A series of of sightings of unexplained aerial phenomena over Washington D.C. in late July 1952 attracted intense interest from the U.S. Air Force, generated widespread media coverage, prompted a presidential phone call, and triggered a secret CIA study that led to a government-wide campaign to squelch public fascination with unidentified flying objects. With more than 500 reports in July 1952 alone, “the Washington sightings marked a seismic shift in UFO history.”¹
First Reports
At 11:40 p.m. on Saturday, July 19, 1952, Edward Nugent, an air traffic controller at Washington National Airport, spotted seven objects on his radar.² 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. Nugent's superior, Harry Barnes, a senior air-traffic controller at the airport, watched the objects on Nugent's radarscope. “We knew immediately that a very strange situation existed,” he later wrote. “ . . their movements were completely radical compared to those of ordinary aircraft.”.³
Barnes had two controllers check Nugent's radar. They found that it was working normally. Barnes then called National Airport's radar-equipped control tower. Two controllers, Howard Cocklin and Joe Zacko, said that they also had unidentified blips on their radar screen. They also said they saw a hovering "bright light" in the sky, which departed with incredible speed. "Did you see that?” Cocklin asked Zacko. “What the hell was that?"
When other objects appeared on the radarscope moving over the White House and the United States Capitol, Barnes called Andrews Air Force Base, located 10 miles southeast of National Airport. Although Andrews reported that they had no unusual objects on their radar, Airman William Brady, who was in the tower, reported seeing an "object which appeared to be like an orange ball of fire, trailing a tail . . . [it was] unlike anything I had ever seen before."⁴ As Brady tried to alert the other personnel in the tower, the strange object "took off at an unbelievable speed.”⁵
Not long after that, a Capital Airlines passenger flight departed from Washington en route to Detroit. After the pilot, Captain Casey Pierman, reported seeing what he believed to be a meteor, he was told that the control tower's radar had detected unknown objects closing in on his plane. Pierman observed six objects–which he described as "white, tailless, fast-moving lights" — over a 14-minute period. Pierman was in radio contact with Barnes during his sighting. "Each sighting coincided with a pip we could see near his plane,” Barnes said later. “When he reported that the light streaked off at a high speed, it disappeared from our scope."⁶
At 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. 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."⁷ The objects were last detected by radar at 5:30 a.m.
News Coverage
Three days later the New York Times reported “Flying Objects Near Washington Spotted by Both Pilots and Radar. “ The article cited an unnamed Air Force source who “received reports of an eerie visitation by unidentified aerial objects– perhaps a new type of “flying saucer”–over the vicinity of the nation's capital..... They were described as traveling at a slow 100 to 100 and 30 mph instead of with the incredible swiftness attributed to earlier saucers, although at times they shot up and down.”⁸ The Times report on the combination of visual sightings and radar data in the nation’s capital prompted news coverage across the country.
The Washington Post reprinted the Times story on its front page, and two days later, added a report on UFO sightings throughout the northeastern United States. From Manchester, New Hampshire, Maj. Harold Hurlburt, commander of New England’s Operation SkyWatch, said two trained observers reported disc-like objects over their stations in Westfield and Nahan, Mass.”⁹
Newspaper reporters attempted to make sense of the reports. The Post reported that a man who monitored TV stations in the Washington D.C. region said that at 7:15 p.m. on Sunday, July 20, he observed a “strong electronic interference” across TV channels the likes of which he had never seen in six years.¹⁰ A girl in the Shenandoah valley found a ripped eight-foot weather balloon near her family’s home, “the remains of what she believes may have been mistaken for a flying saucer.”¹¹ The Post also reported that a chemical engineer in Arlington, Virginia who had been studying for UFO reports for five years, said “official denials notwithstanding, the saucers are most likely Navy-developed missiles, either piloted or ground controlled or both, and jet-propelled.”¹² On July 26, a second sighting occurred over Washington, and the Air Force scrambled F-94 intercept jets to give chase but the objects vanished.
At a crowded Pentagon press conference on July 29, Air Force Chief of Intelligence Major General John Samford said the “radar blips” might be due to an atmospheric condition known as “inversion,” a layer of cool air between layers of warm air, which can, under certain circumstances, reflect radar rays.”¹³
This explanation did not satisfy Life magazine, one of the country’s most popular publications.
“The U.S. Weather Bureau in Washington said that there had indeed been inversion layers on the night of the radar sightings but that these were not unusual,” Life noted, “Furthermore, radar experts could not explain how the inversion theory would account for the appearance of simultaneous, identically located blips on three separate screens.”¹⁴
Capt. Edward J. Ruppelt of the Air Technical Intelligence Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio traveled to Washington that week–but not to investigate UFOs, he told the Post.¹⁵ In fact, Ruppelt, in charge of the Project Blue Book, a secret Air Force program to monitor UFO reports, was asked to investigate the reports.
Wanting to know more, President Harry Truman ordered an aide to call Ruppelt and ask for an explanation of the sightings and radar data. Truman listened to the conversation between the two men on a separate phone, but did not ask questions himself.¹⁶ Ruppelt recalled telling the president's assistant that the sightings might have been caused by a temperature inversion that could bend radar signals and give false returns. However, Ruppelt had not yet interviewed any of the witnesses or conducted a formal investigation.
When Ruppelt checked the data of the Air Defense Command Weather Forecast Center, he ruled out inversion as an explanation. “On each night that there was a sighting there was a temperature inversion,” he later wrote. “but it was never strong enough to affect the radar the way inversions normally do.” In addition, the second sighting was confirmed by some of his closest associates in the Project Blue Book, including a Navy electronics specialist assigned to the Air Force Directorate of Intelligence, who were in the airport control center. They “all saw the radar targets and heard the radio conversations as jets tried to intercept the UFO's,” Ruppelt said.¹⁷
The generally respectful media coverage of the UFO reports prompted more vehement denials from senior officials.
