out.
Immediately after that, Chase and McCoid began talking about it on the
interphone and McClure, recalling the unusual 2800 megacycle signal that he
had seen over Gulfport now mentioned that peculiar incident for the first time
to Chase and McCoid. It occurred to him at that point to set his #2 monitor to
scan at 2800 mcs. On the first scan, McClure told me, he got a strong 2800 mcs
signal from their 2 o'clock position, the bearing on which the luminous
unknown object had blinked out moments earlier.
Provenzano told me that right after that they had checked out the #2
monitor on valid ground radar stations to be sure it was not malfunctioning
and it appeared to be in perfect order. He then checked on his #1 monitor and
also got a signal from the same bearing. There remained, of course, the
possibility that just by chance, this signal was from a real radar down on the
ground and off in that direction. But as the minutes went by, and the aircraft
continued westward at about 500 kts. the relative bearing of the 2800 mcs
source did not move downscope on the #2 monitor, but kept up with them.
This quickly led to a situation in which the entire 6-man crew focussed
all attention on the matter; the incident is still vivid in the minds of all
the men, though their recollection for various details varies with the
particular activities they were engaged in. Chase varied speed, to see if the
relative bearing would change but nothing altered. After over a hundred miles
of this, with the 2800 mcs source keeping pace with the aircraft, they were
getting into the radar-coverage area of the Carswell AFB GCI (Ground
Controlled Intercept) unit and Chase radioed that unit to ask if they showed
any other air traffic near the RB-47.
Carswell GCI immediately came back with the information that there was
apparently another aircraft about 10 miles from them at their 2 o'clock
position. (The RB-47 was unambiguously identifiable by its IFF signal; the
"other aircraft" was seen by "skin paint" Only, i.e., by direct radar
reflection rather than via an IFF transponder, Col. Chase explained.)
This information, each of the men emphasized to me in one way or
another, made them a bit uneasy for the first time. I asked McClure a question
that the Colorado investigators either failed to ask or did not summarize in
their Report. Was the signal in all respects comparable to that of a typical
ground radar? McClure told me that this was what baffled him the most, then
and now. All the radar signature characteristics, as read out on his ALA-5
pulse analyser, were completely normal -- it had a pulse repetition frequency
and pulse width like a CPS-6B and even simulated a scan rate: But its
intensity, McClure pointed out, was so strong that "it would have to had an
antenna bigger than a bomber to put out that much signal." And now, the
implications of the events over Gulfport took on new meaning. The upscope-
downscope sweep of his #2 monitor lobe implied that this source, presuming it
to be the same one now also being seen on ground radar at Carswell GCI, had
flown a circle around the RB-47 at 30-35,000 ft altitude while the aircraft
was doing about 500 kts.
Shortly after Carswell GCI began following the two targets, RB-47 and
unknown, still another significant action unfolded. McClure suddenly noted the
lobe on the #2 monitor was beginning to go upscope, and almost simultaneously,
Chase told me, GCI called out that the second airborne target was starting to
move forward. Keep in mind that no visual target was observable here; after
blinking out at the 12 o'clock position, following its lightning-like traverse
across the nose of the aircraft, no light had been visible. The unknown now
proceeded to move steadily around to the 12 o'clock position, followed all the
while on the #2 monitor and on the GCI scope down at Carswell near Ft. Worth.
As soon as the unknown reached the 12 o'clock position, Chase and McCoid
suddenly saw a bright red glow "bigger than a house", Chase said, and lying
dead ahead, precisely the bearing shown on the passive radar direction-finder
that McClure was on and precisely the bearing now indicated on the GCI scope.
_Three independent sensing systems_ were at this juncture giving seemingly
consistent-indications: two pairs of human eyes, a ground radar, and a
direction-finding radar receiver in the aircraft.
One of the important points not settled by the Colorado investigations
concerned the question of whether the unknown was ever painted on any radar
set on the RB-47 itself. Some of the men thought the navigator had seen it on
his set, others were unsure. I eventually located Maj. Hanley at Vandenberg
and he informed me that all through the incident, which he remembered very
well, he tried, unsuccessfully to pick up the unknown on his navigational
radar (K-system). I shall not recount all of the details of his efforts and
his comments, but only mention the end result of my two telephone interviews
with him. The important question was what sort of effective range that set
had. Hanley gave the pertinent information that it could just pick up a large
tanker of the KC-97 type at about 4 miles range, when used in the "altitude-
hold" mode, with antenna tipped up to maximum elevation. But both at the start
of its involvement and during the object's swing into the 12 o'clock position,
GCI showed it remaining close to 10 miles in range from the RB-47. Thus
Hanley's inability to detect it on his K-system navigational radar in altitude
hold only implies that whatever was out there had a radar cross-section that
was less than about 16 times that of a KC-97 (roughly twice 4 miles, inverse
4th-power law), The unknown gave a GCI return that suggested a cross-section
comparable to an ordinary aircraft, Chase told me, which is consistent with
Hanley's non-detection of the object. The Condon Report gives the impression
the navigator did detect it, but this is not correct.
