UFO over Washington
The White Sands missile test site stretches for many kilometers, there are numerous cine-theodolite stations connected by telephone cable, and other equipment that makes it possible to observe fast-moving objects at high altitudes. A cinetheodolite is similar to a 35mm movie camera, except that photographs of an object contain three values: the time the picture was taken, the azimuth and elevation of the camera. If an object is photographed with two or more cine theodolites, then you can get approximate data on the size of the object, altitude and flight speed.
Ruppelt in his book "Investigation of Unidentified Flying Objects" mentioned two incidents with the help of which he proves that UFOs are real solid objects.
1950, April 27 - shortly after the launch of a guided missile from the White Sands test site, Air Force technicians noticed an unidentified object in the sky. Because almost all of the cameras no longer had film, only one rig was able to remove this thing before it disappeared. The photo showed only a dirty gray object, but it also proved that this object was moving. A month later, during another test, a UFO reappeared. This time, two camera technicians watched him and took several pictures. The tape was analyzed by the White Sands Information Processing Team. Having made the necessary amendments, the experts determined that the object flew at an altitude of more than 13,000 meters at a speed of 3200 km / h, its diameter was equal to one hundred meters.
Ruppelt warned that these figures are very approximate. But be that as it may, they prove that the unknown body in the air was solid and moved at great speed. These facts convinced Ruppelt, but the Air Force wasn’t enough. What happened the next year in Lubbock, Texas and Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, shocked them.
1951, August 25 - An employee of the top secret Sandia Corporation, accountable to the Atomic Energy Commission - someone with a security code Q, who enjoys great confidence, while in his garden near Albuquerque, New Mexico, he saw a huge plane flying quickly and silently over his home. It was shaped like a flying wing, with six or eight soft bluish lights along the trailing edge of the wings.
That evening, after 20 minutes. After the first visit, four professors at the Texas Tech College in Lubbock - a geologist, chemist, physicist, and petroleum engineer - noticed lights in the sky: 15 to 30 separate bluish-greenish lights moving from north to south in a semicircle. In the early morning of August 26, just hours after the incident in Lubbock, two radars at an air defense station in Washington state noticed an unknown object moving at a speed of about 1400 km / h at an altitude of 450 meters in a northwest direction.
On August 31, two women driving a car near Matador, 112 km northeast of Lubbock, saw a "pear-shaped object" at a distance of 130 meters ahead at an altitude of 40 meters, slowly moving eastward at a speed that was less than the takeoff speed of an airplane brand " Cab ". One of the witnesses was familiar with airplanes, since she was married to an Air Force officer and had lived at air bases for many years; She assured that the object was the size of a B-29 fuselage, had a porthole on its side, moved completely silently, as if it were being blown away by the wind, then suddenly began to rise and, having made a spiral maneuver, disappeared from sight.
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On the same evening, amateur photographer Karl Hart snapped 5 shots of the same bluish-greenish lights that formed the letter "V". Finally, one woman told her husband, the rancher (who in turn told the story to Captain Ruppelt) that she saw a large object floating slowly over their house. This happened 10 minutes after the UFO sighting to an employee of the Sandia corporation, the woman described it as "an airplane without a fuselage," a pair of lights burned on the trailing edge of the wing, which coincides with the testimony of the above certificate.
An investigation by members of the Air Force Blue Book project confirmed that Washington radar detected a solid object that was not a meteorological instrument. It was estimated that he was traveling at a speed of 1,400 km / h in a northwest direction.
5 photographs taken by Karl Hart were analyzed by specialists from the reconnaissance darkroom at Wright airfield. The study found that the lights forming an inverted "V" crossed about 120 degrees of the open sky at an angular velocity of 30 degrees per second, which is consistent with data obtained by four professors at Lubbock. Photo analysis also showed that the lights on the object were much brighter than the surrounding stars.
