A third F-94 had been scrambled, and in the meantime its crew took over the search.  They flew around for about ten minutes without detecting any targets on their radar.  They were making one last pass almost directly over the radar station when the radar operator in the back seat of the F-94 yelled over the interphone that he had a target on his scope.  The pilot called ground radar, but by this time both the F-94 and the unidentified target were again too close to the radar station and they couldn’t be picked up.  The F-94 closed in until it was within 200 yards of the target; then the pilot pulled up, afraid he might collide with whatever was out in the night sky ahead of him.  He made another pass, and another, but each time the bright spot on the radar operator’s scope just stayed in one spot as if something were defiantly sitting out in front of the F-94 daring the pilot to close in.  The pilot didn’t take the dare.  On each pass he broke off at 200 yards.

The F-94 crew made a fourth pass and got a weak return, but it was soon lost as the target seemed to speed away.  Ground radar also got a brief return, but in a matter of seconds they too lost the target as it streaked out of range on a westerly heading.

As usual, the first thing I did when I read this report was to check the weather.  But there was no weather report for this area that was detailed enough to tell whether a weather inversion could have caused the radar targets.

But I took the report over to Captain Roy James, anyway, in hopes that he might be able to find a clue that would identify the UFO.

Captain James was the chief of the radar section at ATIC.  He and his people analyzed all our reports where radar picked up UFO’s.  Roy had been familiar with radar for many years, having set up one of the first stations in Florida during World War II, and later he took the first aircraft control and warning squadron to Saipan.  Besides worrying about keeping his radar operating, he had to worry about the Japs’ shooting holes in his antennae.

Captain James decided that this Alaskan sighting I’d just shown him was caused by some kind of freak weather.  He based his analysis on the fact that the unknown target had disappeared each time the ground radar had been switched to short range.  This, he pointed out, is an indication that the radar was picking up some kind of a target that was caused by weather.  The same weather that caused the ground radar to act up must have caused false targets on the F-94’s radar too, he continued.  After all, they had closed to within 200 yards of what they were supposedly picking up; it was a clear moonlight night, yet the crews of the F-94’s hadn’t seen a thing.

Taking a clue from the law profession, he quoted a precedent.  About a year before over Oak Ridge, Tennessee, an F-82 interceptor had nearly flown into the ground three times as the pilot attempted to follow a target that his radar operator was picking up.  There was a strong inversion that night, and although the target appeared as if it were flying in the air, it was actually a ground target.