Once again: Happy Birthday, Tom.
FILER'S FILES #30-2002, MUFON Skywatch Investigations
George A. Filer, Director Mutual UFO Network Eastern
July 24, 2002, Majorstar@aol.com.
Webmaster: Chuck Warren, http://.www.filersfiles.com
ALIEN ARMADA OVER WASHINGTON DC
Washington Post staff writer Peter Carlson reports on Sunday that, in the control tower at Washington National Airport, Ed Nugent saw seven pale violet blips on his radar screen. What were they? Not planes -- at least not any planes that were supposed to be there. He summoned his boss, Harry G. Barnes, the head of National's air traffic controllers. "Here's a fleet of flying saucers for you," Nugent said, half-joking. Upstairs, in the tower's glass-enclosed top floor, controller Joe Zacko saw a strange blip streaking across his radar screen. It wasn't a bird. It wasn't a plane. What was it? He looked out the window and spotted a bright light hovering in the sky. He turned to his partner, Howard Cocklin, who was sitting three feet away. "Look at that bright light," Zacko said. "If you believe in flying saucers, that could sure be one." And then the light took off, zooming away at an incredible speed. "Did you see that?" Cocklin remembers saying. "What the hell was that?"
It was Saturday night, July 19, 1952, fifty years ago -- one of the most famous dates in the bizarre history of UFOs. Before the night was over, a pilot reported seeing unexplained objects, radar at two local Air Force bases -- Andrews and Bolling -- picked up the UFOs, and two Air Force F-94 jets streaked over Washington, searching for flying saucers. Then, a week later, it happened all over again -- more UFOs on the radar screen, more jets scrambled over Washington. Across America, the story of jets chasing UFOs over the White House knocked the Korean War and the presidential campaign off the front pages of newspapers.
" 'Saucer' Outran Jet, Pilot Reveals," read the banner headline in The Washington Post.
"JETS CHASE D.C. SKY GHOSTS," screamed the New York Daily News.
"AERIAL WHATZITS BUZZ D.C. AGAIN!" shouted the Washington Daily News.
As rumors spread, President Truman demanded to know what was flying over his house. Soon the federal government was fighting the UFOs with the most powerful weapons in the Washington arsenal -- bureaucracy, obfuscation and gobbledygook. That seemed to work. The UFOs never returned.
Snip.
Dr. Bruce Maccabee isn't laughing. "One thing you have to understand: This is serious business," he says. "The skeptics like to make fun of us." Maccabee, 60, is a civilian physicist for the Navy and a prominent UFO believer. Maccabee buttresses his argument with an official government report. It's called "Quantitative Aspects of Mirages" and it was issued by the Air Force in 1969. "They proved in their own study that there wasn't enough temperature inversion to cause this effect," he says. "The Washington sightings cannot be explained as a radar mirage. "In the '70s, he filed the Freedom of Information Act request that led to the release of the FBI's file on UFOs. The file was called "Security Matter X" -- "the real X-Files," he says. Maccabee believes there were "solid objects" in the air over Washington 50 years ago. "And I think those solid objects were not made by us," he says. "And by us, I mean human beings." After 50 years, the debate over the Washington UFOs goes on and on. "You have dueling experts and dueling reports," says Kevin D. Randle, author of "Invasion Washington: UFOs Over the Capitol," a new book on the 1952 sightings. "One expert says it was temperature inversion. Another says it wasn't. In that situation, you have to refer back to the air traffic controllers and the pilots who actually saw the objects." Former controller Howard Cocklin is still convinced that he saw an object over National that night. "I saw it on the screen and out the window," he says. "It was a whitish-blue object. Not a light -- a solid form. An object. A saucer-shaped object." Now 83 and retired, Cocklin says he never saw anything like that saucer -- not before, not since. "It just went away," he says, sitting in an armchair in his Fairfax living room. "Where did it go? Why don't people see these things today? Why 50 years ago?"
Thanks to Washington Post.
(Link now fixed - read more on the Wash. Post site, including bits on Marilyn Monroe and the Pentagon.) |
