The 1952 UFO Wave.

reply to post by kidflash2008


According to what we are told the usaf was never able to make the ufos fly and the saucer shaped design has been abbandonned. Has this video ever been debunked? LIght effects maybe?

reply to post by Cassius666

Originally posted by Cassius666
reply to post by kidflash2008

 

According to what we are told the usaf was never able to make the ufos fly

If the USAF has something, it can't be a UFO, if they have it in their possession, and it's not flying. So I don't know what you mean.

and the saucer shaped design has been abbandonned.

Yes, but they did get the flying saucers to fly a few feet above the ground before abandoning them, but it's an extremely unstable shape aerodynamically:

Source 1:20 in www.cbsnews.com...
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/05a9dd851630.png[/atsimg]

Has this video ever been debunked?

What video? If there's a video in your post, Kidflash's post or the OP, I'm not seeing it?

Originally posted by kidflash2008
2. While there could be radar problems to account for some of these cases, it would be hard pressed to blame faulty radar for all of them. As has been stated before the Cold War was in full swing and radar systems were very well maintained at the time.

Since someone bumped the thread, I have to respond to this.

You are right. Faulty radar is not to blame for all of them. Almost certainly the radar was functioning exactly as it was designed to function when some of these cases occurred. But what the radars were doing was displaying natural phenomena, and since radar is a big part of the meteorologists's toolkit, sometimes it's just doing what radar does, with no malfunction.

Case in point, the July 1952 Washington DC radar case:

A PRELIMINARY STUDY OF UNIDENTIFIED TARGETS OBSERVED ON AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL RADARS

Firsthand observation in the tracking and subsequent motion analysis of 80 of these unidentified targets indicated that a large number of these were actually secondary reflections of the radar beam. Apparently these reflections were produced by isolated refracting areas which traveled with the wind at or near the temperature inversion levels.

So there's no indication of faulty radar in that description, just somewhat unusual natural phenomena the radar responds to exactly as it's designed. Misinterpreting this information would be human error as opposed to faulty radar.

I can only think of one case off the top of my head where there's no sign of malfunctioning radar, and natural phenomena are unlikely. I'm sure there are more, but I find most of the radar cases are way overhyped once I start digging into them.

Originally posted by Arbitrageur
Case in point, the July 1952 Washington DC radar case:

A PRELIMINARY STUDY OF UNIDENTIFIED TARGETS OBSERVED ON AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL RADARS

Firsthand observation in the tracking and subsequent motion analysis of 80 of these unidentified targets indicated that a large number of these were actually secondary reflections of the radar beam. Apparently these reflections were produced by isolated refracting areas which traveled with the wind at or near the temperature inversion levels..

Arbitrageur,I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the 1952 Washington sightings as 'temperature inversions' -to my mind there's still a lot of unanswered questions. Gazrok makes some very good points in this thread...

The “official” explanation given at the time was “temperature inversions” on radar. The press accepted it and let the story die. The radar operators knew better, and plainly stated that they were well aware of such things and how they appeared on radar. Also, nevermind the fact that the objects were also sighted visually by pilots (both civilian and military), and the blips confirmed by numerous radar tracking stations, and even photographed! Even Bluebook eventually dismissed the temperature inversion explanation, and the sightings remain listed in the “unknown” category.

UFOs over DC in 1952, Jets Scrambled

..and there are some very interesting points raised in this post.

Cheers.

More statements and info at the thread below including "The Seven Official UFO declarations made by the Argentinian Government"

Capt. Luis Sanchez Moreno investigating for the Navy, told the press the Navy had been constantly concerned about UFOs since the great wave of global sightings in 1952. Following the sightings by Navy personnel in May 1962, the investigation report released by the Argentine Embassy concluded: "The testimonies of Naval Air Officer pilots and personnel of the Flying Course indicate the existence of abnormal luminous phenomenon."

Link

UFOs over Argentina ~ The Bariloche Incident

Originally posted by karl 12
Arbitrageur,I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the 1952 Washington sightings as 'temperature inversions' -to my mind there's still a lot of unanswered questions. Gazrok makes some very good points in this thread...

Hi Karl, thanks for the links, it looks like I have some reading to do over the holidays. I did glance at it but I haven't had a chance to peruse it yet.

I think people underestimate the importance of the fact that July 1952 was one of the hottest months ever recorded in Washington DC (and maybe it still is? I haven't checked since 2009). And even if we have another July as hot in the future, radar filters have improved dramatically since the 1950s, so we are unlikely to see as many radar ghosts or if we do, we are more likely to recognize them for what they are. Regarding the visual sightings, I don't claim I can explain all of them either but I still have reason to think it's not unrelated to the weather. This photo has always looked like a bunch of reflections to me: [atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/4bf5daa47566.jpg[/atsimg]

If this was seen from the ground who knows what the pilots could see?

