After talking with intelligence officers at the Pentagon about the sightings, Ruppelt spent several hours trying to obtain a staff car so he could travel around Washington to investigate the sightings, but was refused as only generals and senior colonels could use staff cars. However, he did not learn about the sightings until Monday, July 21, when he read the headlines in a Washington-area newspaper. Ruppelt, the supervisor of the Air Force's Project Blue Book investigation into UFO sightings, was in Washington at the time. It read "SAUCERS SWARM OVER CAPITAL" in large black type. A typical example was the headline from the Cedar Rapids Gazette in Iowa. The sightings of July 19–20, 1952, made front-page headlines in newspapers around the nation. However, when the jets ran low on fuel and left, the objects returned, which convinced Barnes that "the UFOs were monitoring radio traffic and behaving accordingly." The objects were last detected by radar at 5:30 a.m. Īt 3 a.m., shortly before two United States Air Force F-94 Starfire jet fighters from New Castle Air Force Base in Delaware arrived over Washington, all of the objects vanished from the radar at National Airport. The object vanished in all three radar centers at the same time. this happened several times." At one point both radar centers at National Airport and the radar at Andrews Air Force Base were tracking an object hovering over a radio beacon. Charles Davenport observed an orange-red light to the south the light "would appear to stand still, then make an abrupt change in direction and altitude. Meanwhile, at Andrews Air Force Base, the control tower personnel were tracking on radar what some thought to be unknown objects, but others suspected, and in one instance were able to prove, were simply stars and meteors. When he reported that the light streaked off at a high speed, it disappeared on our scope." Pierman was in radio contact with Barnes during his sighting, and Barnes later related that "each sighting coincided with a pip we could see near his plane. Pierman observed six objects - "white, tailless, fast-moving lights" - over a 14-minute period. After spotting what he believed to be a meteor, he was told that the control tower's radar had detected unknown objects closing in on his position. Pierman, a Capital Airlines pilot, was waiting in the cockpit of his DC-4 for permission to take off. On one of National Airport's runways, S.C. unlike anything I had ever seen before." As Brady tried to alert the other personnel in the tower, the strange object "took off at an unbelievable speed. Airman William Brady, who was in the tower, then saw an "object which appeared to be like an orange ball of fire, trailing a tail. Although Andrews reported that they had no unusual objects on their radar, an airman soon called the base's control tower to report the sighting of a strange object. Cocklin asked Zacko, "Did you see that? What the hell was that?" Īt this point, other objects appeared in all sectors of the radarscope when they moved over the White House and the United States Capitol, Barnes called Andrews Air Force Base, located 10 miles from National Airport. Barnes then called National Airport's radar-equipped control tower the controllers there, Howard Cocklin and Joe Zacko, said that they also had unidentified blips on their radar screen, and saw a hovering "bright light" in the sky, which departed with incredible speed. īarnes had two controllers check Nugent's radar they found that it was working normally. their movements were completely radical compared to those of ordinary aircraft. We knew immediately that a very strange situation existed. Nugent's superior, Harry Barnes, a senior air-traffic controller at the airport, watched the objects on Nugent's radarscope. The objects were located 15 miles (24 km) south-southwest of the city no known aircraft were in the area and the objects were not following any established flight paths. on Saturday, July 19, 1952, Edward Nugent, an air traffic controller at Washington National Airport (today Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport), spotted seven objects on his radar.
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