Did a solid body actually pass over Albuquerque and then fly 400 km to Lubbock at a speed of about 1400 km / h? Judging by the readings of the radar and instruments, as well as eyewitnesses, yes. The documents in this case were reviewed by a group of rocket scientists, nuclear physicists and spies, and all agreed that it was in fact a huge solid object "with a high wing sweep" and with "small exit holes along the edge."
According to Ruppelt, this extraordinary event finally shook up the Air Force and made them act. But official circles began to regard the "UFO problem" with great respect only a month later, after the incident at the radar station of the communications forces in Fort Monmouth, New Jersey.
The turmoil began at 11.10 am on September 10, 1951, when a trainee cameraman demonstrated his skills to visiting bosses. Seeing an object flying 10 km southeast of the station, the operator switched to automatic tracking, but could not keep the object and, to his annoyance, had to report to his superiors that the object was moving very quickly, which meant that its speed was higher than the speed of any known jet plane. After three minutes, during which the UFO was still flying at great speed, it disappeared.
After 25 min. the pilot of the T-ZZ trainer with an Air Force major on board, flying 6 km above Mount Plisent, New Jersey, saw a "dull, silvery disc-shaped object" directly below him. The diameter of the UFO was 10-12 meters. As the object began to descend towards Sandy Hook, the pilot followed. When they got close, the object suddenly froze, then rushed south, made a sharp 120-degree turn and flew out to sea, out of sight. An Air Force major confirmed the pilot's words.
At 3.15 p.m., a call from headquarters rang at the Fort Monmouth radar center. Operators were ordered to track an unknown object flying north at high altitude, roughly where the first UFO disappeared. Radar confirmed that the UFO was moving slowly at an altitude of 28 km, or 18 miles, like a grain of silver. None of the known aircraft of those times could fly 28 km above the ground!
The next morning, two radars spotted another UFO, which was rapidly climbing and descending and maneuvering so much that the radar could not pick up these movements. When the ship climbed, it went almost vertically. And finally, in the afternoon, the radar spotted another slowly moving UFO, which also soon disappeared.
Major General K. P. Cabell, representing the Air Force Chief of Intelligence, ordered an investigation. Within hours, officers from the Air Technical Reconnaissance Center (AT1C) in Wright Patterson were on their way to Lubbock. For two days, they interrogated all employees - pilots, radar operators, technicians and instructors, and then submitted a report to the Pentagon. The meeting was taped, but, as Ruppelt says, "the passions were so heated that the tape was then destroyed."
It did happen at Fort Monmouth and Loubbock prompted Cabell to order ATIC to establish a new, more serious UFO-related program. In April 1952, Project Grad was renamed Project Blue Book, with Captain Ruppelt at the helm. He soon witnessed even more serious panic … and realized that the US government and the Pentagon were not as interested in an official UFO investigation as they seemed.
1952 - The District of Columbia is overrun by UFOs. By June, the Air Force Project Blue Book had received as many official reports as it had not received in any month. Ruppelt writes that the number of reports terrified Air Force officers at the Pentagon. By June 15, it became clear that by all indicators of time, place, sequence - UFOs are gradually approaching the District of Columbia. On the afternoon of June 15, reports of "round shiny objects" and "silver spheres" came from all over Virginia, one after the other: 3:40 pm from Unionville, 4:20 pm from Gordonsville, 4:25 pm from Richmond, 4:43 pm and 5:43 pm from Gordonsville. At 19.35, many residents of Blackstone, 120 km south of Gordonsville, observed a "round, shiny object emitting golden light" moving from north to south. At 19.59, the same object was seen from the radio station of the Civil Aviation Administration in Blackstone. At 20.00, a jet from Langley Base tried to chase him, but after 5 minutes the object, moving too slowly for the plane, disappeared.
Things took such a turn that Ruppelt was summoned to Washington for a private meeting at the Pentagon, attended by General Semford, the chief of intelligence, some of his staff, two naval captains from naval intelligence, and a few others that Ruppelt does not name for security reasons. The result was "an instruction to continue working in order to achieve UFO identification."