“I don’t believe there is any such thing as a flying saucer,” Air Force chief of staff Gen. Hoyt S. Vandenberg told the Post. “Apparently there are physical phenomena which make people say they have seen saucers.”
“They are not machines flown by men from Mars,” Vanderberg went on. “Not from any foreign powers. Nor does the Air Force or any United States military agency have a flying saucer.”¹⁸
The Central Intelligence Agency took note. According to in-house historian Gerald Haines, the Agency reacted to the wave of UFO reports in 1952 by "forming a special study group within the Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI) and Office of Current Intelligence (OCI) to review the situation.” The study group, headed by Edward Tauss, acting chief of OSI's Weapons and Equipment Division, reported most UFO sightings could be easily explained. Nonetheless, Tauss recommended that the Agency continue monitoring the problem." He also urged that the CIA conceal its interest from the media and the public, "in view of their probable alarmist tendencies" to accept such interest as confirming the existence of UFOs.¹⁹
H. Marshall Chadwell, Assistant Director of OSI, said the UFO problem "should be brought to the attention of the National Security Council, in order that a communitywide coordinated effort towards its solution may be initiated." In January 1953, Chadwell and Howard P. Robertson, a physicist from the California Institute of Technology, put together a distinguished panel of nonmilitary scientists to study the UFO issue, with Robertson serving as chair. After 12 hours of reviewing the evidence from Washington and other recent sightings, the panel concluded unanimously that there was no evidence of a direct threat to national security in the UFO sightings. Nor could the panel find any evidence that the objects sighted might be extraterrestrials.
The Robertson panel asserted that continued emphasis on UFO reporting might threaten "the orderly functioning" of the government by clogging the channels of communication with irrelevant reports and by inducing "hysterical mass behavior" harmful to constituted authority. The panel recommended that the Air Force and Project Blue Book needed to spend less time analyzing UFO reports and more time publicly debunking them. The goal, said the panel, was to "strip the Unidentified Flying Objects of the special status they have been given and the aura of mystery they have unfortunately acquired."
The panel submitted its report to the Secretary of Defense, the director of the Federal Civil Defense Administration, and the chairman of the National Security Resources Board. CIA officials said no further consideration of the subject appeared warranted, although they continued to monitor sightings in the interest of national security.²⁰
In short, the Washington sightings of 1952 prompted both unprecedented public interest in unidentified aerial phenomenon. At the same time, the response to the sightings forged a new governmental consensus to downplay and dismiss UFO reports.
Popular Culture
The tenth and final episode of the first season of the 2019 History Channel television series Project Blue Book is titled "The Washington Merry-Go-Round". The episode was based on the 1952 Washington, D.C. UFO incident.²¹
Several episodes of the 2021 Netflix series Top Secret UFO Projects Declassified refer to the 1952 Washington, D.C. UFO incident, including the first episode "Project Blue Book Unknown," which reenacts the incident with computer generated imagery and archival footage of several witnesses.²²
Endnotes
1. “Saucer Full of Secrets,” by Dan Giloff, Washington City Paper, Dec. 14, 2001. https://washingtoncitypaper.com/article/260860/saucers-full-of-secrets/
2. "50 Years Ago, Unidentified Flying Objects From Way Beyond the Beltway Seized the Capital's Imagination," by Peter Carlson. Washington Post, July 21, 2002. (Hereafter “50 Years Ago).
3. Clark, Jerome The UFO Book: Encyclopedia of the Extraterrestrial. (Visible Ink, 1998) p. 654.
4. 50 Years Ago.
5. The UFO Book, p, 654.
6. Saucer Full of Secrets
7. Saucer Full of Secrets
8. Flying Objects Near Washington Spotted by Both Pilots and Radar: Air ...
9. 'Saucers' Seen From Maine To New Jersey, Washington Post, Jul 24, 1952, p. 30
10. D.C. Flying Saucers Play Hob With TV, Washington Post, July 24, 1952, p. 35
11. One 'Saucer' Explained, Washington Post, July 24, 1952, p. 22
12. Flying Saucer Hobby Leads to a Theory, Washington Post, July 30, 1952, p. 8
13. Minutes of Press Conference Held By Major General John A. Samford Director of Intelligence, U.S. Air Force 29 July 1952 - 4:00p.m. - Room 3E-869, The Pentagon. http://www.fold3.com/image/1/12428
14. “Life on the Newsfronts of the World,” Life, Aug 11, 1952; p. 35
15. 'Saucer' Outran Jet, Pilot Says; Air Force Puts Lid on Inquiry,” Washington Post July 28, 1952, p. 1
16. Watch the Skies! Peebles, Curtis (1994). Watch the Skies!: A Chronicle of the Flying Saucer Myth. (Berkley Books, 1994) p. 77
17. Report on Unidentified Flying Objects,” p 170.
18. Saucer Market Goes Bearish As Queries Swamp Air Force, Washington Post, Aug 1, 1952; p. 8
19. CIA's Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90, Studies In Intelligence Vol. 01 No. 1, 1997, https://sgp.fas.org/library/ciaufo.html#rft15
20. CIA’s Role in the Study of UFOs.
21. Project Blue Book Season 1 Episodes, TV Guide https://www.tvguide.com/tvshows/project-blue-book/episodes-season-1/1000568062/
22. "Project Blue Book Unknown." Top Secret UFO Projects Declassified, season 1, episode 1, Netflix, 2021. Netflix, https://www.netflix.com/watch/81066337