I have in my files many pages of typed notes on my interviews, and cannot
fill in all of the intriguing details here. Suffice it to say that Chase then
went to maximum allowable power, hoping to close with the unknown, but it just
stayed ahead at about 10 miles as GCI kept telling them; it stayed as a bright
red light dead ahead, and it kept painting as a bright lobe on the top of
McClure's ALA-6 scope. By this time they were well into Texas still at about
35,000 ft and doing upwards of 500 knots, when Chase saw it begin to veer to
the right and head between Dallas and Ft. Worth. Getting FAA clearance to
alter his own flight plan and to make sure other jet traffic was out of his
way, he followed its turn, and then realized he was beginning to close on it
for the first time. Almost immediately GCI told him the unknown had stopped
moving on the ground-radarscope. Chase and McCoid watched as they came almost
up to it. Chase's recollections on this segment of the events were distinctly
clearer than McCoid's. McCoid was, of course, sitting aft of Chase and had the
poorer view; also he said he was doing fuel-reserve calculations in view of
the excess fuel-use in their efforts to shake the unknown, and had to look up
from the lighted cockpit to try to look out intermittently, while Chase in the
forward seat was able to keep it in sight more nearly continuously. Chase told
me that he'd estimate that it was just ahead of the RB-47 and definitely below
them when it instantaneously blinked out, At that same moment McClure
announced on the interphone that he'd lost the 2800 mcs signal, and GCI said
it had disappeared from their scope. Such simultaneous loss of signal on what
we can term three separate channels is most provocative, most puzzling.
Putting the aircraft into a left turn (which Chase noted consumes about
15-20 miles at top speed), they kept looking back to try to see the light
again. And, about halfway through the turn (by then the aircraft had reached
the vicinity of Mineral Wells, Texas, Chase said), the men in the cockpit
suddenly saw the bright red light flash on again, back along their previous
flight path but distinctly lower, and simultaneously GCI got a target again
and McClure started picking up a 2800 mcs signal at that bearing: (As I heard
one after another of these men describe all this, I kept trying to imagine how
it was possible that Condon could listen, at the October, 1967, plasma
conference at the UFO Project, as Col. Chase recounted all this and shrug his
shoulders and walk out.)
Securing permission from Carswell GCI to undertake the decidedly non-
standard maneuver of diving on the unknown, Chase put the RB-47 nose down and
had reached about 20,000 ft, he recalls, when all of a sudden the light
blinked out, GCI lost it on their scope, and McClure reported loss of signal
on the #2 monitor: Three-channel consistency once more.
Low on fuel, Chase climbed back up to 25,000 and headed north for
Oklahoma. He barely had it on homeward course when McClure got a blip dead
astern and Carswell radioed that they had a target once more trailing the RB-
47 at about 10 miles. Rear visibility from the topblisters of the RB-4 now
precluded easy visual check, particularly if the unknown was then at lower
altitude (Chase estimated that it might have been near 15,000 ft when he lost
it in the dive). It followed them to southern Oklahoma and then disappeared.
2. Discussion:
This incident is an especially good example of a UFO case in which
observer credibility and reliability do not come into serious question, a case
in which more than one (here three) channel of information figures in the
over-all observations, and a case in which the reported phenomena appear to
defy explanation in terms of either natural or technological phenomena.
In the Condon Report, the important initial incident in which the unknown
2800 MC source appeared to orbit the RB-47 near Gulfport is omitted. In the
Condon Report, the reader is given no hint that the object was with the
aircraft for over 600 miles and for over an hour. No clear sequence of these
events is spelled out, nor is the reader made aware of all of the "three-
channel" simultaneous appearances or disappearances that were so emphatically
stressed to me by both Chase and McClure in my interviews with them. But even
despite those degrees of incompleteness, any reader of the account of this
case in the Condon Report must wonder that an incident of this sort could be
left as unexplained and yet ultimately treated, along with the other
unexplained cases in that Report, as calling for no further scientific
attention.
Actually, various hypotheses (radar anomalies, mirage effects) are weighed
in one part of the Condon Report where this case is discussed separately (pp.
136-138). But the suggestion made there that perhaps an inversion near 2 km
altitude was responsible for the returns at the Carswell GCI unit is wholly
untenable. In an Appendix, a very lengthy but non-relevant discussion of
ground return from anomalous propagation appears; in fact, it is so unrelated
to the actual circumstances of this case as to warrant no comment here.
