Introduction. Page I iii Abstract. Explanation of nicap and its policies

The Ground Observer Corps was created in January 1950, and inactivated January 31, 1959. By that time the improvement of electronic detection equipment reduced the need for civilian volunteer observers to supplement the air detection network of the Air Defense Command. During the period of its operation, the GOC made a great contribution to the security of the United States. It also logged hundreds of sightings of unexplainable aerial phenomena.

NICAP Adviser Leonard H. Stringfield, during this period, was Director of an effective world-wide organization (C.R.I.F.O.) in Cincinnati, Ohio, which sifted and publicized reliable UFO in formation. In September 1955, the Air Defense Command Filter Center in Columbus designated Stringfield's home as an official "UFO reporting post." Thereafter, when UFOs were observed in the skies above Cincinnati, Stringfield would check out the reports. If the objects did not appear to be anything conventional, he would alert the Filter Center. On several occasions, Stringfield helped vector in jet interceptors to track down unidentified objects in the skies.

A similar incident occurred August 23, 1955. In a privately published book, [22.] Stringfield described what happened:

"About midnight, residents throughout the city were jarred by the roar of jets. From S.A.C., Lockburne AFB, south of Columbus, the Air National Guard jets were alerted, scrambled and were over Cincinnati in 12 minutes. The alert began when three UFOs were sighted and confirmed by radar somewhere between Columbus and Cincinnati.

"In the meantime, Walter Paner, Supt. of Hamilton County GOC, on duty at the Mt. Healthy Post, phoned the author of the existent alert and relayed the word that jet interceptors were due over the area. He said the UFOs had been active over Mt. Healthy and could be seen clearly by observers from the tower. In a short time, the jets, at approximately 20,000 feet, were over Cincinnati, but poor visibility prevented me and a visiting friend from Toronto, Canada, from seeing the UFOs which had deployed over a wide area. According to radar, the interlopers had extended   37 miles south, 24 miles north of the city, and as far as 10 miles east of Mt. Healthy.

"A later call from Paner disclosed that a UFO was seen hovering in pendulum-like motions directly over the tower. At about 12:10 a.m., the interceptors made contact, and swooping in, chased the UFO - which disappeared at incredible speed. In the meantime, the Forestville and Loveland GOC Post reported the erratic flights of UFOs to the Air Filter Center describing them as round brilliant white spheres and discs."

The Cincinnati-Columbus, Ohio, area has long been a scene of extensive UFO activity. During 1953 and 1954, another NICAP member, Don Berliner, logged UFO sightings at the Columbus Filter Center. A selection of the reports indicates the flavor and frequency of UFO observations:

July 9,1953; Columbus, Ohio. "Circular, silver" object traveling at terrific rate of speed" at very high altitude seen by accountant at North American Aviation plant.

July 24, 1953; Mt. Vernon, Ohio. 0900 EST; "large silver object" circles over town and then leaves in SW direction at speed slightly faster than clouds. Altitude estimated at 30,000 ft.

July 31, 1953; Port Clinton, Ohio. White light; going east 45 degrees in 30-40 seconds; viewed through 7x field glasses; ceiling was 15-20,000 feet. 2050 EST.

August 1, 1953; Toledo, Ohio. 0030 EST; "amber to green or blue;" ... "flickers and jumps."

August 14, 1953; Columbus, Ohio. 2030 EST; lighted object came straight down out of the sky, stopped, then sped out of view; in sight 30 seconds; observed by two young boys. (From Ohio State Journal; 8-15-53).

August 15, 1953; Crestline, Ohio. 2030 EST; light: white, red, green; circling; clear and calm.

August 21, 1953; Maumee, Ohio. 2200-2300 EST; Black oval, beads of light with green and red around perimeter; going NW, 20 degrees above horizon.

August 23, 1953; Columbus, Ohio. 0415 EST; red and white, half dollar [apparent size], moving very slowly upward; observed 1-1/2 hours.

September 24, 1953; Columbus, Ohio. 1027 EST; round disk, silvery, few seconds, following plane.

October 30, 1953; Mt. Vernon, Ohio. 1725z; round, silver, did not look like plane; heard motor sound; low altitude; circular motion; clear.

November 14, 1953; vicinity of Toledo, Ohio. 2330z; orange, white, blue and red flashing; gaining altitude; very clear.

December 13, 1953; Central Ohio. 0030 EST; long with white lights at both ends. Altitude approx. 5000 feet. Clear.

December 16, 1953; Toledo, Ohio. 1920 EST. Small group of lights changing from red to white, each appearing to revolve; altitude very high. Disappeared to NW a few minutes prior to arrival of seven aircraft from east. Seven were in loose formation, 1 mile apart and at different altitudes. Four miles from point of observation, broke formation and flew off in different directions.

