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The
1952 Washington, D.C. UFO incident, also known as the
Washington flap or the
Washington National Airport Sightings, was a series of unidentified flying object reports from July 12 to July 29, 1952, over Washington, D.C. The most publicized sightings took place on consecutive weekends, July 19--20 and July 26--27.
At 11:40 p.m. on Saturday, July 19, 1952,
Edward Nugent, an air traffic controller at Washington National Airport (today
Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport), spotted seven objects on his radar. The objects were located 15 miles (24 km) south-southwest of the city; no known aircraft were in the area and the objects were not following any established flight paths.
Nugent's superior,
Harry Barnes, a senior air-traffic controller at the airport, watched the objects on Nugent's radarscope. He later wrote:
At this
point, other objects appeared in all sectors of the radarscope; when they moved over the
White House and the
United States Capitol,
Barnes called
Andrews Air Force Base, located 10 miles from
National Airport. Although
Andrews reported that they had no unusual objects on their radar, an airman soon called the base's control tower to report the sighting of a strange object. Airman
William Brady, who was in the tower, then saw an "object which appeared to be like an orange ball of fire, trailing a tail
. . . [it was] unlike anything I had ever seen before." As
Brady tried to alert the other personnel in the tower, the strange object "took off at an unbelievable speed."
Meanwhile, another person in the National Airport control tower reported seeing "an orange disk about 3,
000 feet altitude." On one of the airport's runways,
S.C. Pierman, a
Capital Airlines pilot, was waiting in the cockpit of his
DC-4 for permission to take off. After spotting what he believed to be a meteor, he was told that the control tower's radar had picked up unknown objects closing in on his position. Pierman observed six objects — "white, tailless, fast-moving lights" — over a 14-minute period.
At
Andrews AFB, meanwhile, the control tower personnel were tracking on radar what some thought to be unknown objects, but others suspected, and in one instance were able to prove, were simply stars and meteors. However,
Staff Sgt. Charles Davenport observed an orange-red light to the south; the light "would appear to stand still, then make an abrupt change in direction and altitude . . . this happened several times." At one point both radar centers at National Airport and the radar at Andrews AFB were tracking an object hovering over a radio beacon. The object vanished in all three radar centers at the same time. At
3 a.m., shortly before two jet fighters from
Newcastle AFB in
Delaware arrived over
Washington, all of the objects vanished from the radar at National Airport. However, when the jets ran low on fuel and left, the objects returned, which convinced Barnes that "the UFOs were monitoring radio traffic and behaving accordingly." The objects were last detected by radar at 5:30 a.m.
Around sunrise,
E.W. Chambers, a civilian radio engineer in
Washington's suburbs, observed "five huge disks circling in a loose formation. They tilted upward and left on a steep ascent."
Publicity and
Air Force reaction
The sightings of July 19--20, 1952, made front-page headlines in newspapers around the nation. A typical example was the headline from the
Cedar Rapids Gazette in
Iowa. It read "SAUCERS
SWARM OVER CAPITAL" in large black type. By coincidence,
USAF Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, the supervisor of the Air Force's
Project Blue Book investigation into the UFO mystery, was in Washington at the time. However, he did not learn about the sightings until Monday, July 21, when he read the headlines in a Washington-area newspaper. After talking with intelligence officers at the
Pentagon about the sightings,
Ruppelt spent several hours trying to obtain a staff car to investigate the sightings, but was refused as only generals and senior colonels could use staff cars. He was told that he could rent a taxicab with his own money; by this point Ruppelt was so frustrated that he left Washington and flew back to
Blue Book's headquarters at
Wright-Patterson AFB in
Ohio. Before leaving Washington, Ruppelt did speak with an Air Force radar specialist, Captain
Roy James, who felt that unusual weather conditions could have caused the unknown radar targets.
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