What makes it hard to answer the unanswered questions is that we haven't had Washington weather as hot to reproduce the same conditions, and therefore the optical phenomena, if that's what they were, may not be reproduced until we have the same weather again and perhaps not even then.

If the global warming scenario is correct, we may have more record-setting Julys in Washington in the future like we had in 1952, and it will be interesting to see what happens then!

reply to post by Arbitrageur


Hi Arbitrageur, thanks for the reply - the photograph you posted is of reflections but when it gets down to discussing the objects which caused 'the biggest press conference to be convened since the end of WW2' then the verdict is still very wide open.

Hope you find time over the holidays to acquaint yourself with the facts over on Gazrok's thread but I did find it very interesting that the U.S. Government, the CIA, Project Bluebook, the U.S. Weather Bureau and the Washington radar operators all seemingly rejected the 'temperature inversion' theory which, in reality, was just an off the cuff remark by Captain Roy James who hadn't even participated in the investigation.

Here's what the senior physicist at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at the University of Arizona Dr James E. Mcdonald had to say about the subject in his address to the U.S. House Committee on Science and Aeronautics in 1968:

"I have interviewed five of the CAA personnel involved in this case and four of the commercial airline pilots involved, I have checked the radiosonde data against well-known radar propagation relations, and I have studied the CAA report subsequently published on this event. Only an extremely lengthy discussion would suffice to present the serious objections to the official explanation that this complex sighting was a result of anomalous radar propagation and refractive anomalies of the mirage type. The refractive index gradient, even after making allowance for instrument lag, was far too low for "ducting" or "trapping" to occur; and, still more significant, the angular elevations of the visually observed unknowns lay far too high for radar- ducting under even the most extreme conditions that have ever been observed in the atmosphere. Some of the pilots, directed by ground radar to look for any airborne objects, saw them at altitudes well above their own flight altitudes, and these objects were maneuvering in wholly unconventional manner. One crew saw one of the unknown luminous objects shoot straight up, and simultaneously the object' s return disappeared from the ARTC scope being watched by the CAA radar operators. The official suggestion that the same weak (1.7"C) low-level "inversion" that was blamed for the radar ducting could produce miraging effects was quantitatively absurd, even if one overlooks the airline-pilot sightings and deals only with the reported ground-visual sightings".

Dr. James E. McDonald, Senior Physicist at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at the University of Arizona

James McDonald, Statement on UFOs to U.S. House Committee on Science and Aeronatics, 1968 Symposium on UFOs

Cheers.

Originally posted by ArbitrageurIf this was seen from the ground who knows what the pilots could see?

Here's a lengthy interview with the already mentioned Al Chop.

And an article about the White House meeting that was prompted by the incident.

More to come on that soon . . . hopefully. There are leads.

Originally posted by UFO Partisan
Here's a lengthy interview with the already mentioned Al Chop.

And an article about the White House meeting that was prompted by the incident.

More to come on that soon . . . hopefully. There are leads.

UFO Partisan, many thanks for the links mate, -couldn't get the interview pdf file to work but did find the Albert Chop statement about the Washington sightings on the other link very interesting.

"And the guy that the Colonel, that Dewey bought with him, declared that as far as he was concerned, those were real objects up there. No ground clutter or nothing. And the fact that when we had an intercept come in, and those things vanished the very instance that we could see the planes coming in on the radar scope. The minute we saw the beginning of these guys, the UFOs just disappeared. They just left,"

"I mean, the fact that obviously whatever these things were had intelligence enough to get out of the area when they had an intercept going in. They had to be intelligently controlled. About three hours later, when we got the second intercept up, and sent one guy up round the north part of the city, he didn't see anything. But Paterson, down in the other quadrant down here, flew right into the middle of four of them, and he actually said, "They're closing in on me! What shall I do?" Well, what the hell is he going, "what shall I do?" What was I going to tell him? I’m a civilian. I am not going to tell an Air Force pilot to fire at that damn thing or anything! I didn't say anything! Nobody said anything! All of a sudden, these things began to move away from him, and he said, "they’re gone!"

Albert Chop

As for 1952, it seems the state of Texas was also experiencing an unusualy high number of UFO reports -here's a good article posted by Ex_CT2 over on this thread about July,1952:

The Amazing Texas UFO Flap Of 1952

The above incident overshadowed the fact that in that same year of 1952, a massive wave of UFO sightings ranged from Japan to Africa and France to Vietnam. In America just about every state in the union experienced UFO sightings. No doubt that authorities tried to keep these events from being widely publicized or from being connected together by broadcasters..

The great state of Texas was witness to a concentrated stream of bizarre aerial sightings that stretched across the entire geographic region and involved all major cities, and Air Force bases as well. Many sightings were also reported in a great number of smaller towns too. Even with perhaps the largest number of reported unknown aerial phenomena in the US, Texas sightings were simply overshadowed by what was happening elsewhere, and how the press corps chose to prioritize its broadcasts to the public.

link

Cheers.