1952 UFOs: Biggest Events in Human History?

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Here's another article, this time from the Science section of Time
Magazine., dated August 4, 1952.

I suppose that if one is credulous enough to believe in the story of
Noah's Ark, flying saucers isn't much of a stretch.

Mark Stein

TIME Magazine - August 4, 1952

SCIENCE:
Blips on the Scopes
Air traffic was light at Washington Airport one midnight last week, and
the radar scope of the Civil Aeronautics Authority was almost clear. At
12:40 a.m. a group of bright blips showed. The operator estimated that
they were about 15 miles southwest of Washington. Then the blips
disappeared abruptly and reappeared a few seconds later over northeast
Washington. The operator called his boss, Senior Controller Harry
Barnes, 39, a graduate of the Buffalo Technical Institute who has worked
for the CAA as an electronics expert since 1941. The operator told
Barnes: "Here are some flying saucers for you."
Barnes laughed at first, but the blips kept popping up all over the
scope. They sometimes hovered, sometimes flew slowly and sometimes
incredibly fast. Technicians checked the radar; it was in good working
order.
Over the White House. Barnes began to worry when he saw the blips
apparently flying over the White House and other prohibited areas. He
called the airport control tower. Sure enough, its radar showed the
strange blips too. When the towermen measured the speed of a fast blip,
they found that it had flown for eight miles at 7,200 m.p.h.
Now the blips on Barnes's scope were moving towards Andrews Air Force
Base about ten miles to the east. Barnes called the Andrews tower.
Nothing strange showed on its radar, but both towermen and an enlisted
man on the field saw a single, round, orange light drifting in the
southern sky. That was enough for Barnes. He called the Air Defense
Command and reported an unidentified object was over the Washington
area. Then he told an airline pilot, C.S. Pierman of Capital Airlines,
who was about to take off for Pittsburgh, to watch for mysterious
objects. Pierman climbed to 6,000 ft. and headed northwest. Barnes & Co.
saw a group of strange blips cluster around the blip made by Pierman's
plane and Pierman spotted a white light "like a falling star." It sped
away, and its blip disappeared from Barnes's scope.
Air Force to the Rescue. Over from a Delaware base came a flight of
radar-equipped F-94 jet fighters. Before they reached Washington, all
the blips vanished. The jets saw nothing at all. But when the jets
departed the blips reappeared, playing all over the scope. Barnes said:
"like a bunch of kids." He called all airliners flying near Washington,
asked their pilots to report any strange objects. One pilot saw a white
light, moving fast. But during all this uproar, other radars near
Washington (e.g. Quantico and Fort Meade) saw nothing unusual.
All the rest of the week, a few strange blips appeared now & then. Then
on Saturday night they broke out all over, criss-crossing the capital as
they had the week before. This time, the radar at Andrews was seeing the
things too. One blip hung over Bolling Field, across the Potomac from
the airport, but observers at Bolling saw nothing in the sky. Some
airline pilots saw mysterious lights; others saw nothing.
The Saucer Flies Again. Down from Delaware roared another flight of
night fighters. This time the blips did not vanish. They stayed on the
ground scopes while the jets screamed among them. But only one pilot saw
a light, another saw a doubtful blip on his scope. It vanished before he
could shoot.
What were the mysterious blips? The Air Force, unless it was trying to
conceal some mysterious gadget of its own (e.g. a radar countermeasure),
was as baffled as everyone else. As might be expected the phantom
invasion touched off a whole new rash of flying-saucer stories. But if
the men from Mars were really overhead, the oddest part of the whole
story was the fact that among all the conflicting reports, no radar
outside of a ten-mile radius in Washington reported seeing anything
unusual at any time.


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