GOC, Radar, Track UFO Across New York

From 1951 to 1955, NICAP Adviser James C. Beatty served as a civilian leader at the Air Force Filter Center in White Plains, N.Y. The Center covered parts of three states: A portion of southern New York, about one-half of Connecticut, and most of New Jersey. Approximately 15,000 Ground Observer Corps spotters reported to this Center. During this period, Beatty served as an instructor, a team supervisor, and also as alert crew supervisor. In the latter capacity, he would have been the civilian in charge at the Filter Center if New York had actually been attacked. In a tape recorded talk to the New York NICAP Affiliate, Beatty said that UFO sightings reported by GOC spotters were numerous; "It was a fairly frequent occurrence."

Beatty recalled in particular one sighting in which he helped track the UFO. It was late August or early September 1954, on the 8:00 p.m. to midnight shift. At first, all was quiet. Then about 9:30 p.m. a post about 20 miles southeast of Poughkeepsie, N.Y., reported that "a large round orange object" the apparent size of the moon had appeared suddenly in the sky. The moon was also visible in another sector of the sky, and was not full that night.

For 20-30 minutes, the ground observers watched the UFO. At first it appeared stationary, except for an oscillatory effect as if it were about to start moving. Then it began moving slowly in a southeasterly direction. As it moved the color changed slightly from orange to a more yellow-orange.

"During the next hour," Beatty reported, "our team at the Filter Center plotted the progress of this object across the board... This track as it began to evolve had a southeasterly direction. During this whole period of an hour it was under constant observation.

"While the object had been progressing across our board, I at that particular time was on the hot-line at the Filter Center... Two radar stations we were hooked into confirmed at that time that they had been holding an electronic fix on this same object... It coincided in position and movement with the object we had seen visually."

Over the hot-line, Beatty could hear the various ground bases talking to each other, and heard the "scramble" order go out from two different Air Force bases. Two jets were scrambled from Stewart AFB, Newburgh, N.Y., and two from the base at Newcastle, Delaware.

"At the time I was hearing the scrambles in the background, the plot was progressing more in a direction toward the state of Connecticut. ..then we began to pick up the jet patterns, coming in from the south in the case of the scramble from Delaware, and from the west in the case of the scramble from Stewart Field... We could track the jets as they closed in on this object.

"Shortly before the interception occurred, a strange thing happened to the orange object. This was reported both by the ground observer posts and by the pilots of the jets. It seemed to speed up in its motion - it had been oscillating or pulsating and moved rather slowly - and it changed to a rotational effect with

also a change of lights. By this time the reports came in that it was a whirling combination of red, green and yellow lights....sort of a rainbow effect.

"Then at almost the same time we got reports from the posts which had been holding this object under ground observation, and jets themselves, that the object disappeared straight upward in a burst of speed... At that moment it also became apparent that not only the ground observers, but also the aircraft and airborne radar had lost visual and electronic contact with the object as it zoomed upward and vanished in the night sky."

Later the witnesses were requested by the Air Force to fill out standard UFO report forms. [23.]

After a few seconds, "the edge of the disc nearest me appeared to dip slightly down toward my direction, and then it sped off to the WNW with a huge burst of speed. When it dipped, I could see the edge very clearly," Eames said. [32.]

"The time of day was between three and four o'clock in the afternoon, and the sky was clear overhead. I was standing at the rear of the local High School building talking with two friends... Suddenly we all heard a very loud deep roar as of many motors, which accelerated very rapidly and then faded out just as rapidly. The direction of the sound was from the sky and I instinctively turned my head and eyes upward. It just happened that the line of my vision was such that my eyes were almost instantly focused on the object, which was east, perhaps a little to the SE, from where I was standing. It was up high overhead, and from the angle at which I was looking up, about 60 degrees, with the earth, I would say that the object could have been out over the ocean as we are in about 4 miles from the coast...

"The object as I first saw it appeared as a flaming ring. The color was a little on the whitish tone but also had some suggestion of the orange-yellow of the common flame of burning wood, say. At the lower left quadrant of the ring there appeared a small, bright disc tangent with the ring, same color as the ring. The center of the remainder of the ring appeared dark. The object was headed earthward, not quite in a direct line toward me, but sort of downward and a little to the right. This direction was indicated by a short, grayish trail upward to the left. Then the object seemed to waver and 'skid around' for just a few seconds, apparently reversing its direction, because it next went upward and to the right, disappearing from sight very quickly.

"As it disappeared the appearance changed from that of a ring and internal concentric disc, to a solid silvery colored disc. . . The sound came and went synonymously with the object's appearance and disappearance. The size appeared slightly smaller than a full moon would appear high in the sky... The time of observation was short, say twenty seconds, but long enough to get a good clear view of what was visible... My daughter heard the roar from inside our home, and three other people called me, after seeing the newspaper article, to tell me they had heard the unusual sound from the sky at the same time I had heard it...