Chase's account emphasized that the GCI radar(s) had his aircraft and the
unknown object on-scope for a total flight-distance of the order of several
hundred miles, including a near overflight of the ground radar. With such wide
variations in angles of incidence of the ground-radar beam on any inversion or
duct, however intense, the possibility of anomalous propagation effects
yielding a consistent pattern of spurious echo matching the reported movements
and the appearances and disappearances of the target is infinitesimal. And the
more so in view of the simultaneous appearances and disappearances on the ECM
gear and via visible emissions from the unknown. To suggest, as is tentatively
done on p. 138 that the "red glow" might have been a "mirage of Oklahoma
City", when the pilot's description of the luminous source involves a wide
range of viewing angles, including two instances when he was viewing it at
quite large depression angles, is wholly unreasonable. Unfortunately, that
kind of casual ad hoc hypothesizing with almost no attention to relevant
physical considerations runs all through the case-discussions in the treatment
of radar and optical cases in the Condon Report, frequently (though not in
this instance) being made the basis of "explanations" that are merely absurd.
On p. 265 of the Report, the question of whether this incident might be
explained in terms of any "plasma effect" is considered but rejected. In the
end, this case is conceded to be unexplained.
No evidence that a report on this event reached Project Bluebook was found
by the Colorado investigators. That may seem hard to believe for those who are
under the impression that the Air Force has been diligently and exhaustively
investigating UFO reports over the past 22 years. But to those who have
examined more closely the actual levels of investigation, lack of a report on
this incident is not so surprising. Other comparable instances could he cited,
and still more where the military aircrews elected to spare themselves the
bother of interrogation,by not even reporting events about as puzzling as
those found in this RB-47 incident.
But what is of greatest present interest is the point that here we have a
well-reported, multi-channel, multiple-witness UFO report, coming in fact from
within the Air Force itself, investigated by the Condon Report team, conceded
to be unexplained, and yet it is, in final analysis, ignored by Dr. Condon. In
no section of the Report specifically written by the principal investigator
does he even allude to this intriguing case. My question is how such events
can be written off as demanding no further scientific study. To me, such cases
seem to cry out for the most intensive scientific study -- and the more so
because they are actually so much more numerous than the scientific community
yet realizes. There is a scientific mystery here that is being ignored and
shoved under the rug; the strongest and most unjustified shove has come from
the Condon Report. "unjustified" because that Report itself contains so many
scientifically puzzling unexplained cases (approximately 30 out of 90 cases
considered) that it is extremely difficult to understand how its principal
investigator could have construed the contents of the Report as supporting a
view that UFO studies should be terminated.
Case 2. Lakenheath and Bentwaters RAF/USAF units; England, August 13-14,
1956.
Brief summary: Observations of unidentified objects by USAF and RAF personnel,
extending over 5 hours, and involving ground-radar, airborne-radar, ground
visual and airborne-visual sightings of high-speed unconventionally
maneuvering obJects in the vicinity of two RAF stations at night. It is Case 2
in the Condon Report and is there conceded to be unexplained.
1. Introduction:
This case will illustrate, in significant ways, the following points:
a) It illustrates the fact that many scientifically intriguing UFO
reports have lain in USAF/Bluebook files for years without knowledge
thereof by the scientific community.
b) It represents a large subset of UFO cases in which all of the
observations stemmed from military sources and which, had there been
serious and competent scientific interest operating in Project
Bluebook, could have been very thoroughly investigated while the
information was fresh. It also illustrates the point that the actual
levels of investigation were entirely inadequate in even as
unexplainable and involved cases as this one.
c) It illustrates the uncomfortably incomplete and internally
inconsistent features that one encounters in almost every report of
its kind in the USAF/Bluebook files at Wright-Patterson AFB, features
attesting to the dearth of scientific competence in the Air Force UFO
investigations over the past 20 years.
d) It illustrates, when the original files are carefully studied and
compared with the discussion thereof in the Condon Report,
shortcomings in presentation and critique given many cases in the
Condon Report.
e) Finally, I believe it illustrates an example of those cases conceded
to be unexplainable by the Condon Report that argue need for much
more extensive and more thorough scientific investigation of the UFO
problem, a need negated in the Condon Report and in the Academy
endorsement thereof.
My discussion of this case will be based upon the 30-page Bluebook case-
file, plus certain other information presented on it in the Condon Report.
This "Lakenheath case" was not known outside of USAF circles prior to
publication of the Condon Report. None of the names of military personnel
involved are given in the Condon Report. (Witness names, dates, and locales
are deleted from all of the main group of cases in that Report, seriously
impeding independent scientific check of case materials.) I secured copies of
the case-file from Bluebook, but all names of military personnel involved in
the incident were cut out of the Xerox copies prior to releasing the material
to me. Hence I have been unable to interview personally the key witnesses.
However, there is no indication that anyone on the colorado Project did any
personal interviews, either; so it would appear I have had access to the same
basic data used in the Condon Report's treatment of this extremely interesting
case.
For no Justified reason, the Condon Report not only deletes witness names,
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