The Awful Truth About UFOs (long) -- not for believers!

Originally posted by lost_shaman
..your forgetting that White Sands Proving Ground has had a RADAR for several years by this time. ( 1948 -1949 )

There were lots of radar units around at the time, but only two operational long-range (200 mile) stations 1, and one of those (Half-Moon Bay) was dismantled and the operating unit moved to New Mexico under secret orders, specifically to provide coverage for Los Alamos, Kirtland, and Roswell 2.

(I can't believe I'm doing footnotes now )

This was before MIT got involved and started testing advanced radar at White Sands; the White Sands units up through 1950, at least, were either airport-approach type, or specific-purpose telemetry systems inadequete for tracking the anticipated fleets of heavy bombers.

What I was getting at is fairly simple: they (USAF) needed to test these new, inland radar installations under anticipated conditions (ie, detection of fast, high-flying Soviet bombers).

Since blimps were being used as both flying test beds and calibration targets, both then and up through the late 1950s, it's reasonable, for me at least, to think they may have been used in New Mexico; a plane has to fly around, and you can't control a balloon -- only a blimp can park in one spot while the radar operators and engineers adjust the equipment.

How would you site-test? Because, at that time, radar and eyeballs were more-or-less line-of-sight, a flare or rocket could be a good way to test whether a proposed site's coverage was adequate. One way might be to fire rockets up and over the facilities you intend to protect, while aerial observers watch for the exhaust plumes and try to establish the perimeters of possible radar detection. A blimp would make a good observing platform.

Then again, you could tow or release flares around the outer perimeter while ground observers watch from your proposed radar sites. Eventually you might even want to fire off the same sort of rockets around the outer limits of the area, reaching altitudes approximating the bombers you think might come someday. Winged aircraft could certainly fire rockets, but there seems to be no reason a blimp could not.

They HAD to test; this wasn't a game, it was nuclear warfare, bet-the-farm and hope to die. They had to be right and they had to be right the first time, because it would also be the last. Since it took the better part of two years, in most cases, to bring a new radar site on-line, there was no room for error in site planning. Again, they HAD to test the new sites; the only question is HOW they tested.

For anyone who's at all interested, it might be constuctive to correlate the green fireball sightings against the timeline of radar construction in the New Mexico; if I get time I might get back to it, but for now, I'm still stuck in 1947.

BTW, I noticed in the La Paz/AFOSI Catalog (PDF) that many of the entries are not green fireballs, but silvery disk/cigar-shaped objects. Apparently the brief wave of sightings that swept the country in 1947 kept going in the green-fireball areas. Gee, imagine that.

Remember that Roswell debris was supposed to be a RAWIN RADAR reflector?

I'm relying on it. A blimp would be the only conventional aircraft that would need to carry a radar target.

So from a Historical perspective , we did not even have "Aircraft " that could travel 3 miles per second , much less 10 miles per second!

Only 3 sightings had half-way resonable trajectories and those had timing estimates that covered at least a 467% range and the distance estimates were questionable.

By the time the equipment was in place to (inadequately) assess the phenomenon (Project Twinkle, February 1950), the needed inland radar sites providing coverage to NM and Texas were either completed and operational, or under construction 3, so there were no more tests to be done.

And I enjoy a good discussion, too You and a few others have helped forced me firm up my ideas quite a bit and continue to get my votes and thanks.

Notes:
1 -- "[A.]t the end of 1947...ADC operated only two radar stations: one at Arlington, Washington, and one at Half Moon Bay near San Francisco, California." Searching the Skies: The Legacy of the United States Cold War Defense Radar Program
2 -- "March 48 -- 636th AC&WS received orders to...[i.]nstall, maintain and operate an Air Defense Control Center in the vicinity of Kirtland...[and.] install, maintain and operate...early warning stations in the vicinity of Roswell AFB and Los Alamos."
Half Moon Bay EWS, CA - Chronological History, hosted at Online Air Defense Radar Museum
3 -- Lashup Sites, again courtesy of Online Air Defense Radar Museum: look for Lashup under the Early Radar menu item. You can also look up records of all US air defense radar sites.

I am so angry with the CIA for using blimps to abduct its own citizens for inhuman experiments. They even use children dress up as aliens to fool the public into believing that they are real aliens. How can any they be so cruel? we must stop these inhuman practices!

As long as the public thinks that they are UFOs and not the CIA, they can still continue doing these experiments now and in the future. Generations after generations of people will suffer at the hands of these cruel practice. They are even making mutated human hybrids!!!

Now that we know that the CIA is behind them. We must stop them. Lets all stomp the CIA and other government agenies for their inhuman actrocities. They must pay for being the enemy of all humanity.

How long did they think that they could keep this secret from us? So thats why they want to keep Roswell a secret. they were developing blimps to abduct people! TAKE ACTION NOW!!!!

(possible situtation after discovering that the CIA and other government agenies are behind the UFOs) (this had better not be true.)

Originally posted by rand

There were lots of radar units around at the time, but only two operational long-range (200 mile) stations 1, and one of those (Half-Moon Bay) was dismantled and the operating unit moved to New Mexico under secret orders, specifically to provide coverage for Los Alamos, Kirtland, and Roswell 2.

I was talking about the RADAR at WSPG and apparently at Alamogordo.

See this letter dated June 23 ,1947.

www.project1947.com...

Originally posted by Rand

they (USAF) needed to test these new, inland radar installations under anticipated conditions (ie, detection of fast, high-flying Soviet bombers).

Since blimps were being used as both flying test beds and calibration targets, both then and up through the late 1950s, it's reasonable, for me at least, to think they may have been used in New Mexico; a plane has to fly around, and you can't control a balloon -- only a blimp can park in one spot while the radar operators and engineers adjust the equipment.

The problem I have is that we already know "Blimps" are your pet hypothesis. And from the evidence I've seen and what I've read I haven't seen anything that would suggest to me that "Blimps" were involved or had anything to do with the "Green Fireballs".

Seems to me more like wishful thinking.









[edit on 28-6-2006 by lost_shaman]

I opine that every UFO encounter has a prosaic explanation but the premise of this thread is surely the most elegant solution to the slew of UFO sightings from the 1940s - 50s. Top marks to the author, wherever they now roam. It's no surprise this thread received short shrift from fanaticism.