Klass, in his report, attempting to dismiss the case as anomalous propagation, wrote, "If it were not for the incident involving the first Venom pilot's reported radar-visual encounter with the UFO, this case would deserve scant attention because the erratic behavior of the radar-UFOs is so characteristic of spurious targets…"
Klass then goes on to explain the cockpit configuration of the Venom fighter, reporting, accurately, that it is set up so that the pilot sits on the left and the radar operator sits on the right. Controls for the radar, and the screen, are situated so that it would be difficult for the pilot to both fly the plane and work the radar. He suggests, based on the reported communications between the pilot and the ground that there was no radar operator in the cockpit. This, Klass believes, explains why there seems to be a radar visual sighting. The pilot, doing double duty, was "overwhelmed" by the workload and made a simple mistake.
But this is speculation by Klass. He pointed out, "Never once did the words 'we' or 'radar operator' appear in the reports; only the words 'I' and 'pilot.'"
This was a "scrambled" intercept mission. It is unlikely that the aircraft took off without a full cockpit crew. In other words, regardless of the speculations by Klass, there would have been a man sitting in the right seat to work the radar. And, if that is the case, then his whole theory is in error and should be rejected.
And even if he was correct about there being a single occupant of the Venom aircraft, that does not explain the other visual sightings at the scene. The case is made of more than a single misidentified blip on the radars. It is a complex case that should have been carefully researched by those who claimed to be interested in finding answers.
The Condon Committee, which did investigate the case in a very limited fashion, suggested that they were hampered by receiving the case late. It wasn't until the letter from the controller arrived that they even began to look at it. Only then did they request the Air Force file.
One interesting point is that Klass, of course, criticizes some researchers for relying on the twelve-year-old memories of the controller, preferring to rely on the reports written within days of the sighting. The Condon Committee, however, noted, "One of the interesting aspects of this case is the remarkable accuracy of the account of the witness as given in the letter… which was apparently written from memory 12 yr. after the incident. There are a number of minor discrepancies, mostly a matter of figures (the C-47 at 5,000 ft. was evidently actually at 4,000 ft.), and he seems to have confused the identity of location C with B [as noted in his letter]; however all of the major details of his account seem to be well confirmed by the Blue Book account."
After their review of the case, the Condon Committee, which was financed by the Air Force, reported, "In conclusion, although conventional or natural explanations certainly cannot be ruled out, the probability of such seems low in this case and the probability that at least one genuine UFO was involved seems high."
Let's look at that conclusion again, remembering that Ed Condon, in authoring his report to the Air Force claimed they found no evidence for UFOs. But the conclusion reached by the scientists of the Condon Committee was, "…the probability that at least one genuine UFO was involved seems high."
Hynek, in a "memorandum for record" found in the Project Blue Book files, wrote about the case, "The Lakenheath case could constitute a source of embarrassment to the Air Force, and should the facts, as so far reported, get into the public domain, it is not necessary to point out what excellent use the several dozen UFO societies and other 'publicity artists' would make of such an incident. It is, therefore, of great importance that further information on the technical aspects of the original observations be obtained, without loss of time from the original observers."
There is no evidence that anyone did any follow up work, at least in the Blue Book files. Here is a case that, if properly researched, could have given us a great deal of information about UFOs. It contains the elements that the scientific community demands. Not only do we have the reports of the radar operators about what they were seeing on the scopes, but we have visual confirmation by other personnel including two pilots. Clearly something other than weather related phenomena was present.
Even the Condon Committee scientists, who by the time this case arrived, were predisposed to believe that UFOs were nothing more than imagination, misidentification and illusion, wrote that there was a genuine UFO involved. I should point out here that a genuine UFO does not translate directly into extraterrestrial spacecraft.
Klass, at the end of his report about the case, wrote, "UFOlogical principal #10: Many UFO cases seem puzzling and unexplainable simply because case investigators have failed to devote a sufficiently rigorous effort to the investigation." He added, "This is not really surprising because the vast majority of UFO investigators are persons who want to believe in extraterrestrial spaceships, either consciously or unconsciously. The larger the number of seemingly unexplainable cases, the stronger the apparent support for the extraterrestrial hypothesis."
Except, in this case, some of the most persuasive of the arguments came from the Condon Committee scientists. They didn't want to believe at all, and in fact, had hung ridiculous explanations on some of the reports simply to have them labeled as "identified." But here, with this case, they reported it was a genuine UFO.
But the point is that Blue Book and the Air Force had this case in their hands. They were alerted as required by Air Force Regulation 200-2 demanded, and they had access to all the witnesses. At worst, some of them would have been civilians assigned to one of the bases involved. Yet there is no evidence in the Blue Book files that they followed up on the reports. There is no evidence that they cared what the facts were. Instead, someone said meteors might be in the area, and meteors became a source of the visual sightings. Someone suggested that anomalous propagation might be responsible and anomalous propagation became the source of the radar returns.
In fact, one writer suggested that as the objects approached the radar sites, they seemed to fade, and then came back stronger. To him, this meant anomalous propagation because this was a classic symptom of it. The targets often faded and came became stronger under those circumstances.
There is, of course, another, equally plausible explanation. Radar sites are designed so that there is little in the way of signal strength directly overhead. The radars at set up to find targets approaching and to display those targets. If the object flies directly overhead, then the signal fades and the target fades, only to come back strong on the other side, once it is out of this "cone of silence."
In other words, if a real, solid object flew over the top of the radar site, the operator could expect it to fade out and then come back. The returns on the scopes did exactly what they should have, not because they were anomalous propagation but because the target had flown over the top of the site.
What this case demonstrates, however, is that the Air Force, by the mid-1950s, had started to stick explanations on sighting reports. It made little or no difference if those sightings were explained or not. If they could sell the explanation to one another, and no one worked hard to slap them down, then that became the explanation.
This case should have been investigated with the intensity that was applied to the Florida scoutmaster case. The contrast in the investigations is staggering. In Florida, the Air Force investigators tried to find all the witnesses, they knocked on doors, checked the background of the man involved, interviewed the boy scouts, and took samples for testing.