And UFOs continued to excite the people. By the end of June, it became clear that UFOs were being concentrated in the eastern states of the United States. In Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland, fighters soared into the sky almost every night for a whole week, but their radars were unable to perceive the sudden lightning-fast movements of UFOs. On July 1, a cluster of UFOs was seen over Boston, then they began to move down the coast. On the same day, according to the Blue Book report, the UFO "flew over Boston in a southwest direction, crossed Long Island, hovered over secret laboratories in Fort Monmouth for a few minutes, and then moved towards Washington." A few hours later, the first message came from Washington, from University professor George Washington.
For the next two weeks, UFO reports from Washington came in at 20-30 a day. Finally, on the night of July 19, the most interesting events began to take place.
At 11:40 pm, two radars at Washington National Airport detected 8 UFOs near Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland. Their speed was approximately 160-190 km / h, then they increased their speed to incredible limits and disappeared from view, but soon returned. Throughout the night, dispatchers and aircraft crews observed a strange light in the same directions indicated by the radar. The interceptors tried in vain to catch up with them, that night, targets moved in all sectors accessible to radar, even in the "forbidden corridor" above the White House and the Capitol. The climax came early in the morning. Tower dispatchers at Andrews Base, in response to an ARTC request for an object directly above the base radio station, near the tower, reported that "a large mysterious orange ball" hovered directly above them.
Ruppelt was not informed about these cases, he learned about them from a newspaper that he bought at the Washington airport upon arrival from Dayton, Ohio. He immediately rushed to the Pentagon, where he met with the AT1C liaison at the Pentagon, Major Dewey Fourne and Colonel Bower, a scout from nearby Bolling Air Base. They confirmed that jet planes roamed the restricted corridor around the White House that night trying to intercept a horde of UFOs, that they had been spotted on radars throughout DC, that careful analysis had completely ruled out the possibility of temperature inversion, and that radar operators at Washington National Airport and Andrews Air Force Base and two veteran pilots claim that the radar waves hit a solid object.
On behalf of the Air Force, PR Officer Al Chops told the press only one dry "no comment." Ruppelt wanted to conduct a serious investigation, but all his actions were blocked. He planned to drive to all the places where UFOs were seen, but was barely able to get outside the Pentagon.
A week after the first burst of UFO activity, another, even more impressive, followed.
Around 10:30 pm on July 26, the same radar operators detected many slow moving objects … but this time the UFOs spread in a wide arc around Washington, from Herndon, Virginia, to Andrews Base. Simply put, they surrounded Washington.
By 2330 the radars were tracking four or five targets over the Capitol. The F-94s tried to intercept them, again to no avail. After this, messages came from Langley AFB, operators spoke of strange lights that changed color and rotated. Another "F-94" flew into the sky, it was sent by the dispatchers from the tower. The pilot said that when he approached one of the lights, it went out, "as if someone had turned off a light bulb." Immediately after that, UFOs appeared on the radar of Washington National Airport.
Again the F-94s came into action, but as soon as they approached the lights, they “turned off” and disappeared from the radar screens.
The game of cat and mouse lasted all night, and in the morning the UFOs disappeared. Meanwhile, chaos reigned in Washington. The press was outraged as all reporters and photographers were removed from the radar room as the interceptors chased UFOs. When the press withdrew, controversy erupted at control rooms and at the Pentagon. According to Dewey Fournet, everyone gathered near the radars was convinced that they had detected a solid metal object, and nothing else, and this mysterious device could hover in the air, and then break off and accelerate to a speed of several thousand kilometers per hour.
Then rumors spread that President Truman himself had observed a UFO directly over the White House. Whether this is true or not, we do not know, but it is known that at about 10 am the next day, the presidential adviser for aviation, Brigadier General Lendry, called the scouts at Truman's personal request and inquired about what was happening there. Captain Ruppelt talked to him, but he was forced to evade answers, since he himself could not give an explanation of what was happening.
