e
was one of ADC's ace radar trouble shooters and that he traveled all
over the world, on loan from ADC, to work out problems with radars.

"From the description of what the targets looked like on the
radarscopes, good, strong, bright images, I can't believe that they
were caused by weather," he told me.

Then he went on to back up his argument by pointing out that when
the ground radar was switched to short range both the F-94 and the
unknown target disappeared. If just the unknown target had
disappeared, then it could have been weather. But since both
disappeared, very probably the radar set wasn't working on short
ranges for some reason. Next he pointed out that if there was a
temperature inversion, which is highly unlikely in northern Alaska,
the same inversion that would affect the ground radar wouldn't be
present at 25,000 feet or above.

I told him about the report from Oak Ridge that Captain James had
used as an example, but he didn't buy this comparison. At Oak Ridge,
he pointed out, that F-82 was at only 4,000 feet. He didn't know how
the F-94's could get to within 200 yards of an object without seeing
it, unless the object was painted a dull black.

"No," he said, "I can't believe that those radar targets were caused
by weather. I'd be much more inclined to believe that they were
something real, something that we just don't know about."

During the early spring of 1952 reports of radar sightings increased
rapidly. Most of them came from the Air Defense Command, but a few
came from other agencies. One day, soon after the Alaskan Incident, I
got a telephone call from the chief of one of the sections of a
civilian experimental radar laboratory in New York State. The people
in this lab were working on the development of the latest types of
radar. Several times recently, while testing radars, they had
detected unidentified targets. To quote my caller, "Some damn odd
things are happening that are beginning to worry me." He went on to
tell how the people in his lab had checked their radars, the weather,
and everything else they could think of, but they could find
absolutely nothing to account for the targets; they could only
conclude that they were real. I promised him that his information
would get to the right people if he'd put it in a letter and send it
to ATIC. In about a week the letter arrived--hand-carried by no less
than a general. The general, who was from Headquarters, Air Materiel
Command, had bee