"It appeared as though the object were traveling earthward at a terrific speed, and then as though a tremendous force were applied to arrest the earthward direction and send the object

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back upward, and consequently it went rapidly out of sight and out of hearing distance... What the object was, where it came from, and where it went, are all a complete mystery to me but the sighting was as clear as a picture on a wall." [33]

"The objects then started to rise higher above the tree and I began to wonder, so I got out of the tub and proceeded to the window for a better look, by which time the lights were no longer in their previous position relative to the tree. I looked around the horizon, left and right, and up; and there they were - now almost due north and at an angle of about 70 degrees from the horizontal, describing antics which no jet-jobs, guided missiles or airplanes could accomplish.

"I pushed the window open... and got a good look at the two bright lights which can be described as the size of the tip of a blue-head wood stick match at arm's length at a distance from each other equal to about 6 or 7 times their diameter. No better description can be given than that they were brilliantly white lights against an azure blue cloudless sky...

"To describe the antics they were going through is to first state that they made no pattern nor any sense. One could climb above the other, then the other would climb above the first, the lights sometimes blinking on and off at a surprising frequency of four blinks per second as they climbed. When the lights would blink out, there was absolutely nothing to see, indicating that they could hardly have been a somersaulting disc, black on one side and white on the other, as something would have shown up against the clear azure sky.

"The two lights then circled around each other twice and began moving in a more or less straight line due west and continued in this path at a speed I would estimate at 200 mph., for an arc of perhaps 15 degrees requiring some 8 seconds... as I was watching them intently they mysteriously and instantaneously went out... I looked in all directions for the next 30 seconds but they didn't reappear...

(Mr. Besler added a note about the natural tendency for a person to try to account for unusual observations in terms of familiar experiences. "I was aware from almost the first of the 18 seconds I had them in observation that these could well be UFOs. Nonetheless my mind was struggling at all times to identify them as planes, birds, pieces of tinfoil in the wind, or something familiar to this planet. Even after they disappeared my mind kept searching for an explanation other than the obvious that there had been a couple of brilliant flying unidentified objects (saucers?) under observation by the rare chance of a glance out of a window.") [34]

"Flight #61 was over desert country approximately 30 to 45 minutes before landing at Los Angeles International Airport," Hahn reported. The sighting occurred approximately seven to ten minutes before we passed what appeared to be an Air Force base. My seat was just above the leading edge of the wing next to the window on the right side of the plane. We were at about 14,000 feet, or so it had been announced some time previously. I was observing several jets making vapor trails at high altitude, crossing and criss-crossing. The earth seemed rugged and deserted with no sign of roads or cultivation, with the exception of a meandering, apparently dirt, road approximately 10 to 12 miles to the right angling away from our line of flight.

"My first observation of the object struck me as a large, roughly elliptical, metallic building on the ground at the base of a hill that seemed to have dark patches, like brush or small trees. I wondered what such a structure was doing out there with no roads or sign of access appearing near it - it was, I should judge, eight to nine miles ahead and to the right of the plane. Suddenly, I observed it was moving.

"Dark patches on the hill, probably scrub trees, were passing beneath it. It went up and over the hill angling toward the road. Its course was extremely erratic, seeming to zigzag two or three hundred feet in an instant to the right or left while maintaining a general direction angle of about 45 degrees away from our course. Its overall speed seemed to me (pure 'guesstimate') about one-third our own. It eventually disappeared from my view behind and under the wing, paralleling the road about a mile to the right...

"I would judge the size of the object to be approximately 200 to 250 feet in diameter - its height off the ground to be only a couple hundred feet as it went over the first hill and never over 1000 feet during my observation."

Mr. Hahn added that the UFO's surface resembled "sand- blasted aluminum," and was not shiny. He saw no trail or exhaust from the object. [35.]

(That afternoon a group of Rocketdyne engineers sighted three elliptical UFOs over the San Fernando Valley; See Section VI).

September 7, 1958; Mission, Kansas. The publisher of The American Hereford Journal, Hayes Walker, Jr., and his wife saw a white disc speed across the sky about 5:30 p.m. The UFO, round and flat, passed nearly overhead traveling from southwest to northeast, disappearing over the horizon in 12-15 seconds. It was "more distinct than the daytime moon," Walker reported. [36]

Rendezvous of Two UFOs

February 16, 1960; Laguna Beach, Calif. Mr. Earl T. Ross, retired chemical manufacturing company executive (industrial chemist and engineer) reported the following case to NICAP.

"At 9:15 a.m., Tuesday, February 16,1960, from my home... I saw, in a very clear and cloudless blue sky, an oval, light colored object move steadily toward the east from a point a little south of overhead. Then, perhaps two seconds later, I saw another similar object approach and overtake the first from a position lower in the southern sky; the second object wobbled or rather nodded, (on an axis through its center and at right angles to its