When the USAF Was in the UFO Business

[emad]

When the USAF Was in the UFO Business

BY DELIA M. RIOS
c.2005 Newhouse News Service


Just after midnight on July 19, 1952, "seven pips appeared suddenly" on National Airport's control center radar in Washington, according to this unattributed cartoon depicting those UFO sightings. "There's one ... and there it goes!" a nearby airline pilot reportedly radioed. (Photo courtesy of the National Archives)


WASHINGTON -- "Rumors about the saucer mystery fly almost as fast as the strange sights themselves," pronounced the narrator of a 1952 Paramount newsreel, commenting on a rash of UFO sightings from New York to Washington.

He added ominously: "With this evidence, the mystery thickens."

And so it seemed.

A comic book narrative of the time came down on the side of believers. "SAUCERS OVER WASHINGTON, D.C.," blared its bold black headline. It dismissed the military's "glib" explanation of radar blips seen that July by National Airport flight controllers. Simply a case of temperature inversion or reflections of ground objects, insisted the Air Force brass. But what about the pilot, the cartoonist countered, who described "a bright light moving faster, at times, than a shooting star"?

Well, what about it?
http://www.newhousenews.com/archive/Rios081705.html
http://www.newhousenews.com/archive/Rios081705.html

[soothsayer]

1. total coverup