One such study has specifically attacked the problem of radar images that perform rapid and erratic maneuvers at close range and seem to overtake, fly parallel with, or almost collide with the pursuing aircraft. Such returns may be caused by the “non-isotropic secondary scattering of energy” (that is, the radio waves are not reflected in a uniform manner) from an airplane to a ground object, or from ground object to plane. Under appropriate weather conditions the plane itself causes the puzzling echoes, so that the velocity and movement of the radar “saucer” depend directly on those of the plane. When the aircraft is the first of the two scatterers, the radar saucer always appears at the same bearing as the plane, and is always farther away from the detecting radar than is the plane. Thus the path of the phantom always lies outside the path of the aircraft, and when the jet performs a 360-degree turn, the phantom also turns, on an outside path. However, if the jet happens to fly directly over the ground object that is reflecting the energy, then the observing radar will see the images of the jet and the phantom flying on what seems to be a collision course. Conversely, when the ground object is the first of the two scatterers, the saucer phantom always occurs at the same bearing as the ground object, and the distance to the phantom is always greater than to the ground object. If the aircraft crosses the radial line from radar to ground object, at a range exceeding the range to the object, then the echoes from plane and saucer almost merge at the point of crossing, in a “near collision.” But if the plane flies “this side” of the object, then the plane and saucer will never be closer together than the distance between plane and ground object at the point of crossing. A height-finding radar, trained on the pursuing plane, would show the phantom saucer apparently diving toward or climbing away from the plane, attacking and retreating at very high velocities[VIII-4]. _The Kinross Case_ Some such mechanism probably explains the radar returns reported in the Kinross case, which some saucer publications cite as a proved instance in which a flying saucer attacked a plane. On the night of November 23, 1953, an Air Force jet was scrambled from Kinross Air Force Base, Michigan, to intercept an unidentified plane observed on radar. The jet successfully accomplished its mission and identified the unknown as a Dakota, a Canadian C-47. On its return to the base, however, the Air Force jet crashed into Lake Michigan and, as often happens when a plane crashes into deep water and the exact place of the crash is not known, no wreckage was ever found. As the ground radar at Kinross had tracked the returning jet, the scope had picked up a phantom echo in the neighborhood of the jet; the two blips had seemed to merge just as both went off the scope.