One such study has specifically attacked the problem of radar images that perform rapid and erratic maneuvers at close range and seem to overtake, fly parallel with, or almost collide with the pursuing aircraft. Such returns may be caused by the “non-isotropic secondary scattering of energy” (that is, the radio waves are not reflected in a uniform manner) from an airplane to a ground object, or from ground object to plane. Under appropriate weather conditions the plane itself causes the puzzling echoes, so that the velocity and movement of the radar “saucer” depend directly on those of the plane. When the aircraft is the first of the two scatterers, the radar saucer always appears at the same bearing as the plane, and is always farther away from the detecting radar than is the plane. Thus the path of the phantom always lies outside the path of the aircraft, and when the jet performs a 360-degree turn, the phantom also turns, on an outside path. However, if the jet happens to fly directly over the ground object that is reflecting the energy, then the observing radar will see the images of the jet and the phantom flying on what seems to be a collision course.
Conversely, when the ground object is the first of the two scatterers, the saucer phantom always occurs at the same bearing as the ground object, and the distance to the phantom is always greater than to the ground object. If the aircraft crosses the radial line from radar to ground object, at a range exceeding the range to the object, then the echoes from plane and saucer almost merge at the point of crossing, in a “near collision.” But if the plane flies “this side” of the object, then the plane and saucer will never be closer together than the distance between plane and ground object at the point of crossing. A height-finding radar, trained on the pursuing plane, would show the phantom saucer apparently diving toward or climbing away from the plane, attacking and retreating at very high velocities[VIII-4].
The Kinross Case
Some such mechanism probably explains the radar returns reported in the Kinross case, which some saucer publications cite as a proved instance in which a flying saucer attacked a plane. On the night of November 23, 1953, an Air Force jet was scrambled from Kinross Air Force Base, Michigan, to intercept an unidentified plane observed on radar. The jet successfully accomplished its mission and identified the unknown as a Dakota, a Canadian C-47. On its return to the base, however, the Air Force jet crashed into Lake Michigan and, as often happens when a plane crashes into deep water and the exact place of the crash is not known, no wreckage was ever found. As the ground radar at Kinross had tracked the returning jet, the scope had picked up a phantom echo in the neighborhood of the jet; the two blips had seemed to merge just as both went off the scope.
Since the crash was not reported as a UFO incident and did not involve any question of unidentified flying objects, ATIC was not asked to investigate the problem. The office of the Deputy Inspector General for Safety carried out a thorough inquiry and concluded that the crash had been an aircraft accident, probably caused by the pilot’s suffering an attack of vertigo. As for the two blips shown by radar, the night had been a stormy one and atmospheric conditions had been conducive to abnormal returns. The phantom echo had almost certainly been a secondary reflection produced by the jet itself, and it thus merged with the return from the jet and vanished with it when the plane hit the water.
Solely on the basis of this radar phantom, some civilian saucer groups have tried to transform the Kinross crash into a UFO mystery with Air Force investigators as the villains, and have suggested that the ghost blip represented an alien spacecraft that happened to be cruising over Lake Michigan that night and attacked the jet for one of two reasons: 1) The saucer might have tried to avoid close contact with the jet by employing a “reversed G-field beam” (see [Chapter IX]); colliding with this beam as with a stone wall, the jet crashed. 2) The saucer might have used the G-field to scoop the plane out of the air and take it aboard the spacecraft; the captured pilot might have been needed to teach the English language to his alien captors.
The “Invasion” of Washington, D.C.
The most famous of the radar phantoms are those that “invaded” Washington, D.C., on the nights of July 19 and July 26, 1952, and terrified a large number of radar operators, pilots, and Air Force officials who in a more normal emotional climate would have recognized the “invisible” flying saucers for what they were—radar angels produced by weather conditions[VIII-2]. All during July the eastern seaboard had suffered an unprecedented drought and heat wave. Lack of cloud cover produced intensely hot days and rapid radiative cooling of the earth’s surface at night. This situation, combined with the prevailing light winds, was ideal for the formation of low-level temperature inversions during the hours of darkness[VIII-5].
The hundreds of flying saucers reported during the summer ([Chapter VII]) had produced a state of near-panic which entered its acute phase on July 19, at 11:40 P.M. E.D.S.T., when a group of seven unidentified targets appeared on the radarscope of the Air Route Traffic Control (ARTC) at the Washington National Airport[[VIII-3], p. 209 ff.]. Similar targets that moved erratically, appearing and disappearing, were observed on the radars of the control tower and of nearby Andrews Air Force Base. If the blips were to be accepted at face value, then a host of aerial objects had invaded Washington and were cruising over the White House and the Capitol. Traffic control notified the pilots of commercial flights in the area to keep alert for unidentified aircraft. Some pilots reported unusual echoes on their plane radars, some reported only normal returns, and two pilots reported unexplained lights in the neighborhood indicated by radar. Nobody saw any strange aircraft. After several requests from ARTC (which unaccountably did not notify officials in the Air Force Intelligence that an “invasion” was taking place), a jet interceptor finally arrived about dawn to search the area but found nothing. Meanwhile the targets had vanished from the radarscopes.
Next day the report flashed all over the world that a fleet of flying saucers had invaded Washington, and public tension became almost tangible. Was the earth doomed? The terror reached its climax on July 26, just a week after the first incident, when at 10:30 P.M., E.D.S.T., the same radar operators who had observed the first “invasion” picked up another group of mysterious blips on their screens. The host of unknowns had apparently formed a ring around the city of Washington and the surrounding countryside. This time Air Force Intelligence officers were notified. They raced to the airport to see the radarscopes for themselves, and concluded that real saucers must be in the sky. All commercial air traffic was then diverted from Washington, reporters and photographers were barred from the radar room, and Air Force jets took to the air to defend the nation. But against what? The enemy, if there, was invisible. One pilot saw a bright light that vanished when he began to chase it; later, his radar showed a return that faded after a few seconds, but he could not find a visual target. In the hours between midnight and dawn, jet interceptors scoured the skies looking for mysterious objects that produced returns on ground radar but not on plane radar, and were invisible to the human eye. They found nothing.