The Report on Unidentified Flying ObjectsRuppelt, Edward J.
History
The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects
Ruppelt, Edward J.
Unidentified flying objects
The F-94 crew made a fourth pass and got a weak return, but it was
soon lost as the target seemed to speed away. Ground radar also got a
brief return, but in a matter of seconds they too lost the target 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 James, anyway, in hopes
that he might 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 familiar with radar for many years, having 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 James decided that this Alaskan sighting 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 time the ground
radar had been switched to short range. This, he pointed out, is an
indication that the radar was picking up some kind of a target that
was caused by weather. The same weather that caused the ground radar
to act up must have caused false targets 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 moonlight night, 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 times as the pilot attempted to
follow a target 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
some of the people didn't agree with James's conclusion.
A month or two after we'd received the report, I was out in Colorado
Springs at Air Defense Command Headquarters. I was eating 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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