The hundreds of flying saucers reported during the summer (_Chapter_ VII) had produced a state of near-panic which entered its acute phase on July 19, at 11:40 P.M. E.D.S.T., when a group of seven unidentified targets appeared on the radarscope of the Air Route Traffic Control (ARTC) at the Washington National Airport[VIII-3, p. 209 ff.]. Similar targets that moved erratically, appearing and disappearing, were observed on the radars of the control tower and of nearby Andrews Air Force Base. If the blips were to be accepted at face value, then a host of aerial objects had invaded Washington and were cruising over the White House and the Capitol. Traffic control notified the pilots of commercial flights in the area to keep alert for unidentified aircraft. Some pilots reported unusual echoes on their plane radars, some reported only normal returns, and two pilots reported unexplained lights in the neighborhood indicated by radar. Nobody saw any strange aircraft. After several requests from ARTC (which unaccountably did not notify officials in the Air Force Intelligence that an “invasion” was taking place), a jet interceptor finally arrived about dawn to search the area but found nothing. Meanwhile the targets had vanished from the radarscopes. Next day the report flashed all over the world that a fleet of flying saucers had invaded Washington, and public tension became almost tangible. Was the earth doomed? The terror reached its climax on July 26, just a week after the first incident, when at 10:30 P.M., E.D.S.T., the same radar operators who had observed the first “invasion” picked up another group of mysterious blips on their screens. The host of unknowns had apparently formed a ring around the city of Washington and the surrounding countryside. This time Air Force Intelligence officers were notified. They raced to the airport to see the radarscopes for themselves, and concluded that real saucers must be in the sky. All commercial air traffic was then diverted from Washington, reporters and photographers were barred from the radar room, and Air Force jets took to the air to defend the nation. But against what? The enemy, if there, was invisible. One pilot saw a bright light that vanished when he began to chase it; later, his radar showed a return that faded after a few seconds, but he could not find a visual target. In the hours between midnight and dawn, jet interceptors scoured the skies looking for mysterious objects that produced returns on ground radar but not on plane radar, and were invisible to the human eye. They found nothing. One pilot who flew this mission, accompanied by a copilot who was also a radar officer, later described his experience: