The 1952 Washington UFO Sightings: What Did Radar See?

On two July weekends in 1952, radar at Washington's airports tracked unexplained targets, and fighter jets were sent over the capital.

In July 1952, radar at Washington National Airport and Andrews Air Force Base tracked unidentified targets, and fighter jets were sent up. The Air Force blamed temperature inversions, and a later civil aviation investigation agreed.

In July 1952, radar operators at Washington National Airport and at Andrews Air Force Base picked up targets they could not identify. The most publicized sightings fell on two weekends in a row in late July; a CIA history of the agency's UFO work dates the radar sightings to July 19–20 and July 27. F-94 fighter jets were scrambled from New Castle Air Force Base in Delaware to look for the objects.

The story went national. One newspaper ran the headline "SAUCERS SWARM OVER CAPITAL." President Truman's Air Force aide phoned Edward Ruppelt, head of Project Blue Book, who suggested that a temperature inversion might be the cause. On July 29, Major Generals John Samford and Roger Ramey held a Pentagon briefing that has been described as the largest Pentagon press conference since World War II.

The official explanation was the weather. The CIA history puts it this way: "the Air Force quickly offered the explanation that the radar blips might be the result of temperature inversions. Later, a Civil Aeronautics Administration investigation confirmed that such radar blips were quite common and were caused by temperature inversions." An inversion is a layer of warm air sitting over cooler air near the ground. It can bend radar beams and produce false returns. The sightings came during the 1952 wave of reports that concerned both the Air Force and the CIA. Six months later, in January 1953, the CIA-sponsored Robertson Panel met to review UFO reports.