Other types of ring angels have been observed on radarscopes, but the causes are not yet fully understood[[VIII-17], [VIII-18]].
Recognizing the true character of these radar angels and spurious reflections has tremendous importance for the security of the United States. Our Early Warning System, designed to notify Air Defense of imminent attacks by intercontinental ballistic missiles, has already had troubles with such radar ghosts. On October 5, 1960, a signal from Thule, Greenland, to the North American Air Defense Command flashed the warning, “Massive ICBM attack is underway.” The Canadian officer in charge had only seventeen minutes in which to decide whether to order several hundred bombers of the Strategic Air Command to retaliate against the USSR or to push the button that would cause our long-range missiles with atomic warheads to come roaring out of their underground sites. He immediately asked Washington: Where was Khrushchev? Khrushchev was in New York at the United Nations: the officer did not push the button that would have set the world at war.
Later, he learned that radar beams reflected from the moon had produced the terrifying angels. This incident is only one of the reasons why the Air Force continues to be interested in radar UFOs. Failure to identify them correctly could threaten the effectiveness of our patrol system.
The Rapid City Sighting
One of the most complex incidents in saucer history occurred early in August 1953 near Rapid City, South Dakota. Like the sightings the previous year at Bellefontaine, Ohio, and Port Huron, Michigan, the presence of a UFO seemed to be confirmed by several types of evidence. Trained civilian and military personnel on the ground and in the air observed an unknown visually and by radar. The blips on the ground radarscope were photographed and a plane’s gun camera took a picture. If a similar incident were to occur today, Air Force investigators would probably find the answer without difficulty. In 1953, however, they were less experienced and finally classified the case as “one of the best” Unknowns.
It is clearly impossible to solve the mystery with absolute certainty after nearly ten years, because vital information is lacking. The original records are no longer on file. Few details are available except those in Ruppelt’s sketchy summary[[VIII-3], p. 303 ff.], and some of these are inaccurate: the town of Black Hawk, for example, is not west, but northwest, of Rapid City. Although many questions of fact must therefore remain unanswered—exact times, directions, sequence of events—we offer here a highly probable explanation.
The first report came at 8:05 P.M. M.S.T. when a spotter for the Ground Observer Corps in the town of Black Hawk telephoned the Air Defense Command post near Rapid City, approximately ten miles southeast of Black Hawk, to report an extremely bright light hovering low on the horizon to the northeast. The radar operators at Ellsworth Air Force Base had been working with a jet patrol flying west of the base. After receiving the phone call, they shifted the scope to scan the northeast quadrant of the sky and picked up an unidentified target moving slowly at about 16,000 feet. Although the controller wondered at first whether the target might have been due to weather, he decided after a few minutes that it was well defined, solid, and bright.
Since the ground spotter had a visual target and the traffic controller had a radar target, he telephoned to compare notes on positions; as they were talking, the spotter interrupted the conversation to say that the light was beginning to move southwest toward Rapid City. Checking the radarscope and finding a fast-moving target the controller sent two of his men running outside to look at the sky. After a few seconds they reported that they could see a large bluish-white light moving toward them from the northeast. It made “a wide sweep” around Rapid City and then returned to a stationary position in the northeast where it had first appeared. (Unfortunately the account does not state clearly whether the “wide sweep” was observed visually or on radar.)
By this time all the witnesses were greatly excited by the UFO. The master sergeant couldn’t decide what to do next because he kept thinking, “They’re bigger than all of us!” but the traffic controller notified the F-84 patrolling in the west and asked for an intercept. The pilot soon found the light, which was still stationary. He began the chase, but when he had approached to within an estimated three miles, the light rapidly began to retreat. He continued the chase directly north for 120 miles (during which both the jet and the UFO went off the ground scope) but he could not gain on the object. Running short of fuel, he turned back toward the base. The ground scope soon picked him up again and, a few seconds later, picked up an unknown target apparently trailing the jet by ten or fifteen miles.
A second jet then took to the air, located the light, and began the pursuit. Like the first pilot, he could not close the distance between him and the receding UFO. After performing various tests to convince himself that he wasn’t chasing a reflection, he finally turned on his radar gun camera. After a few seconds the red light blinked on, indicating a solid object ahead. The pilot thereupon asked permission to break off the intercept and, having taken a photograph, returned to base. As before, the ground scope picked up the returning jet but this time the UFO did not reappear on the scope. The controller then called officials at the filter center at Fargo, North Dakota. They had not received any UFO reports; a few minutes later, however, they called back to say that spotter posts between the two cities, on a southwest-northeast line, had indeed seen a bluish-white light.