Good Grief, They’re Going After the White House
As we’ve seen, Grudge issued just a single formal report. By way of contrast, between November 1951 and September 1953, Blue Book prepared and issued status reports at the end of every month (with a few exceptions). In addition, Blue Book staffers issued a “Special Report,” dated December 28, 1951. Reports were variously designated as “Secret” or “Confidential.” The Special Report and first four status reports (November 30, 1951–February 29, 1952) were officially attributed to Project Grudge. The Blue Book name first appeared on Status Report No. 5, dated March 31, 1952. Fewer than four months later, events in Washington, D.C., pushed Air Force “explainers” to the wall, and gave Blue Book much more to grapple with.
Throughout 1952, nearly six hundred UFO reports were made to authorities around the world, with the vast majority coming from the length and breadth of the United States. The most dramatic sightings from that year occurred in July, and made one thing very clear: if you’re piloting an unusual aircraft and crave attention, be sure to fly over the White House.
Late on the night of July 19, 1952, air traffic controllers from both radar centers at Washington, D.C.’s Washington National Airport picked up blips of rapidly accelerating aircraft some fifteen miles southwest of the capital. The same array was seen on radar at Andrews AFB, ten miles to the east. Tower sightings made by the naked eye confirmed the objects’ rapid acceleration. And the pilot of a DC-4 awaiting permission to take off from National confirmed the fast-moving, glowing objects.
Not long after midnight, the objects took positions above the White House and the U.S. Capitol. People on the ground watched as the bright-orange objects wheeled in the sky, trailing fire. When two F-94 Starfire interceptors from New Castle AFB, Delaware, approached, the objects streaked away, only to return after low fuel forced the jets to retreat.
Sightings by radar and the naked eye continued until 3:00 a.m. July 20. An encore took place the following night, when radar operators estimated the objects’ speed at nine hundred miles per hour. Additional sightings occurred throughout the following week; when a second pair of New Castle F-94s drew to within ten miles of the objects on the night of July 26–27, the odd craft sped away. One Starfire pilot never got a visual on the objects at all, but the other, Lt. William Patterson, not only saw them but found himself momentarily surrounded by what he described as “four glows.” The Air Force responded with a shoot-down order, to be in effect for any non- communicative unidentified flying objects in the area. The USAF shoot-down order is hardly surprising; authorities were legitimately concerned for the safety of President Truman and everyone one else in and near Washington, particularly following a failed assassination attempt on the president in November 1950, which caused the death of a Puerto Rican nationalist and a White House policeman. (Truman had been sleeping inside Blair House, and suffered no more inconvenience than being awakened from his after-lunch nap.)
Blue Book chief Edward Ruppelt happened to be in Washington on the night of July 19–20. When he learned of the incident the following day, he tried to investigate, only to be stonewalled by senior officers that did not want him around.
At a July 29 Pentagon press conference, Air Force representatives eager to undo the scare caused by the shoot-down order offered too many contradictory explanations:
- the objects had not been solid (radar sightings notwithstanding),
- pilots and ground observers had seen meteorites (they were solid again), and
- the moving lights had been caused by temperature inversions (semi-solid). A later, official USAF explanation cited atmospheric mirages caused by stars viewed through the distorting effect of a “temperature inversion.” Blue Book ultimately went along with that idea, over the objections of Capt. Ruppelt. He had finally gone back to Washington to interview various witnesses, including radar operators, all of whom scoffed at the weather theory. Further, one or two confided that their superiors had none-too-subtly tried to steer them toward that explanation.
Dr. James McDonald (see chapter one), a prominent atmospheric physicist and a dependable antagonist of glib explanations, conducted his own interviews, and then looked at July 1952 weather charts and declared that, given radar- propagation theory (which concerns itself with variations in the refractive index of the atmosphere), the temperature-inversion theory was impossible.