The events began at about 11:40 PM on Saturday, July 19 when the Washington Air Route Traffic Control Center (WARTCC) radar at National Airport detected targets which moved toward Andrews AFB (AAFB). Then at 5 minutes past midnight a phone call was received at AAFB control tower advising that there was an orange lighted object to the south. According to the official reports, a control tower operator, while talking to the person on the phone, looked south and saw the "orange ball of fire, trailing a tail...it was very bright and definite and unlike anything I had ever seen before....It made a kind of circular movement.... (then) took off at an unbelievable speed. It disappeared in a split second." The person on the phone saw the same thing. A few seconds later the tower operator "saw another one, same description. As the one before, it made an arc-like pattern and then disappeared." During the next 25 minutes, 5 AAFB personnel saw two more lights, reddish-orange in color, moving erratically on a generally southeastward track through the eastern sky. They were seen from 5 to 30 seconds on 3 occasions. At 1:20 and again at 1:25 fast moving lights with an orange hue and a tail were seen by AAFB tower personnel. At 2:35 WARTCC received a call from an airline pilot who said he had seen 3 objects near Herndon, Virginia, west of Washington, and reported that "they were like nothing he had ever seen."

A week later, on July 25 at 9:15 PM, WARTCC again detected from 4 to 8 anomalous targets "described by radar operators as 'good sharp targets." According to the AFOSI report, at 1:20 PM, 2 F-94's were scrambled from Delaware and one of the jets "reportedly made visual contact with one of the objects and at first appeared to be gaining on it, but the object and the F-94 were observed on the radar scope and appeared to be traveling at the same approximate speed. However, when it attempted to overtake the object, the object disappeared both from the pursuant aircraft and the radar scope. The pilot of the F-94 remarked about the 'incredible speed of the object.'"

The next night was a repeat. At 8:15 PM, July 26, the pilot and stewardess of a National Airlines plane flying at 1,700 feet and 200 mph saw a lighted object, which appeared similar to the glow of a lighted cigarette (dull red) which passed "directly over the airliner." They estimated the object speed to be 100 mph. At 8:54 PM, AAFB radar began detecting 10 to 12 unidentified radar targets in the Washington area. An hour and a half later, at 10:23, WARTCC, detected 4 targets at various locations in the suburbs of Washington. According to a document not released until 1985, a Civil Aeronautics Administration official flying at an altitude of 2,200 feet at 10:46 PM saw "5 objects giving off a light glow ranging from orange to white." The same document says, "Some commercial pilots reported visuals ranging from 'cigarette glow' (red-yellow) to 'a light' (as recorded from their conversations with ARTC controllers)." At 10:38 PM the USAF Command post was notified of unidentified targets and at 11:00 PM two F-94's were scrambled. The document says that "one pilot mentioned seeing 4 lights at one time and a second time as seeing a single light ahead but unable to close whereupon the light 'went out.'"

During the sightings on July 26 two members of the PBB staff, one of whom was a radar expert, were in the Washington area. They were notified quickly of the radar sightings and arrived at AAFB shortly after midnight. When they arrived they could see "7 good, solid targets." The radar expert checked with the airport radar and determined that there was a slight temperature inversion. A temperature inversion (when the temperature increases rather than decreases with increasing altitude) can cause "anomalous propagation," i.e. can cause a radar beam to bend downward and detect objects on the ground. The expert believed that the inversion was much too weak to cause targets as strong as these, so a second intercept flight was requested. By the time it arrived the strong targets had departed. That ended the Washington, D.C. sightings but the Air Force response was only beginning.

