UFOs One Year at a Time: 1953

CASE HISTORY ITEMS BELOW ARE FROM NICAP'S 1953 CHRONOLOGY
http://www.nicap.org/waves/1953fullrep.htm

Early, 1953; Salisbury Plains, Great Britain
Daytime. This incident, witnessed by none other than George Townsend Withers, is very impressive. It involves an object following a stripped-down Canberra jet, then being chased by the canberra only to accelerate upward at high speed. Within this report, as told by GTW to Jenney Randles, there is evidence indicating a more serious interest by the British and also their early knowledge of the Estimate of the Situation, which most people knew nothing about at that time. Reference is also made to an FBI document, stating "some Military officials are seriously considering the possibility of interplanetary ships". (Jenny Randles)

Jan. 1, 1953; Mobile, Alabama (BBU)
Brookley AFB USAF Capt. and senior pilot saw to the W from a drive-in theater a bluish-white object 1­ 2 ft size with a short exhaust trail in rapid level flight left to right through 80° arc about 2,000-3,000 ft altitude, 1 mile distance, 250-300 knots speed, started climbing turn at the end and suddenly disappeared like turning off a light. (Hynek-CUFOS­ Willy Smith files)

Jan. 6, 1953; Duncanville, TX [and Oklahoma City, OK?] (BBU) (Item # 6 on Chop Clearance List)
1/1:05 a.m. (CST). The 147th AC&W Squadron, Duncanville, Texas, was notified by the CAA ARTCC at Meecham Field, Fort Worth, Texas, that they received numerous calls of an unidentified flying object northeast of Dallas, Texas. The AC&W unit at Tinker AFB, Oklahoma, reported that they had picked up a target by radar twenty miles southwest of Paris, Texas. This target was moving moving west at an estimated speed of 600 knots at 7,500 feet in altitude. An arrowhead-shaped object was seen by some witnesses. (McDonald list; FUFOR Index)

Jan 23, 1953; Bergstrom AFB, TX (BBU)
3:40 p.m. (CST). (McDonald list; FUFOR Index) Unidentified return on AN/NPM-1 GCA radar set. Size of blip was 3/16" in width and 3/4" in length. Speed was from stationary to as fast or faster then a jet aircraft. Length of observation was 19 minutes. The observer was T/Sgt Gerald Kelly, Aircraft Landing Control Technician, and he is stated to be fully qualified by his commanding officer. (Dan Wilson)

Jan. 26, 1953; Continental Divide, NM
At 2115 MST Air Force personnel stationed at an AC&W station in this area observed an aerial phenomenon simultaneously by electronic and visual means. To the naked eye the object appeared as a very bright reddish-white object estimated to be 10 miles west of the radar site. The object passed behind a hill and then reappeared apparently heading in a northerly direction at a slow speed. The airman making this visual observation reported it to personnel manning the radar equipment. They stated that they had an unidentified blip on the radar scope, appearing west of the station approximately 9 miles away. The scope showed the object to be on a 270 azimuth at an altitude of 10-15,000 moving away from the site at 12-15 mph. It was eventually lost on radar at the 18 mile range. The object was under visual and radar observation intermittently for 45 minutes. (NARA-PBB85-814)


Feb. 13, 1953; Carswell AFB, Fort Worth, TX (BBU)
2:35 a.m. (CST). Pilots and crew of B-36 aircraft (one named Ruth) saw 3 bright lights of equal intensity in stacked vertical echelon formation approaching at moderately high speed (cruise speed of F-86), one object suddenly accelerated then came to complete halt and the other 2 objects did the same, then returned to original formation and repeated the maneuver, ending in a horizontal echelon with center object the pivot, then all climbed steeply in "swinging" motion at high speed. Possible ground radar contact. (Hynek-CUFOS re-eval; Jan Aldrich; FUFOR Index)

From Chapter 17 of Edward J. Ruppelt's The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects

Ruppelt writes: It was just a few minutes before midnight on January 28, 1953, when a message flashed into Wright-Patterson for Project Blue Book. It was sent "Operational Immediate," so it had priority handling; I was reading it by 12:30 A.M... A pilot had chased a UFO. The report didn't have many details but it did sound good. It gave the pilot's name and said that he could be reached at Moody AFB. I put in a long distance call, found the pilot, and flipped on my recorder so that I could get his story word for word.

He told me that he had been flying an F-86 on a "round robin" navigation flight from Moody AFB to Lawson AFB to Robins AFB, then back to Moody - all in Georgia. At exactly nine thirty five he was at 6,000 feet, heading toward Lawson AFB on the first leg of his flight. He remembered that he had just looked down and had seen the lights of Albany, Georgia; then he'd looked up again and seen this bright white light at "ten o'clock high." It was an unusually bright light, and he said that he thought this was why it was so noticeable among the stars. He flew on for a few minutes watching it as he passed over Albany.

He decided that it must be an extremely bright star or another airplane - except it just didn't look right. It had too much of a definitely circular shape. It was a nice night to fly and he had to get in so much time anyway, so he thought he'd try to get a little closer to it. If it was an airplane, chances were he could close in and if it was a star, he should be able to climb up to 30,000 feet and the light shouldn't change its relative position.

He checked his oxygen supply, increased the r.p.m. of the engine, and started to climb. In three or four minutes it was obvious that he was getting above the light, and he watched it; it had moved in relation to the stars. It must be an airplane then, he'd decided - an airplane so far away that he couldn't see its red and green wing tip lights. Since he'd gone this far, he decided that he'd get closer and make sure it was an airplane; so he dropped the nose of the F-86 and started down. As the needle on the machmeter nudged the red line, he saw that he was getting closer because the light was getting bigger, but still he couldn't see any lights other than the one big white one.

Then it wasn't white any longer; it was changing color. In about a two second cycle it changed from white to red, then back to white again. It went through this cycle two or three times, and then before he could realize what was going on, he told me, the light changed in shape to a perfect triangle. Then it split into two triangles, one above the other. By this time he had leveled off and wasn't closing in any more.

In a flash the whole thing was gone. He used the old standard description for a disappearing UFO: "It was just like someone turning off a light - it's there, then it's gone." I asked him what he thought he'd seen. He'd thought about flying saucers, he said, but he "just couldn't swallow those stories." He thought he had a case of vertigo and the more he thought about it, the surer he was that this was the answer.

He'd felt pretty foolish, he told me, and he was glad that he was alone. Up ahead he saw the sprawling lights of Fort Benning and Lawson AFB, his turning point on the flight, and he'd started to turn but then he'd checked his fuel. The climb had used up quite a bit, so he changed his mind about going to Robins AFB and started straight back to Moody. He called in to the ground station to change his flight plan, but before he could say anything the ground radio operator asked him if he'd seen a mysterious light. Well - he'd seen a light.

Then the ground operator proceeded to tell him that the UFO chase had been watched on radar. First the radar had the UFO target on the scope, and it was a UFO because it was traveling much too slowly to be an airplane. Then the radar operators saw the F-86 approach, climb, and make a shallow dive toward the UFO. At first the F-86 had closed in on the UFO, but then the UFO had speeded up just enough to maintain a comfortable lead. This went on for two or three minutes; then it had moved off the scope at a terrific speed.

The radar site had tried to call him, the ground station told the F-86 pilot, but they couldn't raise him so the message had to be relayed through the tower.