Context
The summer of 1952 was the busiest the Air Force had ever seen. More than 717 reports came in that year, against 615 in the previous four years. Newspapers were full of saucers. Then the lights came to the capital. Historian Curtis Peebles would call it the "climax of the 1952 flap."
The first night
Saturday, July 19. 11:40 p.m. In the radar room at Washington National Airport, controller Edward Nugent saw seven blips on his scope. No known aircraft were in the area. The set was checked. It was working normally. Senior controller Harry G. Barnes put it plainly. "We knew immediately that a very strange situation existed … their movements were completely radical compared to those of ordinary aircraft." The targets loafed along at 100 to 130 miles an hour. Then they accelerated to fantastically high speeds. One was clocked at 7,000 miles an hour.
In the tower, Howard Cocklin and Joe Zacko had the blips too. Outside, a bright light hovered. Then it departed with incredible speed. At Andrews AFB, airman William Brady saw "an object which appeared to be like an orange ball of fire, trailing a tail."
Capital Airlines captain S. C. "Casey" Pierman was aloft, in radio contact with Barnes. Each light he reported matched a pip near his plane. "When he reported that the light streaked off at a high speed, it disappeared on our scope," Barnes said. Interceptors came. The targets vanished just before they arrived. When the jets left, low on fuel, the targets came back.
The second weekend
Saturday, July 26. A National Airlines pilot and stewardess saw lights at about 8:15 p.m. By 9:30 p.m. the radar had targets in every sector. This time Blue Book spokesman Albert M. Chop, Maj. Dewey Fournet and Navy radar specialist Lt. John Holcomb stood in the room, watching.
About 11:30 p.m., two F-94 Starfires arrived from New Castle AFB. Flight leader Capt. John McHugo saw nothing. Lt. William Patterson saw four white glows. "I was at my maximum speed, but even then I had no closing speed." Chop later recalled Patterson on the radio. "I see them now and they're all around me. What should I do?" Then Chop's own words. "And nobody answered, because we didn't know what to tell him."
The investigation
The White House wanted answers. Truman's air aide phoned Ruppelt while the President listened on another line. Ruppelt suggested a temperature inversion before any investigation had begun. On July 29, Maj. Gen. John A. Samford and Maj. Gen. Roger M. Ramey faced the press at the Pentagon. Samford spoke of "credible observers of relatively incredible things." He called the inversion theory "about a fifty-fifty proposition." The CIA set up a study group. The road led to the Robertson Panel in January 1953.
The debate
Blue Book's final word was that the radar returns were false images caused by a temperature inversion, and the lights were meteors, stars and city lights. The Condon Report later called the returns "most likely the result of anomalous propagation." At Andrews, Capt. Harold May decided he had seen a star. One target turned out to be a steamboat.
The witnesses pushed back. Holcomb called the inversion "not strong enough to explain the good, solid returns." In 2002, Cocklin was blunt. "I saw it on the [radar] screen and out the window." Even Ruppelt had doubts. "On each night that there was a sighting there was a temperature inversion but it was never strong enough to affect the radar the way inversions normally do."
Legacy
In 1956, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers sent saucers against Washington. A documentary built around Al Chop ended with a re-creation of the night. Ruppelt titled his chapter "The Washington Merry-Go-Round." His verdict still closes it. "So the Washington National Airport Sightings are still unknowns."
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