As far as the general public was concerned the first hint of something unusual happening in the skies over the United States came in the increase in local and national press reports of saucers. Press coverage of the flying saucer phenomenon had been sporadic over the previous 5 years, even though the major news media occasionally carrying discussions pro and con (mostly con) about whether flying saucers/UFOs were really unexplainable or if they were just mundane phenomena (or hoax reports). But in the late spring and early summer the number of reports of recent sightings increased. For example, an Associated Press story datelined Dayton, Ohio, on July 17 reads, "An Air Force spokesman said today sixty reports of flying saucers have been received during the last two weeks. He could give no reason for the increase." The July 18 edition of the Washington (DC) Daily News had the headline "THE SAUCERS KEEP COMING" and contained a sighting report of 5 orange discs seen by the chief engineer of the radio station WRC. It also contained an admission by the Air Force that saucers had been tracked on radar at between 1,500 and 2,000 mph and that " jet fighters equipped with the very latest radar have been sent aloft to 'make contact' with the phantom objects, but all efforts to catch up with them have failed...". The Chicago Daily News carried a statement by a Lt. Col. in the Civil Air Patrol who said he "believes the objects are not natural objects and that he saw one a week ago." The Washington Daily News, on July 19, carried a quote by the Civil Defense Director at Dayton, OH, an Air Force Lt. Col., who said "There is something flying around our skies and I wish we knew what it is." Then on July 19 the national press reported the Air Force admission that people were really seeing something unusual, that the numbers of reports had doubled over what had occurred years ago and that the Air Force couldn't track all the saucers.

Some details of the Saturday and Sunday, July 19-20, sightings in Washington, D.C. were leaked to the press and were reported the following Tuesday. Captain Ruppelt, who was in Dayton, Ohio, at the time, was not told about these sightings. When he arrived in Washington, D.C., on routine business on Monday, July 21, he still did not know about them. It wasn't until he read the Tuesday morning paper that he realized something important had occurred. He immediately began phoning people to find out what had happened because he was responsible for supplying the technical backup for whatever the Air Force would tell the

press. Unfortunately he had no answers, only questions. His predicament was not helped when a general told him that President Truman wanted to know what was going on. Apparently, some of the radar targets had been over the White House restricted area. By late in the afternoon Ruppelt had an "answer" for the press: the Air Force would have "no comment" on the sightings because investigation was ongoing. According to Ruppelt, the next day the newspapers interpreted this as meaning that the Air Force "won't talk."

During late July the press activity related to saucer sightings and Air Force investigations increased on a daily basis. Local papers throughout the country were loaded with the reports of local sightings and articles about UFOs. As just one example, the Indianapolis News carried the following front page headline on July 28: "Hundreds in state see 'flying saucers." The story reported that military personnel and police officers "kept a running check on saucers for more than 4 hours." Capt. Ruppelt, in his book The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, claimed that 148 major newspapers throughout the USA carried about 16,000 stories about UFOs during the six month period from April through September. Dr. Herbert Strentz, who did his Ph.D. dissertation on press reporting of the UFO phenomenon, analyzed the BLUE BOOK records in 1966 and claimed that the number of unduplicated stories was more like 30,000. (Strentz, "A Survey of Press Coverage of Unidentified Flying Objects, 1947-1966," Northwestern University, 1970)

The reports of the Washington, D.C., sightings of July 25 and 26 - 27 only added to the furor. The July 28 edition of the Washington, DC, newspaper carried the story "Air Force Alerts Jets to Chase Flying Saucers Anywhere in U.S." The article referred to the DC sightings and also described a sighting in New York state. Some newspapers carried a startling story, from the International News Service, which said that "...jet pilots have been placed on 24-hour 'alert' against 'flying saucers' with orders to 'shoot them down' if they refuse to land. It was learned that pilots have gone aloft on several occasions in an effort to shoot the mysterious objects to the ground but never came close enough to use their guns."

The Associated Press on July 29 carried a story with the title "Whatever They Are, Flying Saucers Put In Busiest Week On Record." According to the article, "In the New York area, in Washington, DC, in New England and Ohio, reports came in of strange aerial objects that defied immediate explanation. The Air Force said that volume of such reports was the heaviest it has been in five years. Most of the sightings were made by relatively competent observers, by pilots, airport control tower men and civilian air defense spotters." The Air Force was sticking to its official position: "There is still no concrete evidence to prove or disprove the so called 'flying saucers.'" The same article carried brief mentions of sightings in the West Virginia area, Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine, and France.

The Washington, DC sightings attracted interest overseas. Prime Minister Winston Churchill of Great Britain queried his scientists. In a note dated July 28 he wrote, " What does all this stuff about flying saucer amount to? Let me have a report at your convenience." The British Ministry of Defense relied heavily on the 1949 report Project Grudge, the report that had been called "worthless tripe" by General Cabell. Basically they told Churchill that all cases could be explained and so there was nothing to it. Next