It was this series of events that raised suspicions among Project Blue Book members regarding the involvement of the Air Force. What turned out shocked many of them.
For starters, when asked about the “big mysterious orange object” that they saw over the Andrews radio station, the KDP operators reversed their readings and said that they actually saw a star.
According to Ruppelt, it is hard to believe that experienced radar operators mistook a star for a “large mysterious orange object”; his suspicions were strengthened when he learned that, according to astronomical maps, there could not be any particularly bright stars in that place. Ruppelt later found out from informed sources that the operators were persuaded to change their testimony.
Likewise, the F-94 pilot, who unsuccessfully attempted to intercept the unidentified lights, stated in an official report that they were ground lights reflected in a layer of fog - a rather ridiculous claim when you consider that both the radar and the pilot confirmed that the lights appeared and disappeared, until at last they disappeared altogether.
As for the BBC's stubborn excuses that the operators had witnessed a natural phenomenon caused by temperature inversion, Project Blue Book found out at the Air Defense Forecast Center that the temperature inversion during the UFO event could not have been strong enough to cause false images on radar screens. And, finally, no meteorological apparatus is capable of turning 180 degrees and flying away every time an interceptor aircraft approaches it.
This series of phenomena, of course, was unprecedented, but another invasion followed, which helped Ruppelt learn more about what these UFOs are, where they came from and who is related to them.
A couple of months after the Washington panic in early September 1952, many UFOs appeared in the southeastern states, such as Georgia and Alabama. A large number of them circled the vicinity of the new top-secret Atomic Energy Commission complex near the Savannah River, and even more - over Brookly AFB, near Mobile, Alabama. At the same time, NATO's navy was conducting maneuvers known as Operation Mainbrace, off the coast of Europe.
September 20 - An American journalist, pilots and flight deck crew aboard an aircraft carrier in the North Sea observed a "clearly visible silver ball" moving along the sea, just behind the flotilla. The object was large and moving at high speed, but the reporter was able to take some pictures. They were promptly printed and examined by scouts aboard the aircraft carrier. The images were excellent, the object resembling a large balloon was clearly visible, but there were no balloons at the time of the exercise in the area, in addition, further analysis confirmed that the object was moving at high speed.
The next day, six British Air Force pilots were flying fighters over the North Sea and saw a "shiny spherical object" approaching from the NATO flotilla. They began to chase him, but soon lost sight of him, and flying up to their base, they noticed that a UFO was moving behind them. The pilots tried to follow him again, but he “evaporated” in a matter of minutes.
Finally, on the third day of NATO exercises, a UFO was seen near the flotilla, this time over Topcliffe airfield in England. An interceptor was sent, and the pilot managed to get quite close, he saw that the object was "round, silver and white" and "seemed to rotate around a vertical axis and wobble." As he tried to get even closer, the UFO darted and disappeared.
A British Air Force intelligence officer later told Ruppelt at a meeting at the Pentagon that what happened during Operation Mainbrace prompted Air Force officials to launch a serious investigation into the UFO. Although the Air Force denied this, Ruppelt had reason to suspect a link between the Washington panic and the invasion during the NATO exercise.
Ruppelt reports that even before the known incidents of July 20 and 26, 1951 in Washington, a scientist from the agency, whose name Ruppelt cannot name for security reasons, told him with complete confidence: “In a few days … you will witness the worst panic in connection with UFO. It will happen in Washington DC or New York, rather, in Washington. Ruppelt also writes that in September 1952, when the NATO Navy was preparing for Operation Mainbrace, someone from the Pentagon remarked that intelligence had to keep an eye out for UFOs.
In other words, someone in the White House and the Pentagon seemed to know in advance where and when UFOs would appear. This suggests that the United States had its own flying saucers.
Nikolai Nepomniachtchi