For additional details, please see the official government documents regarding this incident, which the Disclosure Project obtained through a FOIA request. These are found in Appendix I (Document A1.4).
6.6
The Summer of 1952: UFOs Over Many Areas Including Washington, D.C.
One of the most frequent rhetorical questions posed about UFOs is: if they are real, why don’t they just land on the White House lawn? Actually, they came pretty close to doing just that on two consecutive weekends in July of 1952. The summer of 1952 was one of the most prolific for reported sightings of UFOs. There had been a significant number of reports flowing in all along the Eastern seaboard and from the Midwestern states for weeks. Intelligence officers grew increasingly more uneasy over the sharp rise in sightings. Of special concern was that many of these statements were coming from civilians. Prior to that fateful summer, most sightings had come from military personnel and had been kept from the public. But now the citizens themselves, including commercial airline pilots had become sources of information: July 10, 1962: A National Airlines plane over Quantico, Virginia observed a light at 2,000 feet which the crew stated was too slow to be a big meteor and too fast to be a lighted balloon. July 12, 1952: Former Air Force jet pilot Jack Green in Delphi, Indiana was one of many who witnessed a blue-white saucer-shaped object high in the sky. July 13, 1952: Thousands of people in Indianapolis witness a huge oval speed over the city at 5,000 feet, frightening many. An Eastern Air Lines captain, an Air Force pilot, and a private pilot all saw a controlled craft initially flying much higher which descended to about 5,000 feet and flew over the city of Indianapolis. This was the first low-range sighting witnessed by thousands of people, at least in the era of UFO sightings that began in the 40s. Just prior to its appearance over Indiana, possibly the same object - certainly one bearing the same description - was seen on Air Force radar at Kirksville, Missouri. It was estimated to be flying at 1,700 mph and to be the size of a B-36 bomber. July 13, 1962: A commercial pilot and crew, flying at 11,000 feet sixty miles southwest of Washington, spotted a light below them. The light rose to the same altitude as the plane, hovered to the left of the plane for several minutes, then rose rapidly when the pilot turned on the plane’s landing lights. July 14, 1952: A PanAm flight headed south to Miami from New York reported observing glowing orange UFOs near Newport News, Virginia. (Note: The first formation consisted of six discs were seen; two more were seen soon after the first formation flew off.) As the formation approached the plane, the lead disc turned on its edge. The others instantly did the same. All the discs flipped to horizontal, changed direction and sped off. July 17, 1952: An American Airlines flight near Denver received a radio transmission warning of a craft ahead. Captain Paul Carpenter and crew observed four saucers in formation flying at an estimated 3,000 mph. From the ground: July 16, 1952: Langley Air Force Base was the scene for a sighting of two large amber lights. One of the two observers was a well-respected civilian scientist from Langley